Pollen Street Group H1 2025 Earnings Report

Pollen Street Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 46
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Pollen Street Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Pollen Street Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 9/16/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:00AM ET

Pollen Street was founded in 2013. It is a listed alternative asset manager dedicated to the financial and business services sectors. Pollen Street has complementary activities in managing third-party assets (as an asset manager) and on-balance sheet investments (as an investment company), delivering growth through dedicated private equity and credit strategies.

Pollen Street Group H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Private Equity Fund V closed at €1.5 billion, well above its €1 billion target, and Private Credit Fund IV has raised £600 million by H1 with visibility of exceeding its £1 billion goal.
• Positive Sentiment: Total AUM grew 35% year-on-year to £6.1 billion and fee-paying AUM rose 37% to £4.7 billion, with recurring management fees now accounting for 76% of group revenues.
• Positive Sentiment: Fund management income increased 55% to £41.4 million, fund management EBITDA more than doubled to £17.7 million, and EBITDA margins expanded to 43% from 31% a year earlier.
• Positive Sentiment: The board declared an interim dividend of 27 pence per share and executed £6.3 million of share buybacks in H1, bringing total returns to shareholders to £70 million since January 2024.
• Neutral Sentiment: The company reaffirmed full-year guidance, outlined strategic priorities around continued fundraising, deal deployment, and private equity realisations, and maintained its progressive dividend policy.

Presentation

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Pollen Street's interim results presentation for 2025. Nice to see so many familiar faces and some new ones too. Thank you for joining. I'm Lindsey McMurray, CEO of Pollen Street, and I'm joined today by our CFO, Crispin Goldsmith. I'll start with the key highlights of the first half of the year, together with a summary of our progress. Then I'll hand to Crispin to cover the financial performance in more detail before I return to outline our strategic priorities and provide some time for Q&A. Looking at the first half, I'm proud of the progress the team has delivered. We set out our clear priorities for 2025, and we're making strong progress against them.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

We completed the fundraising in Private Equity Fund V well ahead of target, and we're on track to outperform our target for Private Credit Fund IV as AUM continues to expand, and we're scaling deployment in both strategies. Earnings are growing strongly, underpinned by higher management fees. Overall, the group is firmly on track to deliver its strategic objectives for 2025 and beyond. As we've communicated, Private Equity Fund V closed at €1.5 billion, ahead of the original target of €1 billion, supported by strong demand, particularly in North America. We're pleased to be able to deliver £500 million of co-invest to our limited partners too. We've raised £600 million for Private Credit Fund IV already by June, with a strong pipeline of investors giving visibility of exceeding the £1 billion target during the second half of the year.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

This drove significant growth in total AUM, up 35% year on year to £6.1 billion, and fee-paying AUM up 37% to £4.7 billion. We've achieved good deployment across both strategies. In private equity, we invested in two new platforms, which I'll explain in more detail later, and we completed seven bolt-on acquisitions. In credit, we closed 14 new deals, bringing the total deployment in the first half to £600 million. Earnings stepped up correspondingly, and the board declared an interim dividend of £0.27 per share and carried out £6.3 million in buybacks in the period. Since January 2024, we've returned £70 million of capital to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Now, with the strong fundraising, we're seeing a structural shift in the revenue profile of the business, with the asset manager delivering the majority of the growth.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

The asset manager revenues accounted for 58% of group revenues in H1 2023, and that's now grown to 76% in H1 2025. Recurring management fees clearly now make up the largest share of our earnings, and these are our highest quality revenue streams, given their contractual and recurring nature, providing strong visibility and resilience as we look forward. This shift underpins the quality of our revenue mix and positions us to deliver sustained earnings growth in the years ahead. Our AUM has grown at 29% CAGR since 2021, increasing to £6.1 billion at June 2025. Fee-paying AUM has also grown at 32% compound annual growth over the same period, reaching £4.7 billion at the half-year.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Both private equity and private credit have contributed to this, and it's particularly notable to see the momentum building in private credit fundraising, which will be the key driver of AUM growth in the near term. Now, looking at our products and taking a look at private equity, we've well trailed the completion of the fundraising of Private Equity Fund V, but the fund is also already well invested, with eight exciting investments already made. The core investment themes across payments, wealth, insurance, tech-enabled services, and lending continue to witness deep structural change, and our team identifies the businesses positioned to benefit from these changes. We've completed two new platform investments: OrderYoyo, a payments-enabled e-commerce provider serving the European restaurant sector, and Leno Curtis, a UK provider of corporate restructuring services. Both have significant growth, both organically and inorganically.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Alongside these platform acquisitions, we executed seven bolt-on acquisitions across the portfolio, strengthening the existing businesses and supporting their buy and build strategies. The outlook for deal activity in our sector is attractive, and as the leading specialist investor in the mid-market, we have an exciting pipeline to curate a very attractive portfolio for Fund V. In credit, we do not invest in corporate direct lending but are focused on asset-based lending. This type of financing underpins much of the real economy, from people buying homes and cars to SMEs financing equipment and working capital, to real estate developers funding projects and even intellectual property owners monetizing their rights. As such, it's less correlated to M&A activity. It's a very large and growing market expected to reach $7 trillion by 2027. We've developed a leading platform in Europe, and we're excited to build this out as the market grows.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

We've had a very active first half in private credit, capitalizing both on strong demand for our product with investors, but also good momentum in deploying capital too. Total credit AUM increased 17% in the first half, up to £2.3 billion, with fee-paying AUM up 41% to £1.8 billion. Fourteen new transactions across our asset classes were completed, and together with growth in credit AUM and the pace of deployment, they're driving an expanded base of fee-paying assets, which will continue to support management fee growth in H2 and beyond. Now, why are we able to deliver fundraising outperformance in a competitive and challenging fundraising environment? Because we're focused on delivering alpha in our asset classes. A combination of sector specialism, mid-market positioning, disciplined structuring, and pricing enables us to deliver top-tier returns within a controlled risk framework.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

In private equity, we invest in businesses that are well positioned to take advantage of structural change. We're disciplined as to pricing and then apply an operational framework focused on revenue-led growth, margin expansion, and buy and build to create long-term value. In credit, our origination networks and structuring expertise give us access to opportunities with attractive pricing dynamics. This combination of specialist focus, discipline, and a proven framework underpins our ability to deliver sustainable, high-quality alpha for investors. With this focus on delivering high-quality returns for our LPs, we're able to build an increasingly large and diversified investor base across geography and investor type. Over the last 18 months, we've broadened our reach with notable growth from North America, as well as increasing commitments from Middle East and Asia. To support this momentum, we recently opened an office in Abu Dhabi, strengthening our commitment in the region.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

I'll now hand over to Crispin to take us through the financial performance.

[Crispin Goldsmith, CFO at Pollen Street]

Thank you. As Lindsey's talked about, the key highlight of the first half has been the increase in fee-paying AUM. That has come from a combination of new fundraising and deployment within Credit Fund IV. As a result, we've seen a step up in management fee income. We've talked before about the impact of operational gearing. We're able to be selective about the OpEx investments we make as revenues increase. This step up in management fee income has fed through into scaled-up profitability and fund management EBITDA margins. We've done this at the same time as having returned significant amounts of capital to shareholders through both dividends and share buybacks. I'll go through these points in more detail in the next few slides. During H1, we've delivered increasing profitability and strengthening quality of earnings. Fund management income grew by 55% to £41.4 million, which included £8.4 million of catch-up fees.

[Crispin Goldsmith, CFO at Pollen Street]

We've held administration cost growth at 29%, as we've chosen to make further OpEx investments in the business development team to support future fundraising and in the investment team. That operational gearing grew the fund management EBITDA margin to 43%, up from 31% this time last year. The 55% increase in fund management income translated into a 112% increase, more than doubling of fund management EBITDA to £17.7 million. Income on net investment assets was £13.3 million for the half year, and that reflected the equalization effects, where gains are reallocated between investors as if they'd all come in at first close from a strong fundraising period. The phasing of equity gains, which are expected to be concentrated towards the second half of the year, and also the £70.6 million capital return to shareholders since January 2024.

[Crispin Goldsmith, CFO at Pollen Street]

You can see the benefit of those share buybacks in EPS growth of 25% from an underlying 18% increase in profit after tax. As Lindsey said, our growth is being driven by management fees, our highest quality revenue stream. That allows us to see a continuing trend, as we discussed in the full year accounts, that results, and as previously highlighted, of an increasing share of revenues coming from the asset manager. Asset manager revenues of £41.4 million for the half represent a compound annual growth rate of 38% versus H1 2023. Within that, £3.4 million came from performance fees, reflecting the expected weighting of equity returns towards the second half, in line with the phasing of the underlying investee company budgets.

[Crispin Goldsmith, CFO at Pollen Street]

We can see that as we grow fee-paying AUM, we're unlocking operating leverage in the asset manager and for the group as a whole, which is complemented by consistent, resilient, and cash-generative investment company returns. As a group, we continue to benefit from a very strong balance sheet. Drawn leverage has increased to £206 million following the refinancing and upsizing of our debt facilities during H2 2024. We maintain £34 million of undrawn leverage, with a net debt to tangible equity ratio at 55.6% at the half-year end. I'm pleased to say we're trading in line with expectations both for H2 and beyond. We'll see a continuing growth in fee-paying AUM in H2 through rising credit for deployment. The management fees will be lower than H1 without the benefit of catch-up fees.

[Crispin Goldsmith, CFO at Pollen Street]

We expect performance fees to normalize towards the lower end of the long-term guidance, and full-year investment company returns are expected to be in line with FY24, with both performance fees and investment company returns benefiting from the weighting towards the second half of gains on equity positions. Our longer-term financial guidance remains unchanged, as does our capital allocation framework. Share buybacks continue to be a key component of this, and authority for further share buybacks was renewed at the June 2025 AGM. We also remain committed to a progressive dividend policy. Dividends per share in relation to the full year 2025 will be no less than 55p as previously communicated, and we're pleased to announce an interim dividend of 27p per share as the first tranche of this.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Thank you. Now, turning to the strategic priorities for the second half of the year, the focus remains firmly in execution, continuing fundraising on Private Credit Fund IV, maintaining active deployment across both strategies, progressing the private equity realization pipeline, and evaluating buybacks within a broader framework to ensure that they are used strategically where the most value can be created. To bring this all together, I'd like to close by recapping our investment case. We're delivering strong, consistent AUM growth supported by a specialist focus and strong returns, while growing operational leverage, further enhancing profitability. There's been a step change in the quality of earnings with recurring management fees now the primary driver of growth. This builds a predictable, high-quality income stream supported by continued AUM expansion. Our balance sheet remains a key differentiator, providing stability and enabling third-party AUM growth.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Alongside this, our disciplined capital allocation balances the investment in growth with returns to shareholders. Together, these pillars create a resilient and scalable platform, positioning us to deliver long-term value for investors and shareholders. I'd like to thank our team for their hard work and our investors and shareholders for their continued confidence. With that, I'd like to open to questions. Thank you.

Morning. I just had two questions if I may. Firstly, on the realization pipeline, I appreciate timing is probably pretty hard to predict perfectly, but in terms of the impact of that on AUM and fee-paying AUM, could you just give us some sort of sensitivity? That'd be quite helpful. Secondly, on private equity fundraising, kind of more long term, you obviously kind of exceeded your target for Fund V. Are there any sort of new opportunities that you sort of identified as part of that process and through talking to investors? Thanks.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

The realization pipeline is factored into our outlook on an ongoing basis, and therefore, the guidance we give for AUM factors in the realization. It's a steady sort of progression as you start to have some of the funds roll off as we're continuing to raise. It's incorporated into the outlook that we provide. It's a steady process; there's no one single change that will cause that to have a material impact. On the new opportunities, we've definitely built up very strong relationships with new LPs, and we've had a very significant step up in the number of LPs that have come into that fund. With that, also building out the consulting relationships, which are important to the fundraising also. We are very much staying in our heartland of mid-market, and that's our differentiator. That's where we can generate good returns.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

What we are able to do is work with our investors to do some larger deals, which brings the co-invest. It's marrying up. We create the portfolio where the larger size of fund enables us to stay in our strategy, but add maybe one, two to three more deals into a fund. That's broadly how we're utilizing that extra capital. Where we're seeing larger opportunities, which are coming through, we're able to then partner up with our investors, our LPs, to execute on those.

Can I just check on your guidance? Obviously, with the context of 50% EBITDA margins, what do you think happens to operating expenses over the next couple of years? Because obviously, that's a relatively big step up in the first half. I think you sort of referred to a couple of factors driving that.

[Crispin Goldsmith, CFO at Pollen Street]

Yeah, so a key element of that is the placement agent costs as well, which is directly linked to the sort of outperformance on fundraising. I think, yeah, as we say, we continue to plan to make active developments in the business development team to support future fundraising. The way we invest in our investment team is by promoting within the team and bringing people on typically at a more junior level and developing them ourselves. Those are sort of, you know, decisions that we take. It's sort of, you know, any sort of increase in headcount, we have the ability to take that as a selective decision. I think we've previously talked about low double-digit growth in OpEx going forward to get to that 50% margin, probably towards the end of the current forecast period.

Morning.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Morning.

Yeah, just a couple of quick questions, please. First of all, obviously, deployment in private credit for you're making confident sounds around that. In the various silos of where you deploy across private credit, are there different areas of demand you're seeing particularly more interesting elements? What's that implying for potential returns there? Is there anything incremental to talk about there? I suppose the second one, just on private credit for, I mean, the fee structures on new money coming through, are those all very stable in line previously, or is there anything to talk to there as well?

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Yeah, so the deployment has been very well diversified across, you know, there's a slide, I'm not sure if I, yeah, I can go backwards here, on the deployment on private credit, which you can see was across, is across the rate, these different segments. We've seen a consistent over the last several years across these four, mainly these four subsectors, you'll see a lack of exposure there into consumer. That's for a number of different reasons, partly because there's more competition than that, ironically. We've had a good run in SME lending, where there's a number of businesses and our product fits it very well. Across it, we've had a good experience in the government back space where we provide facilities, but actually have the backing of a government guarantee sitting behind there. Often again, linked with SME because governments want to promote SME lending in their space.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Across each of these areas, we've had very good and balanced deployment so that the composition of the fund is well spread. We've been very disciplined as to our returns, and we continue to generate and deliver very strong returns for a senior credit fund. In this 12% to 14% is what we're delivering for our investors. Very strong returns, very good discipline, and very well spread and composed. We don't see that changing in the foreseeable future. We're very confident about the composition of fund four and the return profile. In terms of fees, the allocations to credit are sometimes, or can be much larger. Single ticket allocations are larger. Where you get those several hundred million allocations, there can be a fee discussion, but we're managing to keep within the overall guidance. Where there is any sort of fee pressure, it will tend to come with AUM outperformance.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

Overall, the financial guidance would likely be more positive than negative.

I'll get a hostile one. Private equity, you said you're up to eight in the piece. How many do you generally target? Excuse my ignorance for the fund of this.

[Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street]

That's 12. We've typically said 10 to 12. As we outperformed, that's enabled us to probably be 12 to 13, 14 in the fund. We're executing a very active buy and build strategy within each of our businesses, and we'll also use some of that capital to continue to deploy into the assets that we've already invested in. It'll be a combo. I think likely to be 12 to 13 and then further follow on, I would say. If there are no further questions, thank you for joining. As ever, if you have any follow-up questions, we're available anytime. Thank you.

Participants

Analysts

• Lindsey McMurray, Managing Partner & Chair - Investment Committee at Pollen Street
• Crispin Goldsmith, CFO at Pollen Street