EQT Stock

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to EQT's Q3 announcement. Today, we are thrilled to announce the acquisition of Stockbridge, a leading U.S. real estate investment manager. And during the quarter, we also closed the Coller Capital transaction, all while fundraising momentum, deal flow and value creation remains strong. But before handing over to Per, let me ask again that we limit questions to 2 in today's Q&A, so we have time for everyone's questions. So over to you, Per. Next slide, please.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Let me start today with some reflections on the PEI ranking published last week. After the acquisition of Coller Capital, EQT is now the third largest private markets firm globally. We are, by a distance, the largest non-U.S. firm, and we're the only firm in the top 20 without a private credit platform. In today's environment, this is an important differentiator. In a volatile and uncertain world, we are the performance-focused, trusted, reliable and strategic partner for investors. We're the global provider of international alpha.

Thanks to the breadth of our platform, we can deliver unique opportunities and differentiated solutions. Through our AI infrastructure fund, we provide access to the value creation in the world's second largest developer of data center capacity in 2026, EdgeConneX. In the Scaleup Europe fund, we provide access to the most attractive start-ups in Europe. The Scaleup Europe fund puts EQT really at the heart of the European growth ecosystem. It also helps us position EQT as a natural partner for global asset allocators that want to get access to private market opportunities in Europe.

In our private equity strategies, we can give investors exposure to the demographic and economic growth in Asia, 60% of the economic growth in the world is coming from Asia, but only 5% of the capital raised for private market funds are invested there. Thanks to joining forces with Coller, we can engage with clients on their strategic asset allocation considerations. We can provide clients with the most attractive liquidity solutions, and we can help them stay invested in their winners, and support them in rebalancing their portfolios.

Today, with the acquisition of Stockbridge, we're taking another step in the development of EQT and in making EQT an even more attractive partner for clients. As we stated in our first half update, broadening the thematic focus areas and growing our real estate platform is a strategic priority for us. Performance in EQT Real Estate remained strong, and we want to be able to offer investors access to more alpha in this asset class. We'll come back to Stockbridge shortly.

Today, we're really in a stronger position than ever before. I've never been more excited about what we're building. In a tricky environment for our industry, we continue to produce attractive deal flow and good returns for investors. Thanks to our strong local presence in our target geographies, we can unlock attractive investment opportunities in our prioritized sectors, and we find those opportunities, both in the public markets and in the private markets, and we delivered the most compelling co-invest program globally.

Over the last 12 months, we doubled our fund-based investments to EUR 30 billion. At the same time, we sent back EUR 29 billion to clients. Over the past 24 months, distributions amounted to EUR 58 billion. We will keep on investing in our value-creation toolbox, in our AI capabilities and our capital markets expertise so that we can maintain the attractive value creation momentum in our portfolio and that we can maintain those top quartile DPIs in our key funds.

On the back of our strong track record and the strong performance we've generated, our fundraising momentum is excellent, and we are taking market share. Over the last 12 months, global fundraising volumes for the industry are down 13%. During this, [Technical Difficulty] strategies to Scaleup Euro Fund and the AI Infra fund. Including Coller Capital, our fundraising outlook for this cycle is now EUR 140 billion, which is up from the original guidance of EUR 100 billion. This puts us in a position where we will have significant dry powder to invest in an environment where competition for deals is lower and where public market valuation multiples for many of our -- where we will have significant dry powder to invest, in an environment where competition for deals is lower and where public market valuation multiples for many of our target sectors are attractive in a long-term perspective.

Next slide, please. We closed the acquisition of Coller Capital end of August, and the combination is off to a good start. The secondaries market is one of the fastest-growing areas of the private markets industry. Deal volume in the first half of 2026 is up 20% year-on-year. There are a number of forces behind this structural growth trend, including increasing client demand for liquidity solutions and private market investors wanting to stay invested with their best assets for longer. Our colleagues from Coller EQT give us access to these capabilities and to arguably one of the longest and most consistent track records in the secondaries industry.

Across the most recent flagship funds, Coller has delivered first quartile net returns. In the short term, at Coller EQT, we're focused on the launch of the fundraising for the new generation of the private equity and credit secondary funds on capturing the attractive growth opportunity that we're seeing in the Insurance segment, where we really see strong demand for the structuring solutions that Coller EQT can offer. And we're focused on accelerating the product build out, both for our institutional clients and for our wealth clients. We remain confident in the target that we have communicated to double Coller's fee-based assets under management in less than 4 years. Next slide, please.

The latest product addition to the EQT platform is the Scaleup Europe fund. In this strategy, we're off to an amazing start. Deal flow is above even our most optimistic assumptions. And it's clear that Europe doesn't have a start-up problem, but it has a scale-up challenge. This strategy is perfectly designed to address this challenge and to capture this opportunity and the fund has already announced 7 investments, including ICEYE, Europe's leader in radar satellite intelligence; Tandem, a leading European clinical AI platform and Mistral, the leading European sovereignty AI platform.

The pipeline that we see going forward remains deep across geographies, the targeted subsectors and I expect the investment pace to remain healthy. Demand from investors globally for this fund is very encouraging, and we expect demand to significantly surpass the EUR 5 billion target fund size. Next slide, please.

Post being awarded the mandate to the managed to Scaleup Europe Fund, EQT has become the preferred partner for talented founders and entrepreneurs. Most of them now want to have EQT and the Scaleup Europe Fund as a shareholder. And this is really also what we're seeing in the attractive deal flow that I just spoke about. In addition to this, there's also a broader positive halo effect across all of EQT and the entire EQT platform. The win of this mandate to manage the Scaleup Europe Fund, and the way we're delivering on this strategy has really elevated EQT standing globally. Thanks to our track record, EQT being a true European success story. And post the endorsement from the European Commission, EQT is now seen as the partner of choice for founders and global private market investors.

Entrepreneurs in Europe are looking for a partner that can give them access to relevant sector expertise, operating capabilities and really the support to help them win globally. Investors from around the world are turning to EQT for access to the most attractive European investment opportunities and access to the most attractive alpha in Europe. We're the only platform in the industry, investing into Europe across ventures, growth, life sciences, buyouts, secondaries, and infrastructure, making us the natural partner for investors looking for exposure to this part of the world. Next slide, please.

Let me next turn to the AI infrastructure fund. This is another example of a recently launched strategy where we see excellent momentum. In the quarter, NAV grew more than 20% to $11.5 billion up from $9.4 billion at the end of Q2. Just below half of that increase came from capital raising and the rest from value creation. We see continued strong growth ahead in NAV to put the current NAV into perspective and to give everyone a better sense for the potential size that this strategy can achieve over time. EdgeConneX today has a total equity value of around $50 billion, so approximately 4x the fund's current NAV. Over time, we expect the AI infra fund to continue to acquire shares in EdgeConneX from selling shareholders. Next slide, please.

Let me -- next, turn -- yes, yes, since our entry in 2020, actually, EdgeConneX has grown into one of the largest data center platforms globally. When EQT Infrastructure IV acquired EdgeConneX, it was a regional data center operator with around 200 megawatts of contracted capacity. In 2026, EdgeConneX is the second largest developer of data center capacity globally, and actually ahead of every other private markets owned platform. Today, EdgeConneX has more than 90 data center sites across 26 countries on 5 continents, and 96% of contracted capacity is serving hyperscalers, investment-grade counterparties that have entered into long-term contracts with EdgeConneX. Since our investment contracted recurring revenue has grown more than tenfold, and the equity value has increased from around $1.5 billion to $50 billion, we expect continued strong growth for EdgeConneX. As of the end of 2025, Edge had around 1.3 gigawatts of contracted capacity, we expect to end 2026 at around 3.5 gigawatts of contracted capacity. In other words, the business has nearly tripled in scale in a single year.

EdgeConneX is truly a unique asset. It's the only global independent pure-play operator, and thanks to the integrated investment strategy that we have applied in EQT infrastructure over the last years, EdgeConneX can bring power, fiber and capital from across the EQT infrastructure platform to the hyperscalers. And this is really a differentiated proposition. EQT remains the largest shareholder, so we control this business. And with the open-ended AI infrastructure fund that we have set up, we can really keep scaling this business and also this strategy for years to come. Next slide, please.

Yes. And now we'll turn to our real estate business and the acquisition of Stockbridge. EQT Real Estate is a top-performing platform with an excellent long-term track record. Since acquiring Exeter in 2021, we have doubled fee-based AUM and more than doubled fee-related EBITDA. Today, we're investing one of the largest sector-specific real estate funds in the U.S. and in Europe. However, relative to the size of the asset cost, our real estate business still has significant potential for further growth. The institutional real estate market is large, growing and highly fragmented.

It has around $13 trillion of AUM and is expected to grow by 7% to 8% per year. The top 10 players account for around 30% of funds raised. Stockbridge is a natural way for us to grow and to strengthen our team and broaden our offering. Stockbridge brings top-performing, diversified, open-ended core funds and complementary thematics to EQT Real Estate. And it will strengthen our existing team for the industrial Core+ and value-add strategies. Stockbridge brings a 20-plus year track record and a team that's also culturally well aligned with EQT. So with this transaction, we're building a stronger EQT Real Estate platform with a broader and even more attractive offering for clients and a more well-positioned larger business that will be driving profit growth and margin expansion over time. It's 100% cash field, and we believe that we have sourced this transaction at attractive terms for shareholders. Next slide, please.

Thanks to Stockbridge, we will be broadening the EQT Real estate strategies into new thematic focus areas. Stockbridge has an excellent track record in alternative living. We're also creating a more scaled and diversified platform. Post closing, the Industrial segment will represent around 75% of assets under management and living will increase to around 20% of the business. And we will have a stronger offering of Core and Core+ products. In total, the combined platform will have around 600 full-time employees and $42 billion of fee-based AUM, up from $25 billion today. I'm really, really excited to welcome Stockbridge and the Stockbridge team to EQT and look forward to the collaboration.

I'll now hand it over to Gustav, who will provide you with more details on this transaction.

Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. We're very excited about expanding our real estate business, and we think that we found a great partner in Stockbridge. They have around 185 employees across 6 offices and manages over USD 16 billion of fee-paying AUM on behalf of around 180 institutional clients. They've built the business across 4 main areas. First, alternative living. Stockbridge has realized USD 15 billion in value in manufactured housing at a net IRR of close to 20% and a net ROIC of over 4x in one of the best real estate track record that exists in the market.

Secondly, the open-ended core, which is an established and high-performing product with USD 4 billion of fee-paying AUM and has delivered top 5% performance over the last 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years compared to peers. Thirdly, the industrial outdoor storage, an attractive niche within logistics, where Stockbridge has a scale presence with over USD 2 billion of fee-paying AUM, highly complementary to EQT Real Estate's existing logistics offering. And fourth, separate managed accounts with around USD 10 billion of fee-paying AUM that are both diversified and sector-specific across this risk sector and represents important relationship with strategic clients seeking targeted returns. Next slide, please.

We see a number of clear value levers in this. First, by adding Stockbridge industrial auto storage expertise to EQT's logistics capabilities, we can continue to expand our leading industrial platform. Secondly, we're building out the alternative living side and broadening our thematic focus beyond logistics. Stockbridge long-standing track record in alternative living gives us a unique platform to build out.

Third, growing the Core platform. We will aim to scale Stockbridge open-ended core products through EQT's global client network and deal sourcing capabilities. This is something that we've done before. In the last U.S. real estate fund, the first flagship fund raised after we acquired Exeter, around 15% of the commitments came from EQT-sourced clients, and in BPEA IX, the same statistics was close to 25%. And fourth, we're planning to fully integrate the 2 real estate businesses and create a stronger business together with significant platform benefits across operations, analytics and AI. Next slide, please.

So let me now turn to the financial contribution. For 2027, we expect Stockbridge to have fee-paying AUM of USD 17 billion to USD 19 billion, management fees of USD 120 million to USD 130 million and fee-related EBITDA of USD 35 million to USD 45 million. In the coming years, we expect fee-related EBITDA for the Stockbridge business to grow by 15% to 20% annually. Next slide, please.

Finally, let me also talk about how we structure the transaction to ensure alignment of interest and a focus on long-term growth. This is a 100% cash acquisition with a base consideration of USD 375 million. 50% of the base considerations will be reinvested by the sellers in EQT shares with similar type of lockups as we've seen in our other transactions. On top of this, there is also an earnout of up to USD 175 million, subject to certain performance targets. As Per mentioned, we believe that we sourced this transaction at fairly sensible terms, where the base consideration represents a high single-digit multiple of the 2027 fee-related EBITDA that you saw on the previous page. We expect this transaction to close in Q1 2027. Next slide, please.

So turning to fundraising, where we see strong momentum across the platform. During the third quarter, net inflows and value development added another EUR 42 billion to the fee-paying AUM. This includes EUR 34 billion from Coller following the closing of the transaction. The key funds had net inflows of EUR 11 billion during the quarter, which is largely attributable to the addition of Coller and hence CIP IX. We expect EQT XI to be activated in the next few months, and hence, that EQT XI will be included in the fee-generating AUM by year-end.

On the back of the deals done in 2026, including Intertek as well as the performance of EQT X, we're seeing continued good momentum for EQT XI while recognizing that the fund raise will continue throughout 2027. As previously communicated, we expect to activate Infra VII around year-end and have an early close in December with the first close in H1 2027. On the back of continued strong performance for infrastructure, we see very promising fundraising dialogues.

And finally, on the key funds, the fundraising for CIP X is expected to be launched early 2027. Across other closed standard strategies, we're currently in the market with around 10 funds. We've already secured commitments of more than EUR 3 billion for the Scaleup Europe Fund. For Coller equity, we've launched a fundraising for CCO III. The fund charges fees on invested capital and is yet to be activated. And we've held the final close of the health care growth fund at EUR 1.4 billion, in line with the targets.

On the institutional open-end side, the AI infrastructure reached an NAV of $11.5 billion at the end of Q3, an increase of more than USD 2 billion during the quarter. About half of it was related to strong value appreciation and the rest was related to capital raised. All capital raised was used to sell down in EdgeConneX in Infra IV and Infra V. During the quarter, we activated our open-ended active core fund. The fund charges fees on NAV and contributed with around USD 0.7 billion to fee-paying AUM at activation. As of Q3, just above 10% of our fee-paying AUM is now charged on NAV and hence, growing with the performance, up from around 1% just 12 months ago.

Lastly, our private wealth evergreens. I'll come back on this in a moment. I also want to explain a change in how we're going to present Coller EQT's fee-paying AUM from year-end. In contrast to the legacy EQT funds, Coller EQT funds stepped down in fee rate and not in capital base. To align the presentation of the fee-paying AUM across equity, the step-down in fee rates will instead be reflected in the fee-generating AUM base going forward. On this basis, Coller EQT's fee-paying AUM is USD 33 billion, compared to the reported EUR 38 billion as of the end of September. And our previous guidance of USD 40 billion per year-end is hence instead going to be USD 35 billion.

Given the lower fee-paying AUM, the average fee rate will instead be higher as the management fees received are the same. So this is purely a technical change in order to align reporting. And in the appendix of this webcast presentation, you will find an illustrative case on how this is done. Next slide, please.

So let me zoom in on the insurance side. This is one of the most interesting and fastest-growing pools of capital in private markets. Insurance capital is expected to grow by close to 10% annually to reach above USD 10 trillion by 2035. At the same time, insurance companies operate in a highly regulated environment and to participate at scale, you need fixed income exposure and strong structuring capabilities. On a stand-alone basis, EQT has been structurally limited in this area through Coller EQT, which brings deep insurance relationships and a dedicated team with in-house structuring expertise.

Insurance clients account for close to 25% of Coller EQT's client commitments compared to less than 10% for EQT as a whole. And since 2024, Coller EQT has raised almost USD 9 billion from insurance including a USD 2.7 billion structured product during the third quarter. This is a core growth area for Coller EQT going forward, but also for EQT as a whole, given the possibility to create combined primary and secondary insurance solutions. Next slide, please.

We continue to see strong inflow across the Evergreen platform. Interest has been particularly strong in our U.S. focused evergreen infrastructure vehicle, which passed USD 1 billion in NAV during the quarter after being launched in early 2026. This is a clear sign of continued strong investor demand for infrastructure exposure. Q3 is a seasonally less active quarter given the summer holiday period. Net inflows still amounted to around EUR 0.9 billion during the quarter, compared to EUR 1 billion during Q2. Across those 6 months, September was the strongest single month.

Redemptions is included in the net inflow and remain limited at around 1% of NAV during the quarter. And during Q3, we've also launched EQT Nexus Asia, a new Asia-focused private equity evergreen vehicle.

And with that, I will hand over to Olof. Next slide, please.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Gustav. Let's next turn to investment and exit activity. So looking back over the past 12 months, we announced about EUR 30 billion of fund investments across our global platform, of which EUR 7 billion was in the third quarter of this year. Additionally, we provided about EUR 12 billion of co-invest opportunities for our clients over the last 12 months, including EUR 2 billion in Q3. Infrastructure represented 1/3 of investments during the quarter as we continue to invest into areas, enabling the AI infrastructure build out, such as energy. On the private capital side, EQT X announced its final 2 investments, concluding the fund's investment period. And in real estate, we announced 2 large logistics portfolio acquisitions in Europe and in California.

Turning to exits. We announced about EUR 3 billion of fund exits during the third quarter, which is typically a seasonally slower quarter for deal activity taking the last 12 months fund exit volumes to EUR 15 billion or EUR 30 billion, including exits for our co-investors.

The Q3 exits included realizations across our Asia and European mid-market strategies, and EQT real estate announced the sale of 2 large logistics portfolios in the U.S. After the quarter, interestingly, Fortnox announced a dividend recap in the first software recap in Europe in 2026. The refinancing comes 15 months post our acquisition of Fortnox and since strong performance and cash generation has driven rapid deleveraging. It shows that the capital markets activity is picking up across well-performing names across the software industry.

Driving exit remains a top priority, and we have a number of companies and assets preparing for exits. However, as always, it's hard to predict when these events will eventually take place. The geopolitical backdrop and the recent increase in interest rates makes for a more selective environment for exits at the moment. We've been one of the most active sponsors in the ECM market in recent years, and we're planning for certain IPOs. However, the public market performance is concentrated and so is the IPO market at the moment.

At the same time, we're encouraged to see strategic interest picking up for certain situations. And as previously stated, we expect the AI Infra fund to gradually increase its ownership in EdgeConneX through additional purchases of shares following some purchases already this year. Next slide, please.

Turning to performance. All of our key funds continued to perform on or above plan. During the third quarter, key fund valuations increased by 5%. That follows broadly flat valuations in Q1 and a 5% increase in Q2. I'd say the Q3 performance was more broadly based than that we saw in Q2. Over the last 12 months, we saw double-digit value creation across private equity and infrastructure. The performance is paced by digital and energy infrastructure subsectors and EQT X seeing mid-teens value increase over the last 12 months. Earlier vintages, which do have a larger share of portfolio assets already realized, so a somewhat softer value development, increasing about 1% during the quarter.

Turning to funds in value creation mode. These funds showed overall good performance, up 5% during the quarter and 10% over the last 12 months. This is a strong relative performance considering these vintages having been partly invested in a high valuation environment. And following the closing of Coller, CIP IX is now part of our key funds, and it's performing on plan. The fund, as you know, is Coller EQT's, latest private equity secondaries flagship with about $10 billion of fee-generating commitments.

So with that, let me hand it back to you, Gustav.

Great. Thank you, Olof. So let me say a few words on how we're using our balance sheet, which can be split into 3 distinct areas, which we invest into. First, we have fund investments of around EUR 1 billion. These are commitments alongside clients in EQT funds and will grow broadly in line with the AUM growth. The return of these investments comes from value development in the funds and cash materializes as the funds are distributing capital. Then we have strategic investments of around EUR 2 billion comprising of the second and third area.

We have the seed investments in the newly established closed standard and evergreen strategies designed to accelerate growth for those strategies and enable early deployment. On the closed-ended side, EQT earns a capital charge and repayment is usually within 6 to 12 months. On the Evergreen side, EQT earns returns based on the value development and repayment is usually within 1 to 3 years. And then lastly, the third area is the structured solutions offering for both insurance and institutional clients.

For these structures, EQT will hold an equity portion over the lifetime of the structure and as such, earn a return on that investment. As mentioned during the half year announcement, a good proxy for the annual blended returns on our balance sheet investments should be at least 10%, reflecting the diversified product and vintage mix.

And with that, I will hand it back to Olof to go through our revenue mix. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Gustav. So our revenue mix is broadening not only as it relates to investment income, but we also expect fee-related performance revenues to ramp up. Before going into some details, please note that this is a quarterly announcement and the figures on the page in front of you are therefore the adjusted H1 '26 figures, and they do not include Coller EQT.

So starting with our fee-related revenues. The management fees, of course, make up the lion's share of revenues. These are contractual long-term and recurring fees for which we receive cash on a semiannual basis. With an increasing share of open-ended funds that Gustav talked about earlier, we will increasingly charge fees on the basis of NAV, allowing us to capture value appreciation, albeit at a lower fee rate. With more open-ended vehicles, we also expect to earn materially more fee-related performance revenues. These are earned on a recurring basis from funds charging fees on NAV, including the co-invest part of our evergreens, the AI infrastructure fund and the new active core infrastructure funds.

These revenues do not require the realization of the underlying assets on our crystallized quarterly, annually or every third year, depending on the fund structure. EQT either receives cash or shares in the product. In H1 alone, they were already nearly 3x the EUR 10 million we recorded for the full year 2025, and we expect them to scale with our open-ended offering. As of the third quarter, we had about EUR 20 billion of funds eligible for fee-related performance revenues. And in the appendix, we've included more details on how we earn these revenues.

Secondly, transaction advisory and other fees are transaction driven, and we're expecting to remain largely stable at around the current levels. And moving over to carried interest and investment income, investment income is as just described by Gustav, driven by the fund performance and by the balance sheet investments. During H1, we recorded just over EUR 200 million of investment income, which is more than we had in the full year of '25. And finally, carried interest where growth will be driven by value creation and importantly, exit activity. And as we discussed in our H1 update, we have 4 funds in carry mode with an expected EUR 600 million of carry to be recognized over a multiyear period, and we have 4 funds expected to enter carry mode in the coming years.

So with that, I'll turn it back to Per for some concluding remarks before we open up for Q&A.

Thank you, Olof. So to conclude, our long-term approach to building the most attractive global client-centric platform in our industry continues to pay off. EQT is now the third largest private markets firm globally and the largest non-U.S. firm by some distance. Fundraising momentum and deal flow remains strong, really across our platform. The AI infrastructure fund launched in Q2 has already reached $11.5 billion of NAV. We see continued strong growth ahead for this strategy given the value creation potential of EdgeConneX.

EdgeConneX is today the world's second largest developer of data center capacity, and we really see no signs of a material change when it comes to the demand supply and balance for AI compute globally. The Scaleup Europe Fund is off to an excellent start. Both deal flow and investor demand is above expectations. The fund has signed 7 investments during the quarter, and we expect investment pacing to remain healthy. The investor demand for this fund is going to be significantly above the target fund size of EUR 5 billion. Thanks to our strong fundraising momentum and post the closing of Coller Capital, we now see raising -- we now see us raising EUR 140 billion in this cycle compared to EUR 100 billion as previously communicated.

We see attractive deal flow across strategies, and we expect EQT XI to be activated within the next few months and Infrastructure VII to be activated around year-end. The acquisition of Stockbridge will further strengthen EQT Real Estate's presence in the U.S. and broaden our client offering to more thematic areas where we can create outperformance for instance, within alternative living. During the quarter, we successfully closed the Coller Capital transaction and the combination is off to an excellent start.

Finally, we're pleased that we, also during the quarter, established a presence in the Middle East. This is a part of the world where we see continued attractive growth and investment opportunities ahead for us.

So with that, thank you all for joining us today. And now we'd like to open up for Q&A. Operator, please.

[Operator Instructions] And this question comes from the line of Arnaud Giblat from BNP Paribas.

Two questions, please. If I could start with your acquisition of Stockbridge, I think you're talking about 15% to 20% growth is to be expected. I'm just wondering how that feeds into the earn-outs. I mean, clearly, there's a range of potential outcomes there that yield or not to earn-out. So I'm just wondering if you could give us a bit of the parameters as to what level of growth needs to be achieved to achieve the full earn-out or no earn-out at all, that would be quite helpful.

And my second question is on Infra IV and EQT IX, you talked about potentially some exit prospects, which of these are related to those 2 funds. And particularly, if I focus on zooming in on Infra IV, you also said during the call that there is an expected sell-down of EdgeConneX from Infra IV and Infra V into the AI Infra fund. So I'm just wondering at what pace that could go at how we should expect that to impact DPI of Infra IV?

Thank you for those questions. I'll start with the question on exit outlook, and maybe, in particular, also on Infra IV. So as was mentioned during the call, we see continued resilient and good performance in our portfolio and encouraging value creation developments. What our focus is in this environment is making sure that we can continue to push value creation across all of our strategies across the portfolio and that we really make sure that our businesses are exit-ready, so that they can take advantage of the right exit window when it emerges.

What we're also seeing is an increasing dialogue in -- across a couple of our sectors with strategic buyers. It's, of course, hard to say when these conversations will materialize and lead to transactions, we're also making sure that our businesses are prepared for IPOs when public market conditions are the right ones. When it comes to the Infra IV and the sell-down of EdgeConneX, we see excellent momentum in the business. We continue to see good value creation, strong value creation ahead for EdgeConneX. And so on the back of that value creation, we expect interest in the AI infrastructure fund to remain very healthy.

And so depending, of course, on how much capital will be raised for this strategy going forward, that will then also dictate how quickly we will be able to reduce the exposure in Infrastructure IV, but then also over time, in Infrastructure IV and Infrastructure VI to EdgeConneX. But we are -- yes, we're very positive about the development and we see very good momentum and investor demand for this strategy.

And with respect to Stockbridge and the earnout, I'll hand it over to Gustav who can elaborate on that.

Yes. Thanks, Per. I would say, so the earnouts are -- there are a couple of them, and they are not specifically related to the overall growth but rather to the development of certain areas. So you can't tie it specifically to an overall growth rate. But I think if you think about it in general, as we said, for '27, we're expected to be between EUR 35 million to EUR 45 million, so midpoint is EUR 40 million. If you think about that from a 15% to 20% growth rate in the coming 3 years, i.e., to 2030, you get to somewhere around EUR 70 million of fee-related EBITDA in 2030.

And I think it's -- in that scenario, I think you should assume that we would be paying out the full earnout, which would then give us a purchase price of EUR 550 million and a multiple of around 8x.

And this question comes from Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

I've got 2 of them. Firstly, on EQT XI, I think you said you still expect it to be activated at around the year-end. Can you talk about how fundraising so far has been in that fund? Should we expect the first close to be about half the target size? And do you still expect that fund to close in about 2 years? Or do you think it could take longer now?

The second question is, again, on the exit outlook. I think previously, you guided for about EUR 19 billion of exits this year, which is same as last year. But as of now, it feels like it's unlikely to achieve that. So can you talk about how this changes expectations around carry investment income? I think previously, you said that you expect H2 to be similar to the first half. I'm just wondering if that guidance has changed now.

Thank you for those questions. I'll start with the one on EQT XI. So we held the first close this summer around 50% of the target fund size. Since then, also on the back of the excellent deal flow that we've had in Fund X investments such as Intertek but also [ Taco Seal ], McGill and all of these investments have generated attractive also co-invested deal flow and are off to very promising starts. We continue to see very good momentum in the dialogues with our investors, our clients around EQT XI and so we expect to continue to make progress over the next sort of 12 to 15 months in this fundraising.

I think the way you should think about the time line is very similar to the time line that we had around EQT X when I think we -- after the first close that we held, we continue to fund raising over the next 12 to 18 months to -- in the end reach the hard cap.

In terms of the exit outlook and carried interest recognition, maybe I'll leave that to Gustav and Olof to comment on.

Should I maybe I start. I think, as you say, I think the exit volumes year-to-date is around EUR 10 billion. So I think, as always, with exits as same as with investments, they come in, in periods, and it's not a straight line. So I think we'll need to wait and see where we end up on a full year basis. But I think as we've also talked about, we have a set up now where we are generating carry and have generated carry from an IFRS perspective, a lot in EQT VIII and Infra III and there will be somewhat of a gap until we get to Infra IV and EQT IX. So I think that is something that has a timing effect on when the carry will be recognized.

So -- and then when it comes to the guidance on the investment income and carry, I would say that I think the levels that we saw in H1 is probably the best proxy that we can give for H2 as well, both in terms of the absolute volume, but also to some extent, probably the split between carry and investment income, of course, especially given the strong performance that we've seen in Q3 on the investment side, that will have a positive effect also on the investment income side. So I think that's the best proxy I can give right now.

This one comes from the line of Ermin Keric from DNB Carnegie.

Two questions from me, if I may. So first, on fundraising. Could you give us any more color on the scale-up funds hard cap and your expectations for evergreen flows given the acceleration you saw in September?

And then the second question would be on Stockbridge and long-term margins. So clearly, it has lower fee rates and a lower FRE margin than EQT has overall. Do you still stand by the guidance you have for next year of reaching your target level and the FRE margin? Or will that now be delayed given the acquisition?

I'll start with the fundraising related question on the Scaleup Europe Fund. So what we have communicated is that investor demand is significantly above the EUR 5 billion fund size target that we're seeing. We haven't set the hard cap yet, and so we don't want to provide -- or we cannot provide any further guidance on this at this point, but we're just incredibly like humbled and thankful by the demand that we're seeing and also the amazing momentum that we have in this part of our business, and we will come back with more information when we set the hard cap for this strategy.

Gustav, you want to comment also on the Evergreens and then the margin outlook post Stockbridge.

Yes. So on the Evergreen side, I think what I said in the H1 report where we had approximately EUR 2.5 billion of gross inflows. And I said that's a good proxy for the second half of the year, but that you should expect a bit lower volumes in Q3 compared to Q4. I think that still holds. So as we said, we have EUR 0.9 million net inflows here. So the gross inflows is about EUR 1.1 billion. So that would mean that you would need EUR 1.4 billion in the second or in the fourth quarter.

And let's see if we get to exactly that amount, but I think we'll be close enough for that guidance to be the right guidance. So I think that still holds. When it comes to the Stockbridge margins, they will have somewhat of an impact. But I would say that given the strength that we're seeing in the business, given the positive effects that we will see from the fee-related performance fees, the previous guidance that we've given still holds for 2027.

We are now going to take our next question and this one comes from Angeliki Bairaktari from JPMorgan.

Just a couple from me as well, please. First of all, with regards to your EUR 140 billion fundraising and ambition over the cycle, given that you have now brought on another EUR 17 billion of fee-paying AUM with Stockbridge and it sounds like you expect those assets to grow quite fast, does the EUR 140 billion fundraising includes Stockbridge? Or should we expect something on top over the next 3, 4 years?

And second question with regards to the value appreciation in the AI infrastructure fund coming from EdgeConneX. It's a pretty big number this quarter, $1.1 billion. I was just wondering what share of that comes from underlying earnings growth at EdgeConneX? And what portion of that comes from potential multiple appreciation?

Thank you for those questions. I'll start with your second question on EdgeConneX, so all of the value creation that we saw in the quarter relates to earnings growth and new business growth. And so we haven't made any changes in the multiple EdgeConneX, and we continue to see excellent momentum for this investment also as we head into Q4 and look out into 2027.

Gustav, do you want to comment on the point on fundraising guidance in this cycle post Stockbridge.

It does not include Stockbridge. So there is a bit of upside in it. But just to remember that it kind of this -- for us, this fundraising cycle kind of ends with the start of -- with the launch of BPEA X, so we're not talking about 3, 4 years out. So in essence, it means that we have a bit shorter period of time. So I don't think that you should expect that Stockbridge in that period of time will add a material amount. We will, of course, not include the [ EUR 16.5 million ]. So it's only net additions from that, that would include. But there is probably a couple of billion of upside from that acquisition in the time we have left in this cycle.

We are now going to take our next question and this question comes from Magnus Andersson from ABG Sundal Collier.

Just first of all, on margin as much of the new FUM coming in is from AI infrastructure, Evergreens, real estate and Coller Capital here. How you see the average fee rate developing a few years out as the fees here are lower than in your buyout flagship funds?

And then secondly, just coming back a bit to exits as your stock is unlikely to rerate significantly before exits really get going. It's obviously been very weak also in Q3. So when do we have to see exits coming out on the EQT IX for your kind of guidance for 2028 to hold? We've been waiting for quite a while for Infra IV and EQT IX without anything happening. And you pushed the guidance forward in connection with the H1 report, as we know but just so that we have something to monitor because the conviction about estimates here, expectations for 2028 is obviously still very low in the market considering where you are trading?

Yes. I'll start with the question on EQT IX. So it's very much in line with the statement I made earlier. We're very focused on driving value creation also in this fund. We have like a handful of companies that are performing really well, that have good momentum and where we're making sure that they are exit-ready, should we have the right window. And so I think you should expect us to continue to stay disciplined in this fund and also to continue to monetize investments as those windows emerge.

It's not as if we haven't done anything also over the last 12 months. We've stayed active continuing to sell down. We had to sell down an exit event in Bay Ref. And so we have a number of companies in EQT IX that we are preparing for an IPO and then we also have investments where we are going to run an M&A process. And as I said, it's like a handful of companies that we're working on. Of course, it's incredibly hard to say exactly when we will be able to monetize these investments, but that's like the short-term pipeline, I would say.

Just a follow-up then. A year ago, you also talked about that from Q3 '25, we should expect a pickup in exits in your Infra funds, which hasn't materialized either. What is the main -- I mean how should we think about that going forward, if you disregard from EdgeConneX, which we just talked about.

I think a similar picture in the infra funds, where we have a number of companies where we actually have ongoing exit discussions in the Infra fund. And then, of course, we also have the investment in EdgeConneX, where we monetize part of that investment during the quarter, right? I mean the strategy is clear. We have raised the AI Infra fund. We raised $900 million in the quarter for the AI Infra fund. And all of those funds were used to reduce Infrastructure IV and V investment in EdgeConneX, and we expect to continue with those sell-downs going forward as well.

And then maybe, Magnus, on your margin question, I would say that naturally, of course, with these strategies, as we've been clear on, you have a lower blended management fee rate. So that will have an impact over time. What I would say is that we don't foresee that it will have a negative impact on the overall fee-related EBITDA margin, because, of course, a lot of these strategies are less people dependent or at least require less people to run the strategies. So we think from an overall fee-related EBITDA perspective, we would expect that not to have a negative impact.

Maybe what I should add also, right, just to put things a little bit into context. Regarding EQT IX, the DPI right now is around 0.4, 0.5 which we actually believe is top quartile for the vintage of 2020.

This question comes from Russell Quelch from Morgan Stanley.

I want to focus on product opportunities in a few different areas. Firstly, in private credit, given you now have private credit capabilities again through the acquisition of Coller Capital, wondered how you're thinking about the strategic case for expanding your presence there across the asset class. Could partnerships, perhaps with insurance companies provide an attractive route to building scale there through access to permanent capital, long duration capital? Would you perhaps favor a more organic expansion? And maybe more broadly, how do you assess the relative attractiveness of entering that market today given increasing competition and spread compression concerns around credit quality.

And second, just sort of in relation to that, really, what gives you confidence that this is the right point in the cycle to expand into U.S. real estate? And then if I could squeeze a third in, just wondering what your thoughts are on expansion and timing into secondaries within the infrastructure space?

I can start to address some of these questions. So in terms of private credit given the growth opportunity that we see ahead also in the insurance segment, we don't see a need for us to add a primary credit platform in order to be able to capture that opportunity. We're well set up with the capabilities that we now have access to, thanks to joining forces with would call it capital. And I think it's really just a statement of strength that we've been able to reach this industry-leading position that we have being now #3 globally in terms of funds raised over the last 5 years, whilst really staying focused on this active ownership, alpha-focused asset categories and strategies where we can make a real difference as an investor, and that has served us very well so far, and that continues to be our strategy.

As I spoke about earlier, we want to be the global provider of international alpha, the trusted and reliable partner for clients and investors. I think the acquisition of Stockbridge just fits really nicely into that strategy. It's a very natural evolution of the journey that we've been on for the last 2 to 3 decades. We have seen very strong performance in our real estate business. We've also been successful in monetizing investments and deals during 2026. And what we're seeing is that this thematic investment approach that we have, the value creation capabilities that we bring to bear and also the tools that we can use, the AI tools, the data analytics that we have, which our investors, our clients tell us, is really industry-leading and very, very differentiated, right? That allows us to put capital to work in real estate where we really see a leasing demand and leasing growth.

So I'll give you an example, thanks to the data analytics that we have tools that we've developed in real estate, the tool called the Hard Hat. We can really see the flows in terms of where data centers are being developed in the U.S., and then what that leads to in terms of warehouse demand. And actually 20% to 30% of leasing demand that we're seeing in our real estate portfolio comes from AI-related CapEx. And we want to bring those -- all of those scale benefits that we have in our platform also to bear with Stockbridge, and Stockbridge is just a really, really good way for us to double down in this part of our business. And we think it's an interesting time to do so, because, of course, this asset class has been a little bit out of favor and strategically and culturally, this is just a very, very good fit for us.

Gustav, anything you want to elaborate on? And maybe you want to talk a little bit about the secondaries infra opportunity and next steps there.

And I think you covered it on the real estate side, so nothing more from my side there. I think on the infra secondaries, this is a key opportunity for us. We're fully focused on building this leg of the business. Of course, now we're about 45 days from the closing. So it will take a little bit of time, as it always does. First of all, we need to find -- we need to have the right people in order to run this, and that's priority number one. But we see that our right to win in this space is significant. So it is an area that we're very focused on.

We are now going to take our next question and this question comes from Nicholas Herman from Citi.

A couple from me as well, please. Firstly, on Stockbridge, could you just give us some context to the 15% to 20% EBITDA CAGR that you've guided to? What assumptions have you made on open-ended inflows as well as closed-ended upsizing in fund cycle duration? I ask because one of your European peers recently acquired a real estate manager and guided to 20% to 30% earnings CAGR. So I'm just trying to work out if it's low for you because you've been more conservative on assumptions, say. And then secondly, on SCF and Private Wealth. I saw that the SCF will feed into Nexus.

I can imagine that's going to be quite attractive for private wealth investors and distributors. So I guess I mean at the same time, I also see Evergreen inflow -- net flows have kind of fallen for a couple of consecutive quarters. So could you just give us a sense of gross -- how gross inflows are trending momentum that you see with -- in the build-out of your private wealth offering with distributors?

And if I could sneak a very quick clarification and, by the way, the significantly larger fund sizes for the SCF, does that reflect more investments or larger investments versus the base case or target?

I think 2 questions for you, Gustav, on the guidance for Stockbridge and the Private Wealth momentum.

Yes. And I would say on the Stockbridge, I think that we're not -- I'm not going to go into specifics of the different components here. I think as we as we talked about, we see that there are a number of levers. You have the open-ended side, you have the alternative living side, you have the logistics side. And then, of course, we have platform synergies in this setup, so to speak. I think we feel comfortable around the 15% to 20%. I haven't -- I wasn't part of doing the assumptions for Bridgepoint, which is the transaction, I assume you relate to. So I don't know what they have assumed.

I think if we can deliver 15% to 20% CAGR on the transaction where we're paying single-digit multiple. I think this is going to be a great deal for us. So I feel comfortable from that perspective. When it comes to the evergreen flows, as I said, I think we had a very strong Q1 as you've seen in the numbers, I think that if you would compare Q2 to Q3, without taking the seasonal effects of July and August being summer months, I would say that Q3 is stronger than Q2. So I think that from that perspective, I think we're not in a downward trend, if that was kind of what you were referring to.

I think when it comes to the Evergreen side, I think this is something where we're building this from more or less 0 a couple of years back. And we think that this is going to be a strong growth engine for us going forward as we're adding new NAV and new AUM to the platform. And I think the pace that we're running at right now is, as I said, a good proxy of where we think this business should be able to generate on an annual basis. So I think we see good momentum of the business. As I said, the infra side is stronger than the PE side. And -- but in general, I think we have good inflows across the board on that basis.

And regarding the question on -- the final question on the Scaleup Europe Fund and the larger fund size target. So in terms of the targeted equity investments that the strategy is based on, that hasn't really changed. But of course, I would say the opportunity set is larger than we anticipate that the deal flow is of higher quality than we anticipated. And if you also then look at the number of unicorns that are being produced in Europe in 2026 versus 2025. It's definitely up.

And so probably the mix of the equity tickets that we had targeted, if you say the range was sort of EUR 50 million to EUR 150 million, EUR 200 million, there's going to be a higher number of investments at the higher end of that range. And that then also justifies a larger fund size that we will communicate in due course.

We are now going to take our next question and this question comes from Haley Tam from UBS.

I have a couple of follow-up questions, please. Firstly, on Stockbridge, could you just tell us how the 30% to 35% EBITDA margin compares to your existing real estate business? And you mentioned platform synergies a few times. Can you confirm you expect to be able to lift the margin across the whole of real estate up towards the 55% to 65% target you have over time?

And then the second question on AI Infra, also a follow-up to an earlier one. In terms of the value appreciation, you said the multiple you've applied is unchanged. I just wondered, do you incorporate volatility in public market valuations in your approach? And have you seen any impact on demand from investors in your fund raising as again, public market sentiment has also been volatile?

So we haven't seen a change in investor demand for the AI Infra fund. EdgeConneX is really a unique asset if you think about it. There's very, very few platforms that are truly global. EdgeConneX is one of the few 90 data centers globally and really being able to add data center capacity across the U.S., Europe and Asia and then the quality also of the client base, the investor base, the counterparties that the EdgeConneX has is really quite differentiated. The multiple that we have applied is we think, appropriate. And if you just take, again, the earnings growth that we've seen in this investment over time and in the context, so far, I mean, we acquired the business in 2020. So 6 years ago, operating profit was around $100 million. We think that the run rate is approaching $4.5 billion to $5 billion by year-end.

And when it comes to the real estate margins, so I would say the following. I would say that the real estate business today has somewhat lower multiple -- or lower margin that we see on the overall business. I would say the main difference is the scale, so to speak, that the real estate business is operating on a somewhat smaller scale than we have, especially on the private capital and infrastructure side. So I think we have the ambition to bring up the margin for Stockbridge over time.

I would not expect the real estate business to reach the same margin as we have on the firm-wide in the short to medium term.

We are now going to take our next question and this one comes from Julian Dobrovolschi from ABN AMRO-ODDO BHF.

I have also 2 follow-ups. The first one is on the EQT XI fund. Just wondering what's really holding back activation? Is it fundraising? Or is it just EQT X deployment? I think this one sits at about 60% at the end of Q3, which is pretty much in line with Q2. And then what size is likely that we will actually activate in Q3, this one is really going to happen?

And how to think about the catch-up fees in terms of the modeling just because I believe you are continuing, you also said it today that you will continue fundraising for this fund over the next 12 months plus. And the second is, again, on the AI Infra, just wondering quickly, what's the blended fee rate for this fund? I believe you said it's between 50 to 75 bps at Q2. So just wondering where exactly do we sit within this range today?

Thank you for those questions. I will leave the details to Gustav but in terms of activation for EQT XI, what's driving the activation is really when the -- this fund will be making its first investment. And since we haven't done that yet and just concluded actually, the investment period for EQT X, that's why we haven't activated this strategy yet. So it's purely driven by that and by deal flow and deal flow is attractive. We're working on a number of exciting and attractive and new investment opportunities in this strategy. So we will announce those, hopefully, if and when they materialize. Gustav?

Yes. And maybe just so I think as we said, the plan is to activate it within the next few months and i.e., that it will be activated before year-end. Of course, we don't know if that's going to be the case as Per says it's dependent on doing this first deal in EQT XI. So I think that's a key parameter in it. When you think about size at activation, I think as we've said a number of times in this -- in the past, you -- and we've said that we are about half the size of the target fund size at first close, which was during December, i.e. that would then imply EUR 11.5 billion.

What you always see in these fundraisings is that after the first close where you have the first close discount, you have a bit of period before new investors come in. So even if we feel that there is strong momentum in the fundraise, there is going to be a bit of time before we will see a significant increase in the level from the EUR 11.5 billion that we kind of alluded to in the H1 report.

So I think that's a signal to where that we will be, of course, above that by year-end. But I don't think that you should expect that we will be close to EUR 20 billion in that number for -- by year-end. As we said, this is going to continue for the full year, and that we expect that a lot of the demand is going to come in 2027 for the fund.

When it comes to the AI infra fund, as you said, what we said in H1 is that the fee range will be between 50% to 75% and that we were in the lower parts of that in H1 given the founder economics. So that means that on a relative basis now, we've increased that slightly, but it will take time before it will trend towards the 75% just given the dynamics of it. So I think you should -- what we said in H1 is probably still the right guidance to that as well.

Okay. Excellent. Well, I don't think there are any more questions on the line. So thank you, everybody, for joining today's call, and as always, available for any follow-ups after the call. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome to EQT's half year report 2026. It's been a busy and successful first half for us, all in Fee paying AUM at EQT grew 10%. We delivered total revenue growth of 5% and 4% of EBITDA growth versus last year, with significant fundraising activities underway, driving growth into 2027.

Before handing over to Per to kick things off, let me ask that we limit questions to 2 questions. in today's Q&A to make sure everyone has sufficient time to answer questions.

So with that, let's hand it over to you, Per, to kick things off.

Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everyone. In a challenging and uncertain environment during the first half, we delivered strong performance and made significant progress across the board. We took advantage of a volatile market environment to unlock attractive investments. We were able to leverage our differentiated sourcing capabilities to really create very attractive deal flow for investors. We substantially increased our investment pace compared to last year. And in total, we put EUR 19 billion of capital to work and generated EUR 9 billion of co-investments.

At the same time, we stayed disciplined on exits, building really on the record year of exits that we had in 2025 when we achieved EUR 40 billion of distributions. We sent back close to EUR 17 billion to our clients during the first half. The cross business lines, we launched a number of new strategies, and we currently have more than 20 active funds in the market.

In private capital, we were selected for the scale of Europe Fund by the European Commission. This win is really a great testament of our market-leading position in Europe. and the quality of our early-stage platform. In Asia, we raised the largest Asia-focused private equity fund ever with BPA 9 hitting the hard cap at EUR 15.6 billion. For EQT 11, we're off to a very good start, and we have so far secured commitments of half of the target fund size. In private capital, we had strong deal flow across strategies. In total, we put EUR 5 billion of capital to work out of our funds, and we generated around EUR 5 billion in co-investments. A significant part of that co-invest came from the GBP 11 billion take-private of Intertek. Post Intertek and EQT X is now approximately 85% invested. In EQT equity, we continue to see strong and attractive deal flow ahead, and we expect to activate EQT 11 during the third quarter.

The attractive near-term investment pipeline in EQT Equity is also likely to support and drive further fundraising momentum for EQT 11. This is something that we've seen in prior flagship fundraising, most recently in BPEA IX and Infra VI.

Turning to our infrastructure business. Momentum across our infrastructure platform is really exceptional. The investment volumes for the first half of 2026 are higher than the 2 previous calendar years combined. Value creation has picked up significantly. Performance across funds is strong and the outlook remains favorable, not least for the AI infrastructure strategy and all of the connected investments that we have across our infrastructure platform.

Both the AI infrastructure and the active core Infra strategies are off to a very strong start. We launched the EQT Infra VII fundraising with a EUR 21 billion target fund size, and the initial reception has been very positive and interest from clients is strong.

In real estate, we also see excellent momentum. We closed the most recent Europe Logistics fund at the EUR 3.1 billion hard cap, and we launched the U.S. Industrial Value Fund VII targeting EUR 6 billion. We're really optimistic about the potential in this part of our business, and we'll come back to that shortly.

Coller Capital remains on track for closing in the third quarter. adding secondaries capabilities to our platform will make us even better placed to be the most attractive counterparty in private markets for clients. It will also significantly strengthen our positioning in the insurance channel and in private wealth. Across our private wealth platform, we see strong momentum and in the quarter, included in Coller, our Evergreen offerings reached a new milestone of EUR 10 billion in NAV.

Private wealth remains an important opportunity for us. We will approach this opportunity with a long-term and responsible mindset, and we continue to make the necessary investments into our client solutions capabilities, distribution partners as well as our brand. An important initiative in this regard was seen [indiscernible] during the quarter or for brand partnership in sports with the ATP Ten store.

Next slide, please. In May, we announced the decision by the European Commission to select EQT to manage the scale of European. The decision was taken following a highly competitive process and is really the ultimate validation of what we've built over the last 30 years. As the overall European platform investing across ventures, growth and life sciences we are uniquely qualified for this mandate. The opportunity set is significant and very attractive. Over the last decade, an estimated EUR 1.2 trillion in market value has left due to Europe. Europe really doesn't have a startup problem. It has a scale-up challenge. We estimate that there is more than EUR 500 billion in scale of fund until 2031.

Today, 60% of growth stage funding of European companies comes from outside of Europe. With the scale of Europe fund, we want to really rally the entire European early-stage ecosystem behind this opportunity. We want to leverage our scale, our operational toolbox, our global network to help European entrepreneurs and founders realize their full potential. We want them to go for gold and become global winners just like EQT has become a European headquartered global winner in the private markets.

The focus for the fund will be AI, robotics, semiconductors, energy, biotech and advanced industrial systems. In one of these subsectors, we want to find and back Europe's first trillion-euro company. The fund is off to a great start. Deal flow is above our expectations and interest from investors is strong. We have more than 125 high-priority opportunities that we're currently pursuing, and we expect to announce several investments for this strategy already during the third quarter. We set the target fund size at EUR 5 billion. We see client demand above this level, and we have not set the hard cap for this fund yet.

Next slide, please. During the second quarter, we officially launched the EQT AI infrastructure fund to offer investors direct exposure to the most compelling investment opportunity of our generation. The demand for AI compute is accelerating at a rapid pace, and we continue to see a huge supply-demand imbalance. Industry estimates suggest that by 2030, EUR 4 trillion will be invested into data centers and energy infrastructure. At EQT, across our infrastructure platform, we've invested in this team with high conviction for many years, starting with our investment in EdgeConneX in 2020. Since then, we've developed a differentiated strategy to connect our fiber, energy and data center assets and our real estate platform to provide integrated solutions for data center clients around the world.

As a result, EQT is uniquely positioned to be a central partner in this build-out. Through EdgeConneX, we today operate more than 90 data centers globally across 5 continents in 26 countries. We've deployed 30 million miles of fiber network and our energy companies have a development pipeline exceeding 100 gigawatts. No other private markets firm can offer this type of integrated solutions to hyperscalers. The AI infrastructure fund provides a unique opportunity for private market investors to get exposure to this team. And that is what we're seeing reflected in the significant value creation and fundraising momentum for this fund. In less than 3 months, NAV increased from EUR 2.4 billion to EUR 9.4 billion.

Next slide, please. Let me now turn to EQT Real Estate. It's been approximately 5 years since we acquired Exeter. During this time, the real estate market was really or has been out of favor and the fundraising environment has been challenging. In the key funds, EQT Real Estate delivered top quartile or better performance. And as a result, despite these challenging market conditions, we have doubled fee-generating AUM from approximately EUR 11 billion at the time of the acquisition to EUR 22 billion today. We want to build on this performance and momentum and think that now is an interesting time to accelerate growth. We see signs of the real estate market gradually improving and activity levels picking up.

We recently announced the launch of the fundraising for the flagship U.S. Industrial Value Fund VII. And the EUR 6 billion target is a significant increase in fund size compared to Fund VI. The initial response from clients has been very positive. Looking ahead, we see an opportunity to expand into new thembatic verticals beyond our current industrial and logistics focus. Living, multifamily and data centers are near-term priorities and opportunities for us. Geographically, we're continuing to build our presence in the U.S. and Europe, and longer term, APAC is also an opportunity. The new segment reporting reflects the strategic importance and the growth opportunity that we see going forward for this part of our business.

Next slide, please. At EQT, we continue to generate the most attractive deal flow and the most attractive co-investments in the private markets. Our ability to generate co-investments is a real differentiator for us and is the result of the deal sourcing machine that we've built over the last decades. Combining a strong local presence in our target geographies with a global sector-based thematic investment approach allows us to unlock deals and to engage with investors in a more long-term strategic way. Thematically, thanks to the breadth of our platform, we remain perfectly designed to invest into the AI opportunity. And that is what we see reflected in our deal flow and in our investment activity in the first half.

Our infrastructure and private capital platforms are really firing on all cylinders. In infrastructure, we made several attractive investments in the energy sector. For instance, in AES and Copia Power. Copia Power will be the first deal in the newly announced infrastructure 7 fund. We also invested in physical infrastructure businesses that are providing critical nondiscretionary services, for instance, Galda and/or base. In EQT Private Capital, EQT 10 announced an offer for Intertek, 1 of the largest take privates in Europe so far this year and actually the second largest U.K. sponsor-backed public to private transaction of all time. EQT 10 also invested in Eco-Launch a European space company as well as Tal a globally leading niche med tech business. Post TachoSil, EQT 10 is now close to fully invested with an appropriate vintage sector and geographic diversification.

In Asia, we continue to have an attractive pipeline, in particular in India and Japan. In Japan, over the past 12 months, we've done 3 public to privates, including Fujitec, Carnet and Lamesa. Finally, across the early stages platform, deal flow is at record levels, also fueled by the announcement of EQT being selected as the manager for the scale of Europe Fund. The momentum that we're seeing in this part of our business is really very exciting.

Next slide, please. Our strategy of being the client-centric scale player focused on performance, that unique precision -- proposition that we can bring to the market of being the global provider of international alpha that really resonates with investors. In addition, our performance track record is excellent. We've produced attractive short- and long-term risk-adjusted returns. Really no matter how you look at it, whether on a long-term or a short-term basis, we've delivered real cash back to investors real alpha. As a result, our fundraising momentum is very strong, which has allowed us to successfully launch new products and grow existing strategies.

In the last 6 months alone, we've added 4 new strategies with an expected fee-based AUM of more than EUR 5 billion each. The AI infrastructure fund, the scale of Europe fund and private capital, the U.S. Industrial Value Fund VII in real estate and KPN in Coller Capital. Delivering for our clients gives us the right to grow and scale existing business lines and strategies and to introduce attractive new products to help investors achieve their objectives when it comes to target returns and portfolio diversification. Next slide, please.

Since the IPO, we have significantly expanded our offering for clients. At the time of the IPO, the EQT platform consisted primarily of the private equity and infrastructure flagship funds. Our private capital fundraising cycle was essentially 1 flagship fund, EQT IX at the time at roughly EUR 16 billion. Since then, we've added many strategies across the flagship, early-stage, long-haul and evergreen products. For many of these strategies, we're today also offering a specific geographic focus, across Europe, North America and Asia. As a result, in this cycle for private capital, we're targeting fundraising of approximately EUR 55 billion. That's an increase of 40% compared to the prior fundraising cycle.

Similarly, in EQT Infrastructure, we've expanded the fundraising from only EUR 16 billion in Infra V at the time of the IPO to approximately EUR 45 billion for the current fundraising cycle, an increase of approximately 80% versus the prior cycle really an impressive achievement. In addition to the value-add funds, the infrastructure platform now includes the AI infrastructure fund, the transition infrastructure and active cost strategies as well as the evergreen vehicles.

Next slide, please. Thanks to the broadening of our offering, we've been able to create a much more diversified business since our IPO. In September 2019, EQT managed approximately EUR 36 billion in fee-related AUM across 6 private equity and infrastructure focused strategies. Today, we manage EUR 155 billion of fee-generating AUM and EUR 291 billion of total AUM. Pro forma for Cole Capital and including the scale of Europe Fund our total AUM is now around EUR 345 billion as of the 30th of June. We want to leverage our scale, our global presence and insights to deliver the most attractive strategies, product solutions and performance for clients. The AI investment opportunity is a good example of this. Thanks to the breadth of our platform, we can find the most attractive risk reward and allocate capital accordingly for clients. for making investments into exciting native AI companies out of our early steps platform to investing into the opportunity at scale out of our infrastructure funds.

With that, I hand it over to Gustav. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. Turning to fundraising and highlights from the first half of the year, which has been very eventful with around EUR 18 billion of gross inflow turned into fee-generating AUM. For EQT 11, we secured commitments equal to half the target fund size of EUR 23 billion. half the target fund size at the first close for TX1 is slightly ahead of where we were with Infra 6 at the first close. Momentum remains strong with an active pipeline for the H2 and tilted towards Q4, just given the recent first close. We expect activation of the fund during Q3. As communicated, we've set the target fund size for Infra even at EUR 21 billion, and we're seeing promising early indications from investors on the back of very strong fund performance. Infra VII has signed its first deal acquiring Copia Power, [indiscernible] called prefund Bridge, and we expect activation around year-end, in line with earlier communication. At year-end, we expect to have held an early close for Infra VII.

However, we don't expect the first close to happen until H1 2027. Hence, you should expect a smaller amount raised in 2026 then for EQT XI at activation. As a reminder, EQT XI and Infra VII will not contribute to fee-generating AUM until activation and hence, EQT XI is not part of the fee-generating AUM as of today. Across other closed-end strategies, we've been equally active. The scale-up Europe Fund is already anchored by a number of core investors representing the majority of the EUR 5 billion target fund size, and their commitment is expected to be closed out during Q3 with the activation of the fund at the same time.

We're in parallel opening up the fund raise for additional investors and are seeing strong demand on the EUR 5 billion target fund size, and we have not yet set a hard cap for the fund. The fund will be paid on committed capital and is expected to have an average management fee rate in line with EQT's overall blended management fee rate. The the scale of Euro Fund will also mean that we will not be raising a second-generation growth fund. In addition to the scale up Europe fund, we're also raising a large number of additional closed-ended funds. Notably, our U.S. industrial value in real estate fund with a target of USD 6 billion as well as our transition Infra fund. On the institutional open-ended side, the active core infrastructure strategy has now finalized its founding round and it signed its first 2 investments. The fund will be activated during Q3 and has so far raised USD 2.3 billion of which a bit less than USD 1 billion will be fee generating directly at activation.

The AI infrastructure fund reached more than USD 9 billion of fee-generating AUM at the end of Q2, driven by taking in both primary capital to fund future growth as well as secondary capital to sell down investments in Infra and Infra 5 as well as reflecting the strong value appreciation since launch. We expect continued strong development for AI infrastructure, which is open ended. However, also noting that significant capital has been brought in during the last months. And hence, you should not expect the same velocity of inflow going forward. The fund shortage fees on NAV, with the majority of the current capital, i.e., the EUR 9.4 billion came in as of July 1 and with a fee rate of between 50 to 75 bps currently closer to 50 bps due to the founder economics.

Lastly, for the Private Welter greens, I will talk more about those on the following pages. Next slide, please. As of today, we've closed out approximately EUR 40 billion out of our EUR 100 billion fund target -- fundraising target. And currently, we have more than 20 vehicles in active fundraising across closed-ended and open-ended strategies. The remaining EUR 60 billion includes funds currently in fundraising as well as a couple of funds that are yet to launch fundraising. In addition, we've added 3 significant new elements: the AI infrastructure fund, the scale-up Europe Fund and the Coller Capital platform. Together, these are expected to add more than EUR 40 billion of additional fundraising. Hence, we are today expecting to raise more than EUR 140 billion in this fundraising cycle.

Next slide, please. We're continuing to expand our Evergreen offering. Today, including the Coller platform, we have now reached EUR 10 billion in NAV and are continuing to grow rapidly with limited redemptions. During the first half, we have started 2 infrastructure vehicles, and we will, during Q3, launch an Asia-focused fund on the private capital side. In total, including Coller, we raised approximately EUR 2.5 billion during the first half, and we expect that to be a relatively good proxy for forward-looking half years. However, with the notion that Q4 will probably be stronger than Q3 just due to the holiday period in Q3.

We recognize that wealth investors are more sensitive to headlines and market sentiment. This has been visible across the industry. Private credit evergreens products have faced most headwinds while other vehicles focused on other strategies have been more resilient. For EQT without Coller, we had around EUR 800 million of inflow in Q2 and driven mainly by a weak April due to the market sentiment and then May and June more in line with the levels that we saw in Q1. We continue to see momentum on the Infra side on the back of strong performance, and that's an attractive alternative to the significant outflow on the credit side. Redemptions in Q2 continued to be very limited at the same levels as in Q1, hence, around 0.5% of NAV per quarter across the platform.

Next slide, please. So let me give you an update on the Coller transaction. We're on track to close the transaction in mid- to latter part of Q3, and the integration planning is ongoing at full speed. The structural opportunity within secondary is evident from the client demand for additional funds and new products and the continued muted distributions across the industry are widening that structural opportunity even further. Having closed KIP9 earlier this year, Coller's largest fund ever. We plan to launch the KIP9 fundraising later this year with the activation of the fund expected during the first half of next year, with fees charged on committed capital.

Fundraising for CCO 3, the credit fund was launched in Q2 and has been well received by the market. CCO will charge fees on invested capital similar to their earlier fund vintages. Coller continues to see a growing market for structured products and insurance solutions. -- with an innovative evergreen structure closed here in the first half, and they expect to close a large traditional 10-year structured funding vehicle during the second half of the year. We identify insurance capital as 1 of the most interesting pools of capital within private markets. And through color, we get access to strong insurance relationships, as well as strong structuring capabilities.

We're also in early preparations for additional share asset classes, drawing benefits from the combined platform including infrastructure secondaries. We continue to be very excited about secondaries and to join forces with the Coller team.

And with that, I will hand over to Olof. Next slide, please.

Thank you very much, Gustav. So let's next turn to deal activity. And Pat covered our strong deal flow in H1, so let me focus on the exit activity. We announced about EUR 7 billion of fund exits and another EUR 10 billion for our co-investors during the first half of the year. We completed public sell-downs in Galderma and Azelis, in Eni and in Beorev, fully realizing the listed portfolio assets. Public market exits represented about 30% of the exit volumes in H1. On the infrastructure side, we completed a minority stake sale in Nordic Ferry Infrastructure as well as Edge ConneX from infrastructure for and across the early-stage platform, we completed the exit of tubules from LSP 7, which is the largest ever acquisition of a European private biotech company.

We created a continuation vehicle for our well-performing assets in the Ventures One fund, providing further liquidity for those clients. At the start of the year, we announced an ambition to deliver exit volumes similar to last year's levels of about EUR 20 billion of exits. We maintain this ambition for the year despite the somewhat slower start to the year. As always, the market backdrop and specific deal situations can impact volumes in the short term, but we expect realization as to pick up versus the H1 volumes when we look a few quarters ahead.

Looking at our pipeline for H2 specifically, we have a diversified pipeline across geographies, sectors and deal types, including a couple of potential IPOs and minority stake sales. Last year, exits were concentrated to private equity, and we expect exits to be more balanced towards infrastructure this year. And as the AI infrastructure strategy continues to ramp up, we also expect it to increase its ownership in EdgeConneX through further purchases of shares from Infra IV and V.

Next slide, please. Turning to value creation. All of our key funds continued to perform on or above plan. During the second quarter, key fund valuations increased by about 5% and during the last 12 months, key fund valuations increased by 8%. Double-digit value uplift in infrastructure was led by strong underlying performance in the digital and energy subsectors in particular, as portfolio companies continue to secure new contract capacity and grow run rate EBITDA.

Over the last 12 months, profitability accelerated across the private capital portfolio with 14% EBITDA growth in private capital, Europe and North America. Looking at EQT X specifically, saw mid-single-digit value creation in H1 and primarily due to strong operating performance with combined EBITDA growth of 24% over the last 12 months. In EQT IX, lower valuation multiples offset generally strong operating performances. And in the earlier private capital vintages, which are largely derisked already with a meaningful share of realized assets, there we saw softer performance. And across Private Capital Asia, operating performance was broadly positive, which, combined with stable valuation references supported largely positive value creation.

So with that, let me hand it over to Kim.

Thank you. Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everyone. And moving to the financials next. Many of the ongoing fundraisings have started during 2026 and will continue into 2027. Thus, we expect, for example, the full year effects of EQT XI and Infra V to occur in 2027 with a step-up in management fee revenue as a consequence. In H1 2026, fee-related revenue was largely flat year-over-year, mainly due to large retroactive fees in the first half of '25 as well as significant exits in earlier fund generations during the last 12 months, which is helping the strong fundraising momentum across the platform.

Excluding the effects of the retroactive fees, the fee-related revenue increased by about 5% year-over-year. We saw a higher level of fee-related performance revenues in the period. driven by the performance in our Evergreens and open-ended funds. We expect this to continue to grow in H2 and into 2027 and beyond as we scale the open-ended platforms. Carried interest and investment income grew by around 40%. Carry was primarily driven by exits in private capital and investment income was driven by valuation uplifts in EQT's financial investments.

Taken together, this led to a total revenue growth of 5%. We have remained disciplined in our hiring with headcount marginally increasing during the first half. Our key strategic priorities for hiring continues to be private wealth, AI capabilities and geographical presence in Asia and the U.S. The guidance on the mid-single-digit OpEx growth made at the start of the year is still our expectation. The growth is related to the key strategic priorities mentioned as well as ramped up branding, marketing and AI spend. In H1 2026, our EBITDA margin remained flat at 60% and the fee-related EBITDA margin was 50%. During the latter part of 2027, it is likely that we reached the 5% fee-related EBITDA margin ambition we have mentioned before.

I also wanted to repeat our guidance on Coller. As communicated at the year-end presentation, we continue to expect Coller to have a fee-related EBITDA of around EUR 175 million to EUR 200 million for the full calendar year 2026.

Next slide, please. Let's turn to the outlook for carried interest. This year, carry will be based on key funds currently in carry mode. These funds have to date recognized EUR 1.4 billion and have yet to recognize around EUR 600 million over a multiyear period. We have broadened the group of funds expected to enter carryout next, and it now comprises Infra IV and Infra V, EQT IX and BPEA VIII.

Moving Infra V and BPEA VIII into this bucket reflects the progress these funds are making on their value creation and exit plans and the pipeline of future carry contributors is maturing. Within this group, Infra 4 is the furthest progressed, and we expect to continue to realize part of the holding in Edge Connect, for example, across both Infra for and Infra fine. This puts Infra IV on a value creation and exit path towards initial carrier recognition in late 2027. Other funds in this bucket may move into carry mode from 2028 at the earliest. The funds in our most recent vintages are still investing and are fully focused on value creation.

Next slide, please. Some final remarks on how we continue to use our balance sheet to support our growth agenda. The foundation of the balance sheet remains robust. We have low leverage ratios, we have strong cash generation and no bond maturities until 2028. And our revolver remains undrawn. Worth noting on cash generation is that we had some EUR 400 million of cash carry in H1 2026. With a well-capitalized balance sheet, we have also returned around EUR 750 million to shareholders over the last 12 months through dividends and buybacks.

And we continue to have ample capacity to put our balance sheet to work and I will hand over to Gustav to comment on that.

Thank you, Kim. The workfalls seem to a couple of main buckets 4. First, long-term fund commitments. Our commitments alongside clients currently at around EUR 900 million, which aligns us with our investors and grows naturally with the platform. Secondly, the strategic balance sheet investments of approximately EUR 2 billion, mainly seeding our Evergreen private wealth vehicles and bridging new close-ended strategies through launch. These investments are designed to build EQT for the long term to create fee-generating AUM.

Thirdly, structured solutions where we expect to increase investing into bespoke structures to drive business momentum and to add fee-paying commitments. This includes the structured insurance solutions, where EQT's balance sheet will participate in part of the equity investment. This is also one of the growth opportunities that the Colller transaction brings. And then, of course, lastly, M&A. The strategic use of the balance sheet is visible in the P&L. Investment income exceeded EUR 200 million in H1 more than what we generated in full year 2025. This reflects the broadening of platform as well as the strong value appreciation of the positions that we held on the balance sheet investments, especially on the infrastructure side.

Assuming continued performance, we expect investment income to continue to be strong in H2 2026, in '27 and beyond. We believe that the level of carried interest and investment income achieved in H1 is a good proxy also for the second half of the year.

And with that, I will turn back to Per for some concluding remarks. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Kim, and Gustav. To summarize, in a tricky market environment during the first half, we delivered strong performance and executed well on our strategy. Our long-term approach to building the most attractive global client-centric platform in our industry is paying off. A great example of this is the decision by the European Commission to select us to manage the scale-up fund for Europe, a testament to our market-leading position that we've built in Europe and the quality of the early states platform. The combination with Coller Capital is on track to close in the third quarter and will further strengthen our ability to serve clients. We were able to take advantage of the volatile market environment to unlock attractive new investments. Thanks to the breadth of our platform, we are perfectly positioned to invest into the AI opportunity and that's reflected in our strong deal flow.

In the first half, we saw healthy value creation across our business, most notably in EQT Infrastructure where we're seeing exceptional momentum across strategies. In EQT X, we also saw mid-single-digit value creation in the quarter and overall operating performance in the private equity portfolio remains strong. In EQT X, the portfolio delivered 24% EBITDA growth in the last 12 months. Across the firm, we remain focused on monetizing investments and we have an ambitious exit pipeline for the next 6 to 12 months. We're really building on a record year of exits that we had in 2025 and when we sent back EUR 40 billion to clients. In the first half, we delivered EUR 17 billion of distributions. And based on the pipeline that we're seeing and subject to market conditions, we maintain our ambition to deliver exits in this year approximately in line with last year's volumes.

Fundraising momentum across the firm remains strong. The AI infrastructure fund is off to an excellent start. Reception for the scale up Europe fund has been excellent and we've held the first close for ED1 at 50% of the target fund size. We also see continued nice momentum across our Evergreen platform with EUR 2.5 billion of inflows in the first half reaching a new milestone of EUR 10 billion in NAV.

Before I open up for Q&A, I'd now like to take the opportunity to extend a big thank you to Kim Henriksson. This will be Kim's last webcast as CFO of EQT before he moves on to a senior adviser role within the firm. Kim is a deeply valued partner colleague and a friend, and he's done an outstanding job as the CFO during one of the most transformative periods of our firm. Kim is going to remain with EQT. And in that adviser role, he will be supporting our portfolio companies on IPO preparations and public company governance. So a big thank you to Kim. At the same time, I'm delighted to welcome Gustav as the new CFO. Gustav has played an important role in the strategic growth of our firm. He's been closely involved in the acquisitions of Exeter, BPEA and color and also in the development of our Evergreen platform. As part of the transition from Kim to Gustav, Olaf will take on additional responsibilities within the finance organization, which is also exciting.

So with that, I open up for Q&A. Operator, please?

[Operator Instructions] We are now going to take our first question. Just 1 moment. And this question comes from the line of Arnaud Giblat from BNP Paribas.

I've got 2 questions, please. Firstly, could we come back on the investment income. I'm just -- the EUR 200 million is quite a large number. I'm just wondering if you could give a bit more detail as to strategy it comes from? It seems like quite a turnkey return, 10% over 6 months if you're -- if it's over the EUR 2 billion investment -- just a bit more detail there would be helpful. And secondly, with the Cole Capital, clearly, there's an opportunity as you've described to address more of the wealth channel. Are there any other avenues -- distribution avenues you could pursue perhaps small institutional mandates, where they allocate women seek to allocate the significant investments to what manager to do there's a lot in terms of investments for them. Any -- yes, so I was just wondering there and what investments are required to achieve these step-ups in wealth and other distribution opportunities.

Yes. Thank you for those questions. I will hand both of those questions to Gustav. Just a quick comment on Cole Capital. -- in addition to private wealth, as we have previously communicated, we are also really excited about the opportunity in the insurance channel that we're seeing. But I'll let Gustav elaborate on that. .

Yes. Happy to. Maybe starting a little bit with the investment income side. I would say that, as I alluded to, it's very broad-based across the platform, but with the skewness to the Infra side just given the strong performance there. I think the way to think about it going forward, so to speak, is if you think -- I would we have around EUR 3 billion. So the EUR 2 billion plus EUR 900 million of fund investments. So in total, we're talking about around three billion where we're generating around EUR 200 million. So that's, let's say, just shy of 15% return during the half year. I think if you think about that, then it's not like a crazy number given the return targets that we have. not all of the EUR 300 million are going to have the same type of return targets just given that some of it is more like bridges and stuff like that. But if you think about it in a 10% to 15% return on the balance sheet, you kind of end up in that ballpark. So that's how I would think about the investment income side.

When it comes to Coller capital, I would say I think the what we want to build across is really to create more solutions for investors. And that goes for private wealth investors, it goes for institutional investors. It goes for insurance clients that Peer referenced. I would say in the area of, let's say, smaller institutions, we have not maybe had like the same type of success as some other firms in Europe. And I think this gives us another tool in the toolbox in order to be able to attack that part of the market. So it's for sure, an interesting area for it.

And then lastly, when it comes to growing in wealth, I would say that we've taken the majority of those investments, we're going to continue to invest into the brand and marketing side, even though I think the cost that you have in 2026 is a relatively good proxy. It would probably go up a bit in 2017 and beyond, but not to the same extent given that we've grown the sales organization now we're growing the brand and marketing setup. So now I think we feel that we are well equipped, of course, also given that we've gotten a lot of strong people and relationships through the Colller acquisition.

We are now going to move to our next question and this question comes from the line of Haley Tam from UBS.

Can I ask 2 and also then a follow-up on the investment income one, but the 2 initial questions. On the AI infra fund, that's EUR 9.4 billion already, which is fantastic. Could you clarify for us how much of that was primary versus secondary? And I guess, specifically, how much was Edge Connect and I think you mentioned there might be more of that in the future. So just to get a handle on that would be great. Secondly, the effective management fee. I think it was 1.4% in H1 last year. I couldn't see a disclosure of what it was this year. And I heard what Kim said about retroactive fees, but I just wondered if you could help us understand that for the underlying momentum, that would be great. And then just a follow-up on the investment income. I think you mentioned the ETC balance sheet will participate in equity investment insurance structures going forward. Can I just clarify whether that's a recycling of the EUR 3 billion or whether we should expect that to be incremental in the future?

Thank you for those questions. I suggest we answer them in the order that you asked them, and maybe Olof takes the first 1 and then Kim and go stop.

Yes. On the AIM fund, I believe, was your first question. Haley. It's -- this is a structure that is invested in 1 solely at this point in time. And a large part of the EUR 9.4 billion is primary capital that we have raised for that. That's the vast majority of this and the primary capital that we raised the fund is used to fund the CapEx and the growth for EdgeConneX primarily. -- and that is also driving a meaningful uplift that you see in the valuation of the fund in this quarter, but it also means that we are investing in the future growth of this. And that's why we also have a very strong outlook for the performance of this fund from here.

And maybe if I take the last 2 questions. I would say on the effective management fee, I would for the closed standard side, it's unaffected, so to speak. So the EUR 1.4 billion is still valid. Of course, when you bring -- when we bring in additional capital in -- from especially the AI infrastructure fund with a lower fee rate, but also note that the EUR 9.4 million the vast majority of that was included as of June 30, so to speak. So there is no management fee for the first half, but it's included in the end of the period management or fee-generating AUM. So it will be a little bit distorted there just given that in the first half of it.

And then when it comes to the investment income, it's not part of the EUR 3 billion so there might be a bit of incremental increase in it. The way to think about it is, however, also that some of the other capital, i.e., EUR 2 billion will come back. So it's -- I wouldn't put it on top, but I would think that the EUR 3 billion will probably continue to grow probably at a little bit lower pace than what we've had in the last months just given the significant ramp-up that we've had on the Evergreen side, which has which has, let's say, eaten quite a lot of balance sheet capital, which then, over time, will probably, let's say, work its way into other things. So that's how you should think about it.

We are now going to move to our next question. And this question comes from the line of Nicholas Herman from Citi.

Yes. and best of luck to Kim in the new role. Two questions from my side, please. So I appreciate you see upside to the fundraising cycle. You referenced the challenging fundraising environment for real estate. But my sense is that it's also just more challenging across the piece, given I guess, geopolitical disruption or driven uncertainty. Clearly, you guys are very well positioned at the Alpha platform and will take share. But I guess are you seeing that just that challenging fundraising to? And I'm wondering, does like a first close of EQT, which is, I guess, percentage-wise, lower than prior vintages. Is that kind of indicative that it is just a bit tougher. So just kind of thoughts on the general fundraising environment, please.

Secondly, thank you for on expected time frame for carry recognition with EQT IX at 0.3x DPI, Infra and BPA at 1.1x DPI. I guess what gives you confidence that those funds will enter carry mode by 2028? And I guess what level of DPI would you expect those funds to have reached by then? And then just a very quick follow-up if I may on the investment income. Was there any investment income kind of booked within that, I guess, the central part of your group that was also linked to the EdgeConneX an AI transition -- AI infrastructure fund.

I can start. So on the on the fundraising environment, the comment that I made was specifically to real estate and the asset class having faced a more challenging fundraising environment for a longer period of time. And we see activity levels in real estate picking up. And on the back of the strong performance that we've had historically, we've doubled our fee-based in this part of our business. And if anything, compared to the last 5 years, we think that the outlook for this asset class is likely to be more favorable. And so probably including a more benign fundraising environment. Overall, for the industry, we very much agree with your characterization.

What we're seeing now is something we've spoken about in previous calls with you that LPs, institutional investors, but also private wealth platforms, consolidating their GP relationships. And that is happening right now. And in this environment, we have been able to take market share, thanks to the breadth of our platform, the strong strategic positioning that we've had, but also the outperformance that we generated, right? Just to remind you, again, in 2025, we sent back EUR 40 billion of NAV. And in our private equity strategies in Asia and in Europe and the U.S., that was more than 30% of NAV, which is 3x industry average. And that has helped us in our fund raises in BPA 9 where we hit the hard cap. And also now in EQT XI where we've secured of the fund size target. I would say that is in line with our expectation. If you look at Infra Fund VI, as Gustav mentioned earlier, right? The first close that we had for that fund was actually slightly below the 50% that we've secured so far for EQT XI. So we think we're in an excellent position in this fund raise. And based on the strong deal flow that we have right now, also in the co-invest that we're generating we want to build on that momentum during the second half and then into 2027.

In terms of what gives us confidence on the carry recognition, it's just the exit pipeline that we're seeing for all these funds that we're working on. Of course, it's always subject to market conditions, but that's reflected in the guidance that we've given now. The only additional point I would make is that of course, when it comes to the infrastructure IV, specifically, the way this fund is positioned in terms of the AI infrastructure opportunity and the momentum that we're seeing in performance around that and the exposure that this fund and Infra V has we see a good and credible path to reaching the DPI for Infra IV by the end of 2027 as Olof touched upon.

When it comes to investment income, I'll let Gustav or Olof comment on that.

Yes. I can go. So I would say that the -- as I said, the investment income is broad-based. -- it's not so much specifically to the AI infra fund. However, of course, given the performance of the edge asset, etcher asset across a number of different funds that we have, including Infra IV, V and VI. That is a contributor to it, but it is really a broad-based value that we see.

Okay. Helpful. And I guess it was more because I saw that the investment income seems to be put in this kind of central function rather than across the individual operating entities, which will hence why I ask that question. But okay, that's helpful. .

We are now going to move to our next question. And this question comes from the line of Ermin Keric from DNB Carnegie.

So maybe on the foundries and cycle. I mean, before you talked about EUR 100 billion, and now it's more like EUR 140 million. I know that's including color. But would you say you were conservative from the start? Or have you seen a stronger-than-expected demand? And also, is this then based on kind of taking market share or slightly improving fundraising market overall? Then on the scale of purpund, it sounds like you're going to approach the EUR 5 billion target quite fast. When could we expect to get a hard cap? And in terms of kind of your capacity from the organization, Will you need to add anything more to be able to manage that fund? And then last maybe on cost outlook. So you reiterated the 2026 outlook. Could you say anything about how we should think about it going into '27 and beyond?

Yes. Thanks for those questions. I can start and I'll start with the scale of Europe fund. And a question on target fund size. We've set the EUR 5 billion. We're seeing very strong momentum in terms of deal flow, client interest in this strategy. and we will set the hard cap in coordination with the anchor investors and the European Commission in due course. But based on what we can see now, we definitely see interest in this strategy that would support a larger fund size than the EUR 5 billion, but we will set a hard cap and communicated that in due course.

In terms of the fundraising cycle going from EUR 100 million to EUR 140 billion. That's a reflection, just like you said it, in terms of us adding Coller Capital to the platform, but also all of the new product launches that we've done the scale of Europe fund, the AI infrastructure fund, all of these initiatives and products were not part of the initial communication overall in terms of the fundraising environment, in general, I would say, if anything, we're facing a tougher fundraising environment right now compared to when we communicated this, but thanks to our strategic positioning, the performance that we're generating the alpha that we keep on producing, we are taking market share in this environment.

With that, I think I'll hand it over to Gustav and Kim if there's anything more you want to add to the fundraising cycle. And then please also comment on the cost outlook.

Yes, I can comment on the cost outlook. First of all, remember that we did take out some costs in 2025. So the 2026 number is also a reflection of that. So you should expect that the sort of general cost inflation in the industry and for us as well and sort of the investments we're making in the brand and marketing and our amazing people will continue. We haven't given an exact cost growth number, but what we have said is that the margin ambition of 55% fee-related EBITDA margin could be reached during the course of 2027. So I hope that is helpful.

And that margin guidance does reflect the investments that we intend to make into our early-stage platform to support us investing in a successful way to scale up Europe fund and all of the deal flow that we're seeing now in this part of our business. We are effectively doubling the AUM in our early-stage tech strategies. And of course, we're building our organization accordingly. It's a fantastic opportunity for us actually strategically to continue to cement our market-leading position in Europe, and we're definitely going to seize that opportunity.

Wish you all a great summer. And Kim, I wish you the best in your new role.

Thanks for a good cooperation over the years.

We are now going to take our next question. And this question comes from the line of Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

I'd like to also thank Kim for all his help for the years and good luck in the new role. So first question is on the AI Infra fund. Can you talk about how big this fund can get? I know it's open ended, but is there a size that you can achieve? And how do you think about adding new investments in the strategy beyond EdgeconneX? The second question is on the infra strategy. Can you talk about the appetite for IFRS VII, just given that you're also seeing inflows into the AI Infra strategy, active core, any risk of cannibalization going on within your core -- your key splaship in the fund?

I can start with the second part of the question. We don't see any cannibalization for the Infra VII fundraising. If you think about it, it's a much broader thematic focus and the AI infra strategy is really quite narrow in terms of focusing on the AI infrastructure build-out and investing into this CapEx super cycle and the seed investment is EdgeConneX. So the investments that we would be making in addition, EdgeConneX in this strategy would be sort of directly connected to that. So it's much more narrow and hence, no cannibalization really quite complementary to the rest of the strategies that we're offering in the infrastructure. And in terms of the size of the AI infra strategy, of course, is a very scalable setup that we have. But I'll let Olof or Gustav to comment on that.

Yes. And I would say a little bit, as I alluded to, I think there is -- we've taken in quite a lot of capital now in the first half of the year. And I don't -- you should not expect, at least in the short term, the same type of velocity. With that said, of course, we have the ambition to continue to grow it. We think that it's a significant market opportunity. We're not going to give any numbers of how large it can be. So it's rather a question about like what velocity can we and should we bring in new capital into it.

We are now going to move to our next question. And this question comes from the line of Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs.

I've got 2 questions, please. I think Slide 9 is really interesting, where on the right-hand side, you just show this organic growth and broadening out of your various now infra strategies. So more of a conceptual question, but based on addressable markets and the kind of indications you're getting in terms of client demand, just how should we think about the kind of relative sizing of your flagship AI and for our transition on the and the longer hold strategies here. Is there any reason over the medium term that the kind of newer 3 strategies couldn't be as big as you're in for a flagship. So that's the first question.

And then the second question, on transaction and advisory fees, your capital markets fee initiative. So you did EUR 52 million in the first half. So you're running 40%, 50% higher than you were this time last year. Will it be higher again in the second half, given that you've guided for a step-up in exits? And really, what's the latest year in terms of how you're thinking about this capital markets fee stream over the medium term, given you only really launched this initiative last year.

I'll take the first question. So if we look at our infrastructure platform, the overall statement would be that the limiting factor really in that part of our business is not deal flow, it's really access to capital. And we have, I think, designed the platform in a very nice way with a number of complementary strategies that really can scale significantly over time. And to answer your question, if you take a long-term perspective, none of this -- there's no reason that any of those strategies that we've added to the platform in addition to the value-add fund that they wouldn't be able to reach the same size or higher compared to the Infra VI fund size that we're targeting now. And that includes the transition in fraud, but certainly also the AI Infra fund actually, the active core infrastructure strategy, where we're also seeing really, really nice momentum, and there are also other external benchmarks out there for that part of our business that would support over time. a much larger fund size compared to the 1 that we have today. But of course, this is a very long-term perspective that I'm sharing now. In terms of the second question on transaction and advisory fees.

I'll hand that over to Gustav and Kim.

I can comment on that. I believe that we gave guidance that it would be in the region of EUR 100 million or similar to last year when we last spoke. And I would say that the first half number is still a good proxy also for the second half number it is, like you say, it's dependent on deal flow, but it's also -- there's some moving parts in it. So that's our best guess for the moment.

Thank you. There are no further questions. I will now hand the call back to the speakers for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everybody, for joining today's call. I appreciate all the questions, and we're wishing you all a very nice summer. So thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to EQT's Q1 announcement 2026. It's been a busy first quarter at EQT. We kicked off the year by announcing the combination with Coller Capital. In Galderma, we completed the largest sponsor-backed block trade ever to deliver the largest single fund capital gain ever. We closed BPEA IX at hard cap. We launched our new AI Infrastructure strategy, and we'd a record quarter in terms of net inflows to our evergreens.

This quarter again faced significant volatility across markets, which affected our fund valuations in different directions. So we'll cover all of these points in further detail over the next 30 minutes. And with that, let me hand over to Per. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everyone, from EQT's London office. It's been a volatile quarter, driven by rapid advances of AI technology as well as geopolitical uncertainty. And that uncertainty having a short-term impact on energy prices and also the broader macroeconomic outlook.

In this environment, at EQT, we remain focused on executing on our strategic priorities. And as we're entering the second quarter, I'm happy to say that we continue to see strong and broad-based momentum across our business. You will have seen that we, yesterday, in our Infrastructure strategies launched our new AI Infrastructure fund seeded by our highly successful investment in EdgeConneX. Our Infrastructure business has seen strong deal flow during the quarter and been very active since the start of the year. Most notably, we launched a $30 billion-plus public takeover offer for AES, a very exciting and highly thematic investment in the energy sector.

In Private Capital, we pursued a number of attractive new investments out of our early-stage strategies. And we continue to monetize investments, as Olof said, most importantly, EQT VIII's remaining stake in Galderma. In the quarter, we also saw strong fundraising momentum as we are continuing to take market share. We closed BPEA Fund IX at $15.6 billion, close to 40% increase in fund size compared to BPEA Fund VIII. And for EQT XI, we're also seeing strong momentum, and we see this fundraise being on track for a strong first close around midyear.

Our evergreen vehicles for the private wealth segment saw record net inflows of EUR 1 billion during the quarter. And the combination with Coller Capital has really been very well received by stakeholders, including our clients, and the transaction is on track to close in the mid- to latter part of the third quarter. Business momentum in Coller Capital remains strong, and we target to double fee-based assets under management within 4 years.

Across strategies, we have more than EUR 40 billion of dry powder, putting us in a strong position strategically, and this doesn't yet include the upcoming EQT XI fund. During this time of volatility, we remain focused on executing on our exit agenda. With Galderma, we executed the largest sponsor-backed block trade ever done despite significant and elevated geopolitical uncertainty. Similar to last year, in our exit pipeline, we target approximately 30 exit events this year. And if I look at the pipeline, I see that exit pipeline nicely spread across our focus sectors. Our target exit volumes for the year is in line with last year's volumes.

Next slide, please. AI is arguably the most important investment theme of our generation. It will substantially impact most of the sectors and businesses that we're investing into. And it will change how we drive value creation in our investments, and it will also change how we run our firm. I'm saying this with all humility, given the rapid advances of technology. But if I was asked to design a private markets platform from scratch to best capture the AI investment opportunity, I would design it exactly the way EQT is set up today.

First, we are the only scaled private markets firm with both a ventures and a growth strategy. Out of these funds, we make attractive investments into native AI winners, examples being Harvey, Parloa and Lovable just to name a few. Our early-stage platform also provides the rest of the firm with valuable insights and access to talent. This helps us in our deal selection and gives us access to the capabilities required to drive ambitious AI-based value creation and transformation plans in our Private Equity portfolio.

Second, being active across Infrastructure, Real Estate, Private Capital and soon also secondaries means that we can allocate capital to the entire spectrum of compelling AI opportunities. In Infrastructure, we invest into the physical assets required to power AI. We now even have a dedicated strategy to do just that. The Infrastructure team is working closely together with the Real Estate business on the AI opportunity. For instance, out of our Real Estate funds, we source land for data centers. And post the acquisition of Coller, we will also be well positioned to invest into the market dislocation triggered by AI, particularly in the private credit space.

In our Private Equity funds, we target investments where we can leverage our active ownership model, our governance model, our expertise and resources to implement ambitious AI-based value creation plans. Across the Private Equity portfolio, we're already seeing the impact as we're accelerating both AI-driven revenue growth and AI-enabled cost savings in companies such as IFS, CFC, IVC Evidensia and Nordic Ferry to name just a few.

We want to make sure we can provide our deal teams and portfolio companies with direct access to the most relevant AI expertise. This is why we keep on developing our ecosystem of AI natives and strategic partnerships, partnering with key players such as the large language model providers and other companies that are at the forefront of AI technology.

And this is nothing new for us. We've been building our AI capabilities really over the last 10 years when we first launched EQT Digital and EQT Motherbrain. And thanks to this head start, we're well set up also in our internal processes, including how we structure the data that we sit on across our firm. And this way, EQT, you could say, is really set up already in a way that is very similar to an AI-native organization.

Next slide, please. At EQT, we want to be the most attractive global provider of international alpha. This is how we think about developing our platform, how we set our priorities. And as a result of this mindset, we took the strategic decision not to be in Private Credit, but instead to grow our active ownership strategies through the combinations with BPEA in Asia, the acquisition of Exeter in Real Estate and LSP within Private Capital. And of course, now most recently, the decision to build our capabilities within secondaries by joining forces with Coller Capital.

Being able to clearly articulate your sources of alpha and value creation matters more than ever, and the scale players in our industry are pulling ahead. Post Coller Capital, we now have 4 top-performing platforms delivering global alpha at the most attractive returns and the most attractive solutions for clients.

We're now taking the next steps to align our governance and reporting more closely with our 4 business lines, so that we can further sharpen accountability, drive even closer global collaboration and really maximize the potential in all of those business lines. Bert Janssen has been appointed Chair of a newly created global Private Capital management committee and Bert will be joining the executive committee.

We see strong potential to grow our Real Estate platform, both organically and through M&A, which is why I've asked Henry Steinberg, Head of EQT Real Estate, to join the Executive Committee. As part of these changes, Lennart Blecher will step down from the committee, but Lennart will continue to work closely with myself and with the relevant business line heads, and he'll continue as Chair of Real Assets. Masoud Homayoun continues to lead EQT Infrastructure. And of course, we also look forward to welcoming Jeremy, Jeremy Coller, to the executive committee once the combination with Coller Capital closes in Q3.

Next slide, please. Let me just double-click on the AI opportunity that we're seeing in our Infrastructure business. The newly launched AI Infrastructure strategy builds on EQT's deep expertise and leadership in digital and energy infrastructure. Through our ownership of EdgeConneX, EQT Infra today operates more than 90 data centers globally. On the connectivity side, 29 million miles of fiber network has been deployed globally across our portfolio. And the energy companies that were invested in, in EQT Infra have a development pipeline exceeding 100 gigawatts.

The enterprise value of our digital and energy assets combined today is north of $100 billion. We see global demand for AI compute and hence, data centers and power consumption only accelerating. Industry estimates suggest that $4 trillion will be invested into data centers and energy infrastructure to meet this demand over the next 5 years.

At the same time, we see bottlenecks in the form of access to power, reinforcing the need for a coordinated investment approach across digital and energy infrastructure. And this is why we're now launching a dedicated EQT AI Infrastructure strategy focused on investing in a holistic way in the physical infrastructure that AI requires.

The strategy is seeded by EdgeConneX, one of the world's leading data center platforms and, as I mentioned, an existing EQT infrastructure investment, it sits in Funds IV and Fund V in our Infrastructure platform. The fund will have an open-ended structure and will enable EQT investors to double down on existing AI winners that are providing integrated end-to-end solutions to the global hyperscalers and large language model providers.

Next slide, please. During the quarter, we saw significant share price volatility and pressure on listed software companies as fears of an AI-led business model disruption for this sector spread. Against this background, I'd like to just now take the opportunity to share some perspectives on how we at EQT think about investing in software.

Software today represents approximately 7% of our fee-based assets under management and 14% of the fee-based assets under management in Private Capital. We have, over the last years, built the capabilities necessary to properly assess AI risk and opportunities. The EQT software investments are focused on mission-critical B2B enterprise software companies that are really deeply embedded into the workflow of their clients supported by proprietary data and are really incredibly difficult to displace. These software companies will be the primary diffusion mechanism for AI into large organizations. So we're really invested into software companies that will be at the center of the transition to AI.

All of these investments that we've made in software are control investments that allow us to attract the best AI forward CEOs and to move quickly in terms of implementing ambitious AI-based transformation plans. Performance is strong and on average, across our software portfolio, net sales grew at low to mid-teens and operating profit at 20% to 30% last year. And this momentum in our software portfolio has continued into the first quarter, and in 2026, and we expect the operating performance of our software companies to significantly outperform broader public market software indices.

Zooming in on the individual fund exposures and looking at each of the key funds in Private Capital, starting with EQT VII and EQT VIII. Both of these funds are largely derisked, and the funds are performing above plan with top quartile performance for their respective vintages. To date, we've had 4 software exits across these funds at a weighted average gross MOIC of approximately 5x. We still hold one software -- sorry, we still hold one software asset in each of EQT VII and EQT VIII.

Turning to EQT IX, where we, last year, sold a minority stake in IFS, crystallizing a gross MOIC of more than 7x. IFS remains exceptionally well positioned also going forward. IFS is actually a great example of the AI-based value creation potential that we see inherent in mission-critical software companies. IFS has been embedding AI into its processes and products for years and company management is continuing on this journey.

In 2026, IFS will -- as part of that journey, actually reducing its workforce by approximately 20%, thanks to realizing AI-driven efficiency gains across its business. And the annual savings that IFS will be achieving as part of that of up to EUR 100 million, will be 80% to 90% reinvested into growing the company's library of industry-leading AI agenetic solutions. This will help IFS continue to expand margins and continue to grow ARR at more than 20%. And this is quite outstanding also in light of the fact that its sales are quite a bit above EUR 1 billion today.

The strong performance of IFS continues to underpin also our confidence in the performance outlook for EQT IX. As we know, EQT IX was invested in a tricky vintage for the private markets industry. But EQT IX, we can today confidently say is invested in a number of winners, companies such as IFS that I mentioned, but also Bespak, Beijer Ref, Idealista and CFC, just to name a few. So we're confident that EQT IX will be a top-performing fund for its vintage.

In EQT X, it's still early days, but software represents below 30% of the fund. And these investments that we've made are still early in their value creation journey. But also here, we've already started to see the positive impact from AI, helping us drive revenue growth and margin expansion. The underlying performance across the EQT X software portfolio is strong. And we're confident also here in the outlook for these investments.

If we turn to Asia, software today represents a fairly small share of the portfolio. The existing software investments are also here performing well. But given the limited exposure that we have so far, in particular, also in BPEA Fund IX, we actually see the current market dislocation as an attractive opportunity to allocate more capital to software, and we're excited about our pipeline.

Next slide, please. There's really no better way to illustrate EQT's differentiated thematic investment strategy and hands-on approach to value creation than Galderma. This investment ticks all the boxes for how we unlock structural alpha at EQT, from how we source investments to our unique ownership and governance model with access to world-class buy-in shares and CEOs to our value creation and differentiated exit capabilities.

EQT VIII and its co-investors acquired Galderma in 2019 and post a complex carve-out, we embarked on a full transformation of the business. Galderma was listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange in the beginning of 2024. And since the IPO, the share price has approximately tripled. And within 2 years of the IPO, we were able to fully monetize the investments, sending back approximately $26 billion to investors.

The investment generated approximately $20 billion in capital gains, making Galderma the largest fully monetized capital gain from a single fund in the history of our industry. Our final sell-down was the largest sponsor-backed block trade ever done at $6 billion. After Anticimex, Nord Anglia, IFS and EdgeConneX to name just a few, Galderma is just another recent example of how we keep on producing those incredibly attractive investments and long-term winners across our target sectors, geographies and strategies.

With that, I'll now hand it over to Gustav, who will start by giving you the latest on the Coller acquisition. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. Since the announcement in January, we've been truly encouraged by the positive response that we have received. Clients and employees on both sides have been very supportive, while industry peers, shareholders and other stakeholders have recognized the strategic logic.

Meanwhile, the Coller business momentum continues to accelerate. In private credit secondaries, the team is just about to launch CCO III, with very good traction, especially given the current interesting dislocation in the credit market at the moment. In private equity secondaries, the team is preparing to launch its next flagship fund, CIP X, during Q3 on the back of very strong fund performance. In private wealth, Coller had over $400 million of net inflows in Q1 despite the negative sentiment around credit in the evergreen world. And finally, in insurance, Coller continues to have strong momentum in terms of structuring bespoke solutions for the insurance channel.

The integration plan is progressing at full speed, and we're on track to close by mid to end of Q3. And as Per said, we're confident in our ability to scale Coller and double fee-paying AUM within 4 years.

Next slide, please. Turning to fundraising. We're off to a strong start of the year. Starting with BPEA IX, which closed at USD 15.6 billion in total commitments, hitting the hard cap and with fee-generating commitments of USD 14.9 billion. This makes BPEA IX the largest Asia-focused private equity fund ever raised. The fund attracted more than 75 new investors, including more than 45 investors from EQT's other strategies. And these 45 clients contributed close to 25% of the total commitments. This is a clear validation to the success of the combination.

With that, turning to EQT XI. Fundraising momentum remains strong and we expect the fund to have a first close around midyear. And then finally, on the flagships, we're preparing to launch fundraising for Infra VII around midyear.

Despite the volatile market environment, we see our fundraising progresses strongly across a broad base of investors as the concentration of capital to larger managers is just accelerating. In total, during this year, we will be in the market with more than 10 other closed-ended fundraisers, and many of these fundraisings will continue into '27 with the full fee-paying AUM contribution continuing into that year.

And then moving over to the open-ended institutional products. We expect this to grow as a share of our fee-paying AUM. Active Core Infra is continuing to see strong development. And as Per said, we're excited to introduce the AI Infrastructure strategy, where our institutional clients can access long-term return opportunities at scale and our private wealth clients have a unique opportunity to get dedicated exposure to AI infrastructure.

The fund is an open-ended structure, which charges fees on NAV, effective from early Q2. The fee rate is broadly in line with our other long-haul strategies, and the strategy is also eligible for performance fees. In terms of initial size, think about this in line with our guidance for other first-time funds and then over time, we see the potential to scale this strategy to become a key fund.

And then finally, let me comment on our evergreen offering. Next slide, please. Soon 3 years since the launch of our first evergreen vehicle, we continue to see strong momentum building. Quarterly net inflows have been growing meaningfully from approximately EUR 200 million in Q4 2024 to EUR 1 billion in Q1 '26, a result of new successful product launches, the build-out of our network of distributors and strong early performance across the vehicles.

We're currently preparing for two additional vehicles, one for Infra in Q2 and one for Private Capital in Q3. Redemptions continued to be very, very low and amounted to less than 0.5% during the quarter. We have embedded the right lessons on product design, with institutional underwriting standards and ongoing investor education, something we believe will only grow in importance as the industry continues to develop.

And with that, I will hand over to Olof. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Gustav. So let's next turn to investment activity. Q1 was paced by thematic investments within Infrastructure and Infra VI is now 75% to 80% invested. And as previously communicated, we expect to activate Infra VII around year-end. Our open-ended core Infrastructure strategy made its first investment and the fund, which charges fees on NAV, will be activated upon close of the deal later this year.

EQT X remains 60% to 65% invested, and we have an active pipeline, and it's possible that we activate EQT XI around midyear. Technically, EQT XI will be activated upon closing of the fund's first investment and the fund will only be part of net inflows, our dry powder number and FAUM upon activation.

Let's next move to exits. And in Q1, we successfully exited two portfolio companies, Galderma and Azelis. Both exits were out of EQT VIII, which is in cash carry mode. Post quarter end, Infra IV and Infra V sold minority stakes in their respective holdings in EdgeConneX to the AI Infrastructure fund. And Infra V sold a minority stake in Nordic Ferry infrastructure.

A few words on the exit outlook. As a reminder, in conjunction with our full year results in January, we said the gross exit pipeline for 2026 is broadly in line with '25, should markets be supportive. This target remains unchanged. We are maintaining exit readiness and we have a diverse pipeline of exits across Infrastructure and Private Equity globally. Some of the assets in our pipeline, including certain IPO candidates, we believe, could be net beneficiaries of the asset class rotation that we've seen in the first quarter.

Next slide, please. Talking about IPOs and before handing over to Kim, I wanted to highlight our upcoming Value Creation Day. For the second consecutive year, we will host the Capital Markets event in London on the 20th of May. The EQT team across the EQT platform will go into detail of our investment and value creation approach for the AI era. And you will have the opportunity to hear from and meet with the CEOs of 4 of our portfolio companies across various sectors, including Anticimex, EdgeConneX, CFC and Straive. We hope to see you there and make sure to register via the link on this slide or on our website.

So with that, I'll hand it over to Kim. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everyone, from me too. Looking at the average key fund portfolio valuations, they were flat in the quarter as strong performance in Infrastructure was offset by lower valuations in certain Private Capital funds.

Let's break this down, starting with the earlier vintages. The Private Capital fund valuations were lower, impacted by a combination of lower reference multiples and lower closing share prices for the listed part of the portfolio. Remember, however, a large share of the portfolio in these funds has already been realized, and they are largely derisked from a returns perspective.

The Infrastructure funds saw positive value creation. In Q1, our funds with 2020 to 2021 vintages saw valuation uplift in infrastructure, primarily driven by the digital and energy subsectors. And in Private Capital, some multiple headwinds, while underlying operating performance remained strong, resulting in flat valuations.

For the more recent vintages from 2020 (sic) [ 2022 ] and onwards, several investments are developing ahead of plan. Valuations have been somewhat held back by lower software multiples, particularly for EQT X, but the underlying operational trajectory is positive. And remember -- and remember that -- sorry, I'm -- new investments enter at 1x, which means it takes time before the underlying value creation becomes visible.

On software specifically, the portfolio was marked at lower valuations but the strong revenue and earnings growth, AI defensiveness and moat strength resulted in more resilient valuation development compared to the broader public market software indices.

All key funds across Private Capital, both Europe and North America and Asia as well as Infrastructure continue to perform on or above plan. As always, listed assets are marked at the closing price. But when we value entire companies, the valuation moves tend to be less accentuated compared to how the marginally traded share moves in the public markets. Since we closed the valuations at 31st of March, public markets have traded up and reference multiples for our software assets have come back slightly.

Next slide, please. Let me also take a moment to reflect on our financials. Starting with fee-related revenue. As you've heard today, we are in a very active fundraising year. BPEA IX has already closed, but the majority of the fundraises will continue into 2027. As a consequence, we expect the contribution in terms of management fees largely in 2027.

At least [ one quarter ] of contribution from the combination with Coller Capital is expected in 2026. We've included a page in the appendix with a recap of the expected 2026 financials for Coller. They are the same as presented at announcement. And Coller EQT will be reported as a separate operating segment upon close.

Today, we also stated our intention to report Real Estate as a separate operating segment. This change will come into effect in our H1 report. This means we will report based on 4 segments: Private Capital, Infrastructure, Real Estate and Secondaries & Solutions.

Moving to FTEs and costs. We added some 10 FTEs in Q1, and we will continue to be disciplined in our hiring. We stay focused on our strategic growth areas. It's Asia and the U.S., it's AI capabilities, and it's private wealth. And over time, we believe that AI will increasingly allow us to grow without adding people in certain functions. And we're already beginning to see productivity improvements from this. To measure such improvements, we're developing KPIs to track both AI spend and efficiency gains. So by that, promoting AI usage while also holding ourselves accountable. As previously communicated, we expect mid-single-digit OpEx growth in the year.

In our full year results announcement, we mentioned we have 4 key funds in carry mode with approximately EUR 600 million of carry left to be recognized over a multiyear period. And let me reiterate that we do not expect Infrastructure IV or EQT IX to be in carry mode in 2026. We expect to start recognizing carry from these funds only when the DPI is well north of 1.

With that, I will hand over to Per for some concluding remarks.

Thank you, Kim. In a quarter marked by volatility and uncertainty, we executed well, and we entered Q2 with strong momentum across our platform. Thanks to our platform design, we're well positioned to capture the AI opportunity across strategies from making attractive native AI investments in our early-stage funds to investing at scale in AI out of our Infrastructure business and out of the EQT Real Assets platform.

We're excited about the launch of our AI Infrastructure strategy, which will give clients direct exposure to this once-in-a-generation investment opportunity. Thanks to the investments we keep on making in our alpha-generating capabilities. We set new global standards for value creation at scale. During the quarter, we executed the final stake sale in Galderma, the largest capital gain ever generated by a single private equity investment out of a single fund.

The private markets industry consolidation is continuing, and scale is growing in importance. Our strategy to be the scale player focused on delivering global alpha continues to resonate with investors, and we're taking market share as clients consolidate relationships to fewer managers. Fundraising momentum is strong, both among institutional and private wealth investors.

In a volatile environment, we remain focused on executing on our exit pipeline and we maintain the previous guidance for the full year, of course, subject to market conditions.

When it comes to Coller, the transaction is expected to close in the third quarter, and the business is really seeing strong momentum. The combination will further strengthen our ability to serve clients and will add scale, diversification and growth in fee-related earnings to EQT AB.

Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you in London in a couple of weeks. With that, we open up for Q&A. Operator, please.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs.

Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. I've got three questions, please. First question on software. And I really appreciate all the color and detail here. It seems like you're seeing pretty healthy growth across your software assets, and you expect that to continue this year. But it feels like software deals are going to be a little bit slower as people get to grips with AI disruption potential and some of the nuances around things like mission criticality, et cetera. So is this more cautious underwriting, something that you're picking up and seeing in the market, too, on the private side? And any thoughts on what could drive a pickup in deal activity here and when this could happens? So that's the first question.

The second question, still on, I guess, the theme of AI, but on AI-enabled cost investments that you -- the improvements that you called out. So this question is quite intangible. But to me, AI is making capital more valuable, labor less valuable. So private equity should be pretty well placed here for the bulk of assets in the industry. Are you able to give any color on how your value creation playbook is evolving here? And are there any companies that are potentially exceeding business plan expectations because AI is letting you take out costs or perhaps expand these businesses at a lower cost than your business plan assumed?

And then the final question on Infra VII. So it looks like Infra VI is nearly fully invested. Is it still right to be thinking about an Infra VII activation by year-end? I think you mentioned that at the full year results call.

Thank you, Oliver, for those questions. I'll take the first two and the third one, I'll leave to the team. So in terms of the software environment and dealmaking activity, what could drive a pickup. So what we saw during the first quarter was, of course, a lot of volatility in share prices in valuations for publicly-listed software companies. You also saw some of that reflected in how -- in pricing in the credit markets for some of the software -- the private equity-owned software companies.

What we've seen really over the last couple of weeks is the market, in general, becoming a little bit sharper, if you will, a little bit more nuanced in terms of how this AI risk and the AI opportunity is being priced for publicly-listed software companies, both on the debt side and on the equity side. And I'd say that is going to be probably the primary driver of when sort of the bid-ask spread also in the private markets will narrow for software companies and software investments. And that will then also drive a pickup in deal activity. In the meantime, as I referenced earlier, I do think that public-to-private will be an opportunity for private equity players that have dry powder and they can invest into this market dislocation that we've seen.

Second question, how are we leveraging AI to drive the value creation, how is our playbook evolving. It's a little bit what I touched upon in our presentation, right? This is nothing new for us. We've been investing into our digital and AI playbook for a decade. We are continuing to make investments, continuing to build our internal team capabilities, making significant investments here. We already have 30-plus in-house data scientists, but we're continuing to grow and strengthen that team set up. In addition to that, we're also entering new partnerships with the relevant players, relevant AI technology providers, but also other players that have -- that have interesting and relevant and attractive AI value creation playbooks that we want to tap into.

And we're applying this playbook really across our portfolio, across the sectors today. I mentioned some examples in my presentation earlier, I think just a great example of how we're implementing this playbook at scale is IFS, right? And this is a company with 5,000 employees. And as I said earlier, we're -- in 2026, there's an opportunity for the company to reduce its workforce by 20%, creating EUR 100 million plus of savings and 80% to 90% of that is being reinvested into product offering to accelerate the sales growth, right? I think that's just a great example of this AI value creation playbook at work in the EQT portfolio.

Maybe picking up on your third question, Oliver, was in relation to the activation of Infra VII and as we said previously, we expect that to be activated around year-end, as you correctly pointed out. And as you know, Infra VI is now 75% to 80% invested. These things are never an exact timing in the sense that it depends on the progress in terms of deals, but we certainly have a strong continued deal pipeline, both on the Infra side and as Per talked about previously also on the equity side as it relates to the outlook for activation for EQT XI.

We will now take the next question from the line of Haley Tam from UBS.

I have three as well, please. If I could ask one, firstly on software. Again, just a follow-up on Oli's question again. Thank you for the detailed commentary around Slide 7, I think it was incredibly useful. Given what you say there about software multiples contraction, but also the 29% of EQT X that is invested in software, can we just confirm that positive 4% value movement you saw in Q1, you did also lower the reference multiples there. So actually, the implied earnings growth there is much more than the 30% that you're saying for the whole of that group of software portfolio? So that's the first question.

Secondly, just in terms of fundraising, evergreen vehicles, Congratulations. It looks like that's doing really well with EUR 1 billion of net inflows and the [ 0.2 ] of redemptions. Are those sort of run rates we expect to be stable from here? Or can you give us any guide on how to look about that going forward?

And then just if I can, on the EQT VIII's cash carry generation, I think you mentioned it's now in that mode. And I think you said in the past, there might be EUR 0.5 billion of potential there. Could you just update us on how much you've already seen and perhaps what your plans are for proceeds?

Thank you for those questions. Maybe I'll start with the question on software multiples contraction and then I hand it over to Gustav to also elaborate on that if he has anything to add and then take the other questions.

So in terms of the valuation levels for our software investments during the quarter, we saw pressure based on the development of the publicly-listed peer group. But when we then -- and so like on average, valuation levels for the software portfolio across EQT Private Equity was down. But in terms of the relative performance versus the public peer group, of course, they were down to a lesser extent. Why is that? Because we're a control investor. So to acquire control in these companies based on the market conditions today, you'd have to pay a significant premium to where share prices are today for these companies.

And then the other factors are what I mentioned earlier, a superior operating performance that we see in general across the board in our software companies compared to the relevant peer group performance. And then just like also the type of software companies that were invested into, all of them really being mission-critical, B2B software companies, right?

And you see that distinction also in share price levels reflected today, but also in debt trading levels, if we look at the trading levels for the publicly-listed debt levels in our software companies. They're all trading at par. And yes, so that's probably what I'd say on that first question.

Anything to add on that, Gustav and then maybe you take the second one as well.

Yes. No, nothing really to add. I think EQT X is also a fund that is right now like coming into value creation mode, which I think is also seen in that sense, so to speak. So even if you have reference multiples going down, it will still have a good trajectory, so to speak.

I think on the evergreen side, I would say that I think, first of all, we feel very happy about the quarter. I think we see like in general, the market is -- on the evergreen side is impacted by what's happening on the credit side. And that, of course, flows into the other asset classes as well, and then have the ability to get to the numbers that we said that we were going to get to and we got to, I think, it just shows that we're on the right track, so to speak.

I think when it comes to forward-looking, I think as we've said, we see that this is -- we continue to see momentum. It's not going to be linear, so to speak. But I think the level that we're at now is probably a relative good proxy of at least the coming quarters. As I said, we're going to launch two more products during the year. That will have a bit of, of course, positive impact. But I think in general, you can say that this is a relatively good proxy of what we see. And then, of course, on top of that, you will have the Coller flows once they -- once the deal close.

And on cash carry, maybe I'll take that one. First of all, we can confirm that the EUR 500 million that was mentioned earlier is still valid. A significant part of that will be already in H1 of this year. So it will come by the next -- by the time the next financials are out.

The capital allocation framework is a much, much broader question and maybe where we need to triangulate between, on the one hand, capital structure, which is strong, as you know, we need to triangulate between growth opportunities, which we continue to seed a number of new initiatives that we have talked about here also during today's presentation. And then returns to shareholders where we have returned close to EUR 800 million in the last 12 months through dividends and share buybacks. So we will come back to this topic over the course of the year.

We will now take the next question from the line of Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

I've got three of them. Firstly, on fundraising. On Slide 10, you mentioned that there is more than 10 other closed-ended strategies to be fundraising in 2026, can you detail what strategies you are referring to here? Are these new funds or just new vintages of existing funds? So any new detail there would be great.

Second is also on fundraising. Given what we're seeing in the Middle East, are you expecting to see any change in commitments from Middle Eastern, some wealth funds, institutions? I think they contributed about mid-teens to your -- mid-teens percent to your commitments. So any change there?

And lastly, on software. I think you mentioned that you -- for one of the funds or one of the assets that you delivered about 5x on it. Do you think you can still maintain these high exit MOICs for software companies in your portfolio?

Super, thanks for those questions. I'll take the second and the third one upfront and then I'll leave the first one to the team. On the Middle East and what we're seeing in terms of activity level from our clients in that part of the world, we continue to be very active with our Middle Eastern investors really across strategies, and we continue to engage with them, both on opportunities in relation to new fund commitments. And yes, we saw strong interest also continuing in the quarter, but also in terms of co-investment opportunities that we're working on with some of our most important Middle Eastern partners.

I think my reflection, my expectation would be that just like what we're seeing really for the entire private markets industry from the larger, more sophisticated LPs, they're all looking to consolidate their relationships to a smaller number of more strategic GP relationships that can help them achieve their strategic portfolio objectives being attractive FUM-based performance, but also being able to offer them the most attractive co-investment opportunities in the industry and really being able to work with them more holistically to help them achieve their strategic portfolio objectives.

And hopefully, also, what you heard from me in my introduction and my presentation, we believe that we're just incredibly well set up to continue to take market share in that environment in our industry. And post the combination with Coller Capital, we'll be in an even stronger position. And our strategy, that strategy focused on global alpha really resonates with investors across the world, also in the Middle East.

In terms of the software opportunity for Private Equity going forward, would we be able to maintain the attractive returns that we've generated in the past. Of course, there's some uncertainty and volatility right now in the market also in terms of valuation levels. But we expect that to normalize going forward, right? And the market becoming more sophisticated in terms of pricing AI winners and AI losers in software.

Given the strategy that we have within software really being focused on investing into those mission-critical B2B software companies. We are very optimistic about the outlook of the investments that we have. And in that sort of world where there will be winners and losers and maybe also in certain segments of software, more of a winner takes it all type of environment, we are -- we're still positive and optimistic that we will also, going forward, be able to create outsized returns in software in our Private Equity strategies.

Great. And maybe I'll take the first question around the 10-plus closed-ended ones. So I think what I can say is more or less all the funds that are across our early-stage platform. So that includes the second generation of our growth fund, closing out the Healthcare Growth fund, the fourth generation of the Ventures fund, the 8th generation of the Life Science fund and also the second generation of the Asia Mid-Market fund.

On the Real Estate side, a couple of different funds. I think the most notably is that during the year, we'll start fundraising for the VII fund on the value-add side, on the logistics side, which the VI fund was the [ $5 billion ] fund that is there.

And then on the Infra side, it's continuing the Infra transition fund. And then on the later-stage Private Equity side, you also have the next generation of EQT future.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ermin Keric from DNB Carnegie.

Maybe starting on the exit pipeline. I think it was a quite strong message in kind of reiterating the exit outlook despite the market volatility we've seen. Is that enabled by kind of a tilt towards Infra? Or what gives you confidence you can defy kind of these broader market fluctuations? So are you assuming a stabilization? Or kind of what does it take for you to be able to deliver on that?

Then maybe a question on more the long-term outlook for evergreens, if you see any risk that headlines we've seen for private credit will spill over also to the strategies you're running?

And then lastly, on the funding of holdings. I mean, you just mentioned that the software assets, you're still seeing the debt trading at par. But do you see any kind of risks or impact there going forward with regards to the price or cost of debt?

Good. I'll take the first and third question, and then I leave the second one to Gustav. In terms of the exit pipeline, I think it's a very similar situation to the situation that we were in last year around this time in connection with our Q1 report. At that time, 12 months ago, there was a lot of uncertainty in relation to tariffs and the actions from the U.S. administration creating uncertainty and volatility. Just like last year, this year, we also have a pipeline of around 30 exit events, and we have a similar volume that we're targeting.

And just like last year, we're just focused on preparing these investments to be ready for exits, whether that's IPOs or trade sales or other type of monetization events. And so that's really what we're focused on. Of course, everything is always subject to market condition, but -- market conditions, but what gives me confidence is that this exit pipeline is nicely spread across strategies, asset classes, Infrastructure, Private Equity, early-stage and also across sectors, of course, the bid-ask spread is more significant now in subsectors such as software in the private markets. We've spoken about that.

But some of that capital that is looking to be allocated to attractive new investment opportunities, both in the private markets and from public market investors, that will seek other subsectors and other themes to be invested in. And here, we just believe that if we look at our pipeline that some of these opportunities will resonate with public and private market investors going forward and will also be attractive opportunities for potential strategic buyers, right? So that makes us optimistic also about our ability to execute on our ambitious pipeline of exits also this year. And the backdrop is pretty similar to last year.

Third question, software, in terms of the debt trading levels. I mean, it's exactly the same as with the share price trading levels, right? I think the point I was just trying to make is that the market is becoming more sophisticated and is in a position to today better price the winners and losers from AI in software.

And you see that reflected both in recent share price developments, but also in terms of how that risk is being priced in the credit markets. And the point that I was trying to make is that the market is also seeing that in terms of the investments that we have in software as performance remains strong.

And then maybe on the evergreen outlook, I would say a couple of different things. First of all, I think it's important to remember that this type of volatility that we're seeing in the private credit is not very different from what we saw in the real estate a couple of years back. And situation around BREIT and others, so to speak. So I think it's not unique in that sense. And we, of course, saw what happened after that in terms of how the market developed. I think that's one part.

Second part is, I think we see that there are -- as I said, there are effects affecting the broader evergreen market. I am 100% sure that we would have had more than EUR 1 billion in this quarter had we not had the private credit issue, so to speak. So we see it affecting the full market. Right now, we don't see that it will affect more than what we've seen during this quarter. But of course, there is always a risk around it.

Thirdly, I would say that I think the theme that you see around where this impacts more is in asset classes where you've had a significant uplift in inflows for a relatively long -- or a relatively high amount in a relatively quick time. Private credit for the last 3, 4 years from an evergreen perspective has been seen as an extremely easy sell and therefore, there has been a lot of inflows coming into it. And then, of course, you see the effect of that when the return expectation and the worry around software turns in, in the private credit side.

And then I would say lastly, I think on the other side of that, I think what we're starting to see and what we think will only happen more during this year and coming on to that is the transition from private credit to infrastructure on the evergreen side where we think that there is going to be a relatively strong transition there from a risk-reward perspective.

If I may, just to add to a very good and comprehensive answer from Gustav. Some of the dynamics that we're seeing in private growth and in those evergreen products around private credit are very credit-specific dynamics also. What Gustav alluded to in terms of how those products maybe have been sold and marketed as more semi-liquid type of products, I don't think that holds true at all for private equity and the products that have been sold within the private equity asset class to private wealth and retail investors. I think it's always been clear to that investor base, certainly in relation to our products that these are long-term commitments.

And then, of course, in terms of the AI point that Gustav made, right? If you take a portfolio of 10 software investments, half of them are software losers because of AI and half of them are winners in such a scenario in a private equity strategy, the outcome for that type of portfolio could still be very attractive in private equity, whereas, of course, in private credit the outcome would be very disappointing in such a scenario. And you see that dynamic also being played out in the private credit asset class, and that doesn't hold true for private equity and private wealth and retail investors are seeing that. And that's also what you see reflected in the momentum in our products.

We will now take the next question from the line of Arnaud Giblat from BNPP.

I've got three quick questions, please. Firstly, if I could start with the activation of EQT XI guided for mid this year. I suppose that, that is contingent on a number of investments being carried out in fund X. How much visibility do you have on those investments that are happening? And maybe the quantum, I assume it's [ 2 or 3. ]

Second question is on the launch of the data -- the AI strategy with EdgeConneX. I was just wondering if you could maybe give a bit more detail around how that works in terms of partial crystallization, I assume, or sell-down from fund IV to fund V into this new fund. What is the quantum there? And more important, is there a revaluation event with this leading to a higher -- could this potentially drive up the valuations for Infra IV?

And my final question, perhaps related to that is, on your new guidance for Infra IV and fund IX from having -- hitting the -- going into carry mode, we need a DPI close to 1x. Is this just a function of the long duration now of these funds and the compound of the hurdle? Or is this the reasoning behind your introduction of that incremental piece required for going into carry mode?

Good. I'll start with the first question and leave the other two to my colleagues. So in terms of activation for EQT XI, of course, it's subject to our pipeline of new investments and deal flow materializing. When I look at our current pipeline in Private Equity and EQT Equity, specifically, I think it's a very attractive pipeline. It's -- I'm definitely more excited about the pipeline in that part of our business than I've been in quite some time. So -- and it's a pretty deep pipeline, more than a handful of really exciting active opportunities that we're working on. So that's why we think there's a real chance for us to win a number of those investments. That would then also mean that we would start to activate and invest EQT XI in connection with a first close around midyear.

So that will be the color. But of course, it's subject to that attractive pipeline of new investments that we're working on also materializing.

And maybe then on the AI strategy. I would say -- so in general, the way that it will work is that it will be a combination between both primary capital coming in to EdgeConneX and other assets on the basis of the AI Infra strategy as well as the potential of further sell-downs from Infra IV and V. And those transactions will then happen on an NAV basis. So Infra IV and V would then benefit from any value increase from here onwards, so to speak, on that basis as well as the potential risk of decreases, of course.

Maybe what I'd add to that, if I may, just to provide maybe even more color. I think we see an attractive value creation opportunity for the existing investments in that strategy going forward. And as that value creation opportunity materializes, given that it's an open-ended fund structure based on NAV, we see the size of that AI strategy fund, of course, there's an opportunity to grow that.

And as that grows and attracts new commitments then the result of that would also be that there would be an opportunity for fund IV and fund V investors to continue to monetize its investment in EdgeConneX.

And on the carry question for DPI guidance, I'd say, first of all, I believe I said that it has to be well north of 1 DPI before we start recognizing carry and sort of that it's more than 1x DPI is not really new. That would be standard economics for these kinds of closed-ended funds. Maybe it's accentuated then by the fact that they have been open for slightly longer and a cumulative effect of the hurdle rate, but it's more or less in line with what we've said before, and this is not really new guidance. I was trying to reiterate what we've said before that this is not carry mode in 2026.

Very clear. If I could just maybe follow up with a very quick one. Per, it seems like -- I mean, to me, at least, it seems that you've become a bit more vocal around wanting to build out the Real Estate business and perhaps more inorganically than before. I'm just wondering if I'm reading that right. Just wondering what you have to say on that.

No. I think it's a similar message to what we have -- what I've said in the past that we believe we have a very well-performing Real Estate strategy with excellent returns. You see that reflected in the fundraising momentum that we're also seeing in that part of our business. We have a great leader and a strong team. And we, of course, want to continue to invest into that part of our business.

It's the part of our platform, where we're still relatively small, right? I mean, we're -- we have leading market positions today in Private Equity and in Infrastructure. In Real Estate, we've so far been fairly narrow in our thematic focus, being mostly focused on the logistics segment. As I referenced in my intro presentation, we're now looking to broaden that thematic focus. We are seeing closer collaboration between Real Estate and Infrastructure in opportunities such as data centers.

But we see also an opportunity outside of data centers and logistics in areas such as multifamily, student housing, medical offices. And of course, just like we have done always in the past, we will continue to build our platform organically to be able to invest into those opportunities. But if the right acquisition opportunities present themselves, we will certainly also evaluate those in our Real Estate business and with this new governance setup and also with Henry being represented directly in the Executive Committee and also with us reporting this part of our business separately, we'll be in an even better position.

We will now take the next question.

Two questions. The first one is on Coller and private credit. You framed Coller as being well positioned to take advantage of [Audio Gap] team scale to capture it at the pace you envision? Or does it require faster build-out than [ originations ] and that you're building internal KPIs to track AI spend and efficiency gains. Can you say anything about when and your 55% fee-related EBITDA margin target conservative?

Great. Thanks for those questions, Gustav and Kim?

We believe that the investment opportunity is probably bigger than our ability to [indiscernible] that's related to dislocation that you see related to AI and software, but even more so related to what you're seeing in the evergreen side on the primary private credit side, of course, where you will have a lot of portfolios that will -- or a lot of managers that will need to act on their portfolios in that sense, so to speak.

So huge investment opportunity. Coller is extremely well positioned. They are the clear market leader on the private credit side within secondaries. So it's really about capturing that opportunity now, which probably involves also some team build-out. But I think relative to the opportunity, we're not talking about any significant difference from what we thought initially.

And maybe on that topic, right? I think what we're [Audio Gap] in the next couple of quarters, I think is -- yes, it's something we're excited about. And we look forward to engaging with our institutional client base on that opportunity. Kim?

Yes, on the KPIs and the AI opportunity internally, I'd say KPIs required to follow that will be at a fairly detailed level and will be different for different parts of the business. So let's see what of it is sort of suitable for public consumption. But we will, of course, follow it internally. And at some higher level, it may well be possible to disclose in due course.

It's still early stages of this whole transition. And I don't think anyone has the answer to how much of the sort of future split between AI costs and compute and the head count that may be smaller. So I don't have an answer to that. For now, our margin target is retained at what we have communicated here for a few years now and at the 55% FRE.

We will now take the next question from the line of Nicholas Herman from Citi.

Three for me, please. Firstly, on the environment. Look, you've reiterated your expectations for the EQT XI fundraise and also that you expect a similar volume of exits as last year. That's all very reassuring. But with everything that's happened in markets and I guess -- and geopolitically, I'm just wondering, I guess, two things. Has it become harder to do deals? And similarly, in your dialogue with LPs, have you seen LPs becoming more cautious on their commitments to the private equity industry, maybe not yourselves because your performance is clearly very strong, but just more in terms of the industry. That's the first one.

Secondly, on the carry outlook, Kim, you were very clear on Infra IV and EQT IX for this year. I guess, just based on your value creation plans, and what do you see in markets with lower valuations and greater uncertainty, would you expect to deliver the level of exits needed in order for those funds to hit the hurdle -- respective hurdle rates in 2027? Especially with EQT IX at 0.3x DPI? And I ask because I see consensus performance earnings for '27 of around [ EUR 1 billion, ] which to me indicates at least one of those funds coming through next year?

And then the final question on BPEA VIII, which is now almost 5 years old. That fund has had a stable MOIC of 1.3x for almost 3 years now. So can I just ask what you are seeing in that fund operationally that gives you confidence that this fund is still above plan?

Good. I'll take the first question. I'll leave the others to my colleagues can elaborate on any of them, if appropriate. But in terms of the first question, the dealmaking environment, everything that's happening. Is it hard to do deals. I think it's not like a big shift that we've seen this year compared to last year. If anything, as I said, I'm more excited about the pipeline and parts of our business today than I've been, actually, for some time.

Having said that, of course, our industry is maturing, it's consolidating. It's becoming more competitive. And it's been -- this has been an evolution and a development over the last decade or longer, which is why during this time, we have just to continue to invest into our alpha-generating capabilities, right? We have the strongest presence in the world, outside of the U.S., in our target geographies. We have hundreds of investment professionals on the ground across Europe, across Asia. We have a globally leading sector franchise and insights in our target sectors and then we combine that global sector-based investment approach with that strong local presence in our target geographies to unlock attractive opportunities. These are opportunities we're following for years, sometimes decades.

And of course, that differentiation, that proposition today is becoming clearer and clearer also in the minds and eyes of our clients, our institutional investors and our private wealth distribution partners. And that's what I referenced in my introduction presentation, being able to clearly articulate your sources of alpha and how you unlock those returns and create that value. It's more important than ever before, which is why the consolidation of our industry is continuing and is likely to accelerate and is also why we are continuing to take market share in our fundraises.

I don't see a general view that LPs are more cautious now post Q1 compared to the mindset that they had when we presented our Q4 results. But of course, the overall trend that LPs are looking to consolidate their relationships to fewer, more strategic partners that can help them achieve their objectives, that is continuing.

And on the carry outlook, again, maybe the way we are internally thinking about carry outlook is what can we -- what is the amount of carry that we believe we can create out of a particular fund over the lifetime of that fund. And that's how the team is incentivized and that's how we are working to serve our clients with the best type of returns.

Then how that plays out over different accounting periods is another matter, which is much more challenging to forecast and have a view about long into the future. And again, we -- I don't have any carry outlook guidance to give for 2027. We have said how the -- which funds are in carry mode. We have said which -- what the performance of those funds are and that's what we're sort of in a position to say at this point in Q1 2026.

Maybe what I think -- what, of course, you could say is that post the launch of our AI Infrastructure strategy, the momentum that we're seeing here and the interest from clients, yes, I mean if anything, our ability to sort of monetize our most important investment over time in predecessor funds today is better compared to 3 months ago.

Maybe I'll pick up on the final question on the outlook for BPEA VIII. I think, first of all, as you say, it's -- we expect it to perform above plan, which essentially means that we think it's going to perform above the 2.5x gross MOIC that we set as the upper range of on plan.

Second, remember that this is a fund that is very much in value-creation mode. So when we add new investments to it, those are added at 1x and now that we're entering value creation mode, you will see the ramp-up in the gross MOICs coming through more clearly. It's a very well-performing fund. The fund has several investments that are performing above our initial underwriting case. And you have some star performers in this, like in Nord Anglia, for example. When we say it's expected to perform above plan, that's based on our ultimate exit projections for those assets.

And the final comment I'd make is with the successful completion on BPEA IX, I think, is very much evidence of that very strong value creation model that we have across our Asia franchise.

Lastly, we have now been running at 1.5 hours. So mindful of time. I think we should try to wrap up this call. So -- and I know there's some other questions on the line. I'm very happy to take any follow-up questions after this, but maybe we'll let through one last question from an analyst.

We will now take the last question from the line of Patrik Brattelius from ABG.

Then I'll wrap it up with two questions. So in terms of the AI Infrastructure strategy, do you see a risk that this new strategy could cannibalize on existing flagship Infra strategies?

And my second question is in terms of Coller Capital, where you aim to double the AUM within 4 years. But given this global increased macro uncertainty, do you see that it might lead to a slower exit market and this doubling could actually occur even more rapidly than previously planned?

I think I'll leave those questions to my colleagues.

Yes. I'll do both. I think on the AI strategy, I think you should see this as a complement to the existing Infra strategies that we have. In reality, this is also a lot around providing primary capital into the EdgeConneX opportunity, which we would not be able to do from a fund perspective in the same way. So it's really a way to get access to that in a much broader way than what we otherwise would be able to do.

And then I think on the Coller side, I think what you hear us saying is the same type of sentence that we said in Q4. So I think that, that guidance holds, so to speak. I think if anything, I would say that, let's say, our comfort and let's say, security around the ability to reach it in that time frame that we talked, I think, has all increased during these 3 months since we spoke last about it.

Excellent. And with that, we'll wrap up today's call. As I said, very happy to take any follow-up questions afterwards. Thank you very much for an engaging discussion and look forward to seeing many of you in London on the 20th. Thank you.

Thank you, all. See you soon.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of EQT's full year results. We have a lot to cover today. Per will start off by reflecting on our strategic positioning and today's announcement that we're entering the fast-growing secondaries market by joining forces with Coller Capital. Teaming up with Coller strengthens our ability to serve clients globally and it unlock growth opportunities for both firms. The transaction is accretive to our fee-related earnings. It accelerates our growth outlook and it will further diversify our platform.

Before handing over to Per to share more details, let me share a few highlights on 2025. First, it was our most active exit year ever with fund exits and realizations for co-investors of EUR 34 billion. We invested EUR 16 billion across our strategies globally while providing a co-invest ratio for our clients of close to 1:1. It was a pivotal year for EQT's expansion into evergreens and open-ended strategies across the globe with new product launches and accelerating inflows.

We continued to deliver on our fundraising agenda, more than doubling gross inflows to EUR 26 billion. All our key funds continue to develop on or above plan, and our more recent vintages in particular performed strongly. EQT delivered total revenue growth of 16%, while keeping head count largely flat year-over-year.

So with those remarks, let me hand over to Per to go through things in more detail.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Olof. Good morning, everyone, from Davos. We have very exciting news to share this morning, and we'll come back to Coller shortly. I'll start by saying a few words about the private markets industry and our strategic positioning. EQT remains well positioned to navigate a fast-changing world and to capture the growth opportunity ahead. There are a number of forces shaping our industry. The geopolitical backdrop remains volatile. We continue to see private market investors wanting to rebalance their portfolios as they are looking to achieve a better global diversification. At EQT, we are well positioned to navigate this environment and to help our clients achieve their strategic portfolio objectives.

We want to be the most attractive global provider of international alpha. Through our global sector teams, we engage with our clients to align on their pipeline priorities. And with the help of our local teams in more than 25 countries, we can move quickly in times of market dislocation to unlock attractive thematic opportunities.

The combination of our global sector teams with our strong local presence helps us deliver structural uncorrelated alpha as often the sources of alpha across those various countries and regions are uncorrelated. A good example of the investments that we've made into our global platform and how it's paying off is Japan. We built our local presence in Tokyo over many years. And in 2025, we were able to reap the benefits of those investments. In our private capital strategies, we created 2 attractive public to private opportunities, and we continue to have a very attractive pipeline in Japan going forward.

The second force, AI that I'd like to touch upon, that will have an impact on most sectors and businesses that we invest into, including, of course, also our own industry and how we run our business at EQT. At EQT, we keep on investing in our AI capabilities. On the investment side, we continue to back AI-driven tailwinds in our early-stage strategies. We make investments into native AI companies. Harvey and Lovable are 2 good recent examples. In our infrastructure platform, we keep on investing into globally leading data center platforms. One of our companies, EdgeConnex is a good example of that, but also into fiber assets and into energy platforms. We're also driving AI adoption across our organization, deploying advanced solutions that enable better decision-making and help us realize synergies across our platform. Over time, we believe that this will help us run our business in a better way, but also in a more efficient way.

Private wealth and insurance remain 2 attractive growth opportunities where we see new capital pools emerging. We're making the necessary investments to build our capabilities in those areas, and we expect to see significant capital inflows in this part of our business.

Coller will be a catalyst for the insurance segment as we will get access to their capabilities within structured solutions. The rise of secondaries continues, and this part of the market will also going forward, outgrow the rest of the industry. There's a number of structural forces driving that growth. Private markets have grown in size and in relevance. And in some regards, they've become more complex, and we also see public and private markets converging. Clients want to be able to ride the winners, and they want to stay invested in compounding open-ended structures.

On the other hand, there's also been a lack of distributions in our industry post pandemic, we saw a slowdown in dealmaking. And as a result, many firms are not able to raise new funds, and that has created more and more zombie funds in our industry. And all of this drives a need for clients to be able to restructure their private market portfolios and to find good liquidity solutions. And in this context, Coller will be an important enabler and really further strengthen our ability to be that strategic partner for our clients.

Finally, we see the consolidation of the industry accelerating. Not everyone in the private markets will be able to navigate this environment. We'll be able to make the necessary investments to capture that growth opportunity ahead. So size and reach matter more than ever when it comes to creating real alpha and when it comes to serving clients in the best possible way. And our global platform, our size, being the largest private markets firm in the world outside of the U.S., will continue to be a true differentiator for us.

Next slide, please. At EQT, we remain committed to our long-term strategic ambition to keep on building the most attractive scaled private markets firm, delivering industry-leading performance and solutions for clients. By continuing to be that client-centric firm focused on delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns for investors, real alpha, we will also be able to attract the best talent in our industry to our organization and to our portfolio companies. And really that way, creating that virtuous circle that will give us the license to keep on scaling our firm and as a result, over time, also delivering attractive sustainable value creation for shareholders.

Next slide, please. In 2025, we made good progress on our strategic ambitions, and we executed well in a volatile environment. We took the opportunity to simplify our organization to ensure that we can remain that entrepreneurial, fast-paced, high-performing organization. We successfully completed a number of leadership transitions. We streamlined our organizational structures and reinforced our focus on accountability, performance and efficiency across the platform. We also integrated our client relations, capital raising and capital markets teams, creating one unified platform well set up to deliver a seamless experience for institutional clients and private wealth distribution partners. And all of this makes us also well prepared to add Coller now as a new business line to the EQT platform.

In 2025, we stayed disciplined in our investment pacing, producing a record year for co-investments. We facilitated EUR 14 billion of co-investment opportunities for our clients. That is up from EUR 12 billion in 2024. And we want to -- this is an important tool for us to also going forward, create those deep strategic relationships with the institutional investors. And we want to -- we remain committed to continue to produce that most attractive co-invest to fund commitment ratio in our industry.

We did a superb job really in driving realizations in a tricky exit environment. 2025 was actually our most active exit year ever with EUR 34 billion in total of realizations, and that includes EUR 14 billion of realizations out of co-investments that were done together with our clients. And that is just massive outperformance compared to the wider private markets industry in terms of those realizations. A good example is our equity strategy, which is our oldest strategy at EQT. In that part of our business, we sent back close to 30% of NAV, which is approximately 3x the industry average.

And notably, we set a new record for distributions and capital gains from a single investment. So in Galderma, in 2025 alone, we realized more than EUR 9 billion of proceeds for fund investors and for our co-investors. And this actually excludes the stake sale that we have announced to L'Oreal that is yet to close. And this investment has generated more than $20 billion so far in capital gains for investors. As a result of that strong performance, we saw a good fundraising momentum. We more than doubled gross inflows to EUR 26 billion. Our evergreen offerings targeting the private wealth segment saw inflows of approximately EUR 2 billion. And we also introduced our first open-ended institutional product, which is exciting. This is the second generation of our active core infrastructure strategy. And the portfolio in Fund I is performing very nicely, and we really see a strong client interest for this fund.

Next slide, please. As you've heard me say, I think, many times before, we have actively been looking to establish a presence in the secondaries market for some time now, actually. And this is one of the fastest-growing parts of our industry and building our capabilities in this area is really critical so that we can become an even more stronger and attractive strategic partner for our clients. And so today, I'm just very, very pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement to join forces with Coller Capital. This is really a highly strategic and complementary combination. By joining forces with Jeremy and his team, we want to build a market-leading secondaries platform together. We really have a very high bar for any M&A that we do at EQT and the fit must be just very, very strong. And in this case, from a strategic, performance, culture perspective, Coller checks all the boxes.

The strategic fit between our 2 firms is simply excellent. It's highly complementary. And most importantly, the cultural fit, the values fit is very strong. Similar to EQT, Coller is a performance-driven and entrepreneurial organization focused on delivering consistent long-term solutions and returns for investors. And just like EQT, Coller also has that constant improvement mindset and that relentless drive to continue to drive innovation and stay ahead of the curve.

At EQT, we like to say everything can always be improved everywhere at all times. Coller's version of this is better never stops. I'm very excited to welcome Jeremy and the entire Coller team to our firm. And I really look forward to working closely with Jeremy as part of the executive leadership team. And together, we will be just incredibly well placed to deliver the most attractive solutions and the most attractive performance for private market investors and to really fully capture that growth opportunity ahead that we see in secondaries.

I'll now hand it over to Gustav, who will cover the highlights from our 2025 results together with Olof and Kim, and I believe starting with fundraising. So next slide, please.

Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. In 2025, we executed strongly on fundraising across the platform and more than doubled inflows versus last year. Starting with the key funds. Fundraising for BPEA IX continued with strong momentum, having raised $14 billion as of today. We expect to close at the $14.5 billion hard cap in the first quarter.

Fundraising for EQT XI continues to be off to a strong start, further helped by the strong exit pace during 2025. Note that in our reporting fee-paying AUM, it does not include EQT XI until activation. And later this year, we expect to launch fundraising for Infrastructure VII.

So moving over to our other closed-ended strategies. We are advancing our Healthcare Growth and transition infrastructure fundraisings, having raised approximately EUR 3 billion combined, and we expect to conclude fundraising for Healthcare Growth momentarily.

In the fourth quarter, we activated our latest European real estate logistics fund. The fund is expected to close in Q1, and our reporting fee-paying AUM includes almost EUR 3 billion of commitments versus the size of the last fund at EUR 2.1 billion.

And then finally, on evergreens and open-ended institutional strategies. In 2025, EQT launched 3 new evergreens, Nexus Infrastructure and Nexus ELTIF Private Equity distributed in Europe and APAC, and a U.S. domiciled private equity vehicle. Hence, our evergreen offering consisted of 5 vehicles at the end of 2025, and we raised close to EUR 2 billion in 2025, while reaching an NAV of around EUR 3.5 billion by year-end. And just last week, we launched a U.S.-domiciled evergreen structure for infrastructure.

During the year, we've also introduced our first open-ended structure for institutional clients, as Per mentioned, with our active core infrastructure strategy. This fund is yet to be activated and is not in our fee-generating AUM number as of year-end. However, we continue to be very excited about the prospects of scaling this strategy in the coming years.

We've also decided to pursue our first continuation vehicle based on EdgeConneX. This will be an open-ended structure that will allow us to continuously support EdgeConneX's long-term growth opportunity.

And with that, I will hand over to Olof to cover investments and realizations. Next slide, please.

Great. Thank you, Gustav. So looking at the investment activity in 2025, I'd say it reflects our global sourcing machine and our thematic focus. 45% of the EUR 16 billion of fund investments were invested in Europe, about 1/3 in North America and the remaining 20-ish percent across APAC. We invested in a number of high-quality businesses throughout the year, be it the cloud-based software companies such as Fortnox or NEOGOV; industrial tech businesses like Fujitec in Japan or as Per mentioned, AI native investments such as Lovable and Harvey.

In real estate, we continue to see attractive risk/reward dynamics. And in our flagship and transition strategy, we invested in areas such as energy, grids, AI infrastructure and transportation companies. And on that note, please do make sure to take the Arlanda Express when you next come and visit us in Stockholm.

In total, we provided a further EUR 14 billion of co-invest for our clients, a co-invest ratio of close to 1:1. EQT X and Infrastructure VI are now about 60% to 65% invested, while BPEA IX is 5% to 10% invested. We expect to activate EQT XI around midyear 2026 and Infra VII around year-end.

Next slide, please. Turning to exits. It was a breakthrough year in 2025 for exits. Volumes in the EQT funds amounted to more than EUR 19 billion or 70% higher than last year's volumes. Around 2/3 of the fund exits were from funds in carry mode. In addition, we realized EUR 14 billion for our co-investors. The strong activity means that we reached the ambition communicated at the start of the year to execute more than 30 exit events across our key funds. Key fund exits were made at an average gross MOIC of 2.6x above our target return levels. Roughly 40% of the fund exits were minority sales and secondary buyouts.

Early in the year, we announced a minority sale in IFS at a gross MOIC of 7x. This is an example of how we actively work with portfolio construction, sending back EUR 3 billion to fund investors while continuing to own an asset that is expected to have an outsized impact on the fund returns for EQT IX. 1/3 of the exits were equity capital markets transactions. And as a result, EQT retained its position as the most active private markets firm across global equity capital markets for the second year in a row.

Looking ahead, we believe that fund exits in 2025 is a relevant proxy for '26 if markets continue to be favorable. Our gross pipeline for 2026 is, in other words, similar to 2025 when we had gross realizations of close to EUR 20 billion.

And with that, I'll hand over to Kim.

Thank you. Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everyone. All of our key funds continue to perform on or above plan. And during the year, key fund valuations increased by 8% on an FX-neutral basis, but let's look at performance by vintage. 4 out of 5 funds raised in 2019 or before are performing above plan, and most of these funds are in exit mode and already derisked. Funds raised 2020 to 2021, which are still in value creation mode, performed predominantly well with value creation of 10% plus on an FX-neutral basis. We did face some headwinds related to idiosyncratic events in a few individual portfolio companies. But with 350 portfolio companies globally, we will always have certain underperforming assets. Risk-taking is part of our model. As a reminder, historically, about 10% to 15% of our investments have returned less than 1x gross MOIC, while the total portfolios have still delivered on or above target returns.

In 2025, we also realized some assets with subpar performance, enabling us to refocus on the part of the portfolio where we can create more value. Overall, underlying operational performance was solid across the portfolio and particularly so in our latest generation of key funds, which increased by 15%, excluding FX. 1/3 of our investments in these funds are already performing ahead of plan.

Next slide, please. In 2025, carried interest and investment income increased to EUR 448 million on the back of the strong exit activity in funds in carry mode. Looking into 2026, we expect that carried interest will continue to be paced by the key funds already in carry mode. And please note that the figures on this page are based on a simplified and illustrative on-plan scenario. To date, the 4 funds in carry mode have recognized EUR 1.3 billion of carried interest and roughly EUR 600 million remains, and we continue to expect the remaining carry from these funds to be recognized over a multiyear period. The next 2 funds expected to enter carry mode, Infra IV and EQT IX are currently executing on their value creation and realization plans. And we do not expect these funds to enter carry mode in 2026, in line with our previous communication.

The final bucket includes the most recent key fund vintages, which are still in value creation mode. In total, the remaining illustrative carry potential in the key funds activated as of today is approximately EUR 9 billion. This is a simplified round number based on a number of assumptions, which are outlined in the appendix.

Next slide, please. Let's now look at the financials in a bit more detail. In 2025, we grew fee-related revenues by 9% and delivered a fee-related EBITDA margin of 52%, reflecting also the continued investments we make in our business, for example, the build-out of the evergreen offering. As you know, we initiated and completed a number of efficiency measures during the second half of 2025. And as a result, the number of FTEs was broadly flat year-over-year. We expect to see the full year cost effects of this in 2026 and therefore, expect mid-single-digit total OpEx growth this year.

Run rate savings from the efficiencies will, to a degree, be reinvested to support future growth in our priority growth areas, including focused geographies such as Asia and the U.S., focus areas such as AI capabilities, private wealth and of course, the build-out of our new secondaries business. We're ramping up marketing and brand spend, which will remain at meaningfully higher levels going forward. We remain committed to reaching a 55% plus fee-related EBITDA margin at completion of the current fundraising cycle. And we're highly focused on efficiency, scaling and automating parts of our work, including through increased AI adoption. We will continue to keep you posted on this progress and how we see the OpEx outlook beyond 2026. Let me also come back later in the presentation on how the combination with Coller impacts our financials.

The Board has proposed a dividend of SEK 5 per share for 2025, representing a growth rate of 16%. And during 2025, we distributed approximately EUR 460 million in dividends to shareholders. And in addition, we repurchased shares for around EUR 300 million.

Let me also spend a brief moment on our new revenue disclosures. We have, in our income statement, introduced the concept of fee-related revenues, which consists of the underlying management fees, fee-related performance revenues and transaction, advisory and other fees. Fee-related performance revenues are revenues from our evergreen products that are measured and received on a recurring basis and do not require the realization of underlying assets to materialize. Transaction, advisory and other fees include fees from, for example, debt and equity underwriting and other capital markets activities.

With that, I will hand over to Per to cover the Coller combination. Next 2 slides, please.

Thank you, Kim. As I mentioned earlier, secondaries and solutions is becoming an increasingly important part of the private markets ecosystem. GPs are looking for ways to hold on to their best assets for longer, driving the growth of continuation vehicles or GP-led secondaries and LPs are seeking strategic liquidity tools and the ability to actively rebalance their portfolios where LP-led secondaries are a key enabler. And secondaries have now become one of the fastest-growing parts of our industry, and that the market actually grew by more than 40% in 2025 and is expected to more than double from now until 2030. And continuation vehicles are today driving close to 20% of global exit volumes.

Next slide, please. With Coller, we're really happy that we found the right partner to enter this segment at scale. Coller shares our values-driven culture, a strong performance mindset and that drive to constantly innovate for clients with an entrepreneurial approach. As a pure-play dedicated secondaries firm, Coller is 100% complementary and a perfect match for us.

I'll now hand it over to Gustav to tell you more about Coller's track record, Coller's offering and its client base.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Per. As a pioneer in secondaries, Coller has led many of the first in the industry, such as leading the first ever GP-led transaction almost 30 years ago and continuing to innovate across product categories and client channels. Coller has 35 years of proprietary data from more than 25,000 companies has incorporated AI-enabled underwriting into its investment process. This enables faster and more precise investment decisions, aligning very well with EQT's data-driven investment approach and leading AI capabilities.

Their strong investment track record and ability to innovate has allowed them to expand from a single flagship fund in 2021 to today having a multiproduct and multichannel offering investing across both private equity and private credit secondaries.

The private equity secondary strategy recently held a successful final close of Fund IX at USD 10.2 billion of fee-generating commitments, up more than 35% compared to the last generation. Since launching the private credit secondary strategy in 2021, Coller has already been able to raise 3 funds with a total of close to USD 5 billion in fee-generating commitments.

Next slide, please. The team also shares our strategic commitment to the private wealth opportunity, and their journey closely resembles ours. They -- like us, they have a very deliberate and disciplined focused on product development to launch and ramp up products across asset classes and geographies. Since 2024, Coller has launched 4 evergreen products in total with the current combined NAV of more than USD 4 billion. And expansion continues to show great momentum and inflows are around USD 200 million per month. Coller also recently announced a strategic partnership with State Street along with State Street's investment in Coller. Their partnership gives a unique opportunity to go after the 401(k) market in the U.S. We look forward to exploring what we can do together to strengthen the global distribution of the combined evergreen platform. Next slide, please.

Insurance is 1 of the most interesting capital pools in private markets. However, insurance companies operate in a highly regulated environment with strict requirements around capital charges, duration matching, liquidity, ratings and asset-liability management. To participate at scale credit exposure, secondaries and strong structure capabilities are required. This is an area where EQT on a stand-alone basis has been limited on a structural basis, and where Coller today is the clear market leader.

Coller is the preferred partner to insurance clients with deep relationships and in-house structuring expertise. They have reached over USD 5 billion in structured products in the last 2 years, including the largest CFO backed by secondaries at USD 3.4 billion. This is a significant growth opportunity for the combined platform and where EQT's scale will be a key enabler.

Next slide, please. We believe that this combination and more diversified secondaries platform by bringing together complementary strengths, we can accelerate innovation, deepen client relationships across both institutional and private wealth clients. Together, EQT and Coller are very well positioned to accelerate insurance-related product -- and to Per. Next 2 slides, please.

Thank you, Gustav. In 2025, we took the opportunity to simplify our organization and to clarify our governance to put us in the best possible position to be able to accelerate our strategic M&A agenda. So today, we are very well prepared to add Coller to EQT and to support Jeremy and the team to accelerate their growth independent investment committee.

Next slide, please. The Coller team has demonstrated strong fundraising momentum, most recently with the successful close of Fund IX and has earned the strong client trust to expand into new strategies such as credit secondaries over recent years. Today, Coller has around 600 clients and more than half of those will represent new client relationships for EQT.

At the same time, EQT brings a base of around 1,400 institutional clients, of which more than 900 clients are not currently invested with Coller, representing a significant opportunity to accelerate growth across the combined platform. The client bases are also complementary. EQT has a strong footprint with sovereign wealth funds, while Coller is more heavily weighted towards private wealth and insurance.

So together, we will be able to offer clients a broader and more flexible range of solutions from primary investments to tailored liquidity solutions within one global platform with a real focus on generating alpha and performance.

I'll now hand it over to Olof to comment on the transaction structure. Next slide, please.

Thank you very much, Per. So let me talk about how we have structured this to ensure alignment of interest and this growth orientation. The transaction entails 100% of Coller and EQT will be entitled to 35% of carried interest in all the future funds in line with the EQT setup. We are also acquiring 10% of the carried interest in Private Equity Fund IX that Per just referred to. The deal construct includes a base consideration of $3.2 billion with a growth-oriented contingent consideration in 2029 of up to $500 million.

The contingent consideration is structured to incentivize strong growth in the business with full consideration dependent on delivering high 20s, almost 30% fee-related revenue growth until 2029. The base consideration of $3.2 billion will be funded in newly issued EQT AB shares, creating a strong alignment to drive value.

At closing, the shareholders of Coller will own approximately 6.5% of EQT, where Jeremy is the main shareholder of Coller's business today. Closing of the transaction is expected in the third quarter of '26.

And with that, I'll hand over to Gustav to give us the combined fundraising outlook. Next slide, please.

Thanks, Olof. I'll start on the evergreen side, where the joint offering will compromise more than 10 vehicles distributed across U.S., Europe and Asia. In terms of inflows, Coller increases the H2 2025 annual run rate to around EUR 4 billion. As only 7 out of the 10 plus evergreens where operational during that time frame, we hence expect 2026 to be significantly higher than the H2 2025 annual run rate.

We believe that there are significant revenue synergies for the evergreens through the strengthened combined private wealth organization. By leveraging EQT's banking relationships to further accelerate Coller's distribution reach and by jointly tapping into EQT's brand and marketing capabilities. For reference 100% of Coller's evergreen inflows are incremental to fee-generating AUM.

Next slide, please. So we are now a bit more than 1 year into our current of that EUR 100 billion based on the funds activated. 2026 is set up to be a very active fundraising year for EQT with 3 flagship funds, a number of other closed-ended strategies and of course EUR 25 billion to EUR 30 billion to the total amount effectively increasing it to roughly EUR 125 billion to EUR 130 billion. And with that, I will hand over to Kim. Next slide, please.

Thanks, Gustav. First, a few words on the latest flagship fund, the introduction of credit secondaries and the expansion into private wealth evergreens and structured products. Fee-related revenues were approximately $330 million, nearly all of which were management fees. This number includes catch-up fees as Fund IX was activated in July 2023 and closed on 31st of December 2025. However, it does not reflect the run rate management fees from evergreens due to fee holidays for some products in 2025. From 2026 onwards, all private wealth evergreens will be charging full fees.

Across funds, the average fee rate is about 1% and in general, charged on committed capital. It's worth noting, though, that the private wealth evergreens in general charge somewhat higher fee rates with NAV as the fee base and that we see this channel growing faster than the closed-ended funds. Expect Coller to generate fee-related revenue of between $350 million to $375 million.

Adjusting for catch-up fees, fee-related revenue is expected to grow in the range mentioned, the 2029 contingent consideration is based on growth in the high 20s. On costs, Coller has a similar profile to EQT, where the majority of operating expenses are salaries and other personnel-related costs. Then fee-related EBITDA margin at around 50%.

Next slide, please. So what does the above then mean for the combined platform? We expect Coller to accelerate our fee-related revenue growth from day 1. In terms of carry, the acquisition will not impact our outlook for a number of years since the first fund where EQT has right to carry is a 2024 vintage.

As I mentioned, today, Coller has a somewhat lower fee-related EBITDA margin than EQT. But in the near to midterm, however, we expect Coller to be in line with EQT's margin and to grow fee-related expenses. As a result, we maintain our ambition to reach a 55% fee-related EBITDA margin at completion of the current fundraising cycle. I'll now hand over to Per for some concluding remarks.

Adding Coller to EQT is a significant milestone in the development of our firm. Secondaries represents one of the fastest-growing parts of the private markets industry. We're confident that Coller is the best possible platform to build a market-leading secondaries franchise being a pioneer in the space with more than 3 decades of track record and experience.

Next slide, please. The combination really means a step change for EQT in terms of scale, growth and revenue profile. Coller will add approximately EUR 28 billion of fee-paying assets under management and EUR 42 billion of total AUM. We will have a combined AUM of approximately EUR 312 billion. And to our business, we also significantly diversify our fee-related assets under management.

Secondaries will represent about 15% initially of that fee-related fee-based assets under management, but it is expected to represent a significantly larger share over time. The acquisition will enhance our growth profile, and we aim to double Coller's fee-generating assets under management in less than 4 years. This means that 5 years from now, the mix of EQT's business will be much more well balanced across our business lines, private capital, infrastructure, real estate and secondaries. And we also see a very attractive opportunity to accelerate growth and scale of our real estate platform in the years ahead.

Finally, we now manage strategies that, to some extent, are somewhat also countercyclical, if you will, creating an even more resilient and well-diversified revenue profile. As we look ahead with this transaction, we have created a platform that is even better positioned to attract and retain the best people in our industry and to continue to serve our clients, a more attractive, resilient and higher growing platform.

With that, I open up for questions. Operator, please.

[Operator Instructions]

Operator, can I say a few words before we have the first question?

Yes, please proceed.

Thank you. So as you can imagine, Per is on a tight schedule in Davos today. So our suggestion is that we keep the Q&A open for about 45 minutes. And to make sure that everybody has time to ask questions, I would very humbly and politely suggest that you keep it to 2 questions each. And as always, we're, of course, available for any follow-ups after the call today. So let us aim for that and really looking forward to the Q&A session.

And now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs.

Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. Two questions on Coller, please. So I guess you're acquiring a revenue fee stream in a growing asset class that's accretive to EQT, but you've also acquired this knowledge base in wealth. So can you talk to how you think this might help as you build out your existing wealth and evergreen business? And do you think this will accelerate the uptake of your existing Nexus products? So that's the first question.

And the second question on this transaction. I may be wrong, but I don't think Coller has a dedicated infra secondary strategy. And so my guess would be that EQT is one of the largest global value-add infra managers, could add value here? And is this a kind of white space that you could go after? Because it feels like the use case for GP-led secondaries in infra could be even higher than it is in private equity over time because you have these platform build-outs like EdgeConneX that are very long-term assets that need capital and maybe don't fully belong in drawdown funds. So any thoughts there would be helpful as well.

Good questions, Oliver. I think the answer is that in both of those areas, on the private wealth side, evergreen side as well as on the infrastructure side, we see attractive growth opportunities ahead and are both good examples of why we're stronger together. But Gustav maybe you want to elaborate?

Yes, happy to do that. And just echoing what you said, Per, so to speak. I think on the evergreen side, of course, this -- what this enables us, we get 2 strong evergreen organizations, both from a sales perspective, from a product development perspective, where we get to a completely different scale on a combined basis. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there, including joint products going forward in at least a midterm perspective.

I think same on the infra side. This is, of course, one of the key areas where we see that there are complementary capabilities in terms of that Coller is very, very strong on the secondary side. We are very, very strong on the infra side and as well on the real estate side. So going forward, we see that this is, of course, a very interesting growth opportunity for us to attack on a joint basis and where we combined will have a very good right to win in that aspect.

Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Arnaud Giblat from BNP Paribas.

I've got 2 questions, one on Coller and one on your infra business. On Coller, could you -- when I step back and just look at who are the largest GP-led secondary fund, typically, there are quite a few, including Coller before the acquisition, being independent and not having a very large direct business. So I'm just wondering how you're thinking about that? Do you see a need to operate a bit at arm's length? How is that going to be pitched to investors? I'm just wondering if there's any risks around that and how you intend to put that to investors.

My second question is -- thanks for the update on -- in terms of what you intend to do with EdgeConneX and wrapping that into a longer-term structure. I'm just wondering if you could give us a bit more detail in terms of the mechanics, how much of enterprise value would EdgeConneX come into this continuation or long-term fund? And how you're thinking about fundraising around that?

Good questions. I'll let Gustav talk about EdgeConneX and provide more details on that transaction. In terms of the combination with Coller. As I mentioned in my presentation, right, I mean, we've really organized ourselves in a way so that it's very easy to add on a platform such as Coller and also to have that platform continue to be run in a very independent way so that the Coller team can serve clients and its stakeholders in the right way and in the best possible way going forward. And that's the intention also with the combination. That's how we'll organize ourselves.

As I said, Coller will have an independent investment committee going forward and will be a separate business segment of EQT, where we will, of course, collaborate as was mentioned earlier, is in the areas around branding, marketing, also on the client relations side, where we can leverage the strong combined sales force that we have, both on the institutional side and on the private wealth side, right? And that's also how previous transactions have been structured and done in this space in the past, and that's what we intend to do also here when it comes to the combination between EQT and Coller. And Gustav, why don't you address the question on EdgeConneX?

Absolutely. So due to where we are in the process, I can't go into, let's say, details about the size or the terms at this point in time. So we'll come back to you on that at the right time. I think what we can say in general is, so to speak, that we're super excited about this opportunity because, of course, it allows us to really continue to support the company for the long term as there is a very, very significant growth opportunity here in the data center area, so to speak. And therefore, it was also important for us to create this into an open-ended structure.

Now we're going to take our next question and it comes from the line of Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

I've got 2 of them. Firstly, I just wanted to check your expectations for exits in 2026. I think you said you expect it to be similar to 2025. Just wondering why not better? And also, does this mean that we should expect a similar carried interest as in 2025? The second question is on Coller. Can you talk about the opportunity you see with State Street and the partnership there? And do you see this as a way to enter the U.S. target date funds and maybe the outlook for this partnership going forward?

Thank you for those questions. I'll start by addressing the first one, then I'll hand over to Kim to provide more details, and Gustav can talk about the partnership opportunity with State Street going forward. So when it comes to exit volumes, right, I mean, it's important to keep in mind that 2025 was a record year in the history of EQT for us, right? I mean we sent back EUR 34 billion of proceeds to clients, 3x industry average in our equity strategy. So the beauty, of course, the benefits of having a truly global diversified platform the way we have it at EQT is that in certain years, there will be higher amounts of distributions in relation to NAV in certain strategies. And then in other years, there will be a step-up in other parts of the business. And so that's what you should expect in 2026, right? In 2026, we do expect a pickup in distributions coming out of our infrastructure platform, for instance. And yes, I just wanted to provide a little bit of that background and color as to the outlook for 2026.

And Kim, maybe you want to elaborate a little bit on the details and carried interest.

Yes. And what Per just said, how that sort of translates into carried interest really then goes into the framework I talked about earlier, where the carry will predominantly come from the funds that are in 2019 vintages or before. And you saw yourself that there's about EUR 600 million of carry left in those funds to be recognized, whereas the 2 flagship funds not -- next to come into carry mode are not expected to -- with the current exit plans it being carry mode still in 2026. So that's the guidance we can give you at this point in time.

And maybe I'll touch upon the State Street partnership. I think, first of all, we're super excited about having State Street as a shareholder in EQT and the partnership that they already have in place with Coller. Of course, there is a lot happening in the private market side connected to private individuals and in the U.S., especially the target date funds and the 401(k) opportunity. We think that there is tremendous opportunities here, both in the form of over time broadening the partnership with State Street, and that's something that we look forward to having a positive dialogue with them around.

But also when you think about how the target date funds operate and what's required to be able to win in that channel, it's very clear that secondaries is going to be a very attractive and key component of that solution, also given the need to trade on a daily basis which when you think about it from a primary versus secondary perspective, would just make it easier. So I think all in all, we're very excited about it. As we've talked about, we think that the 401(k) opportunity is very significant, but then it will also take time. And this, of course, is an important step for us in that journey to really create products that fit into that type of client base.

Now we're going to take our next question. And it comes from the line of Ermin Keric from DNB Carnegie.

Do you hear me now?

Yes, we can hear you.

Maybe just you mentioned that you expect an increase in evergreen flows in 2026. Could you quantify that? And sorry, then the second question would be on branding. You're saying that you're increasing your spending on that. Could you give us any more kind of details on how much you expect to spend on branding and put it in context to what you spent before and also how the success of those efforts are measured?

Good questions. I'll leave both of them to Gustav and Kim.

Yes. Maybe I'll start with the first one. I'm not going to quantify it into a number. I think that if you think about -- if I were you, I would think about it in 2 aspects. First of all, as I talked about, during that time frame, 7 out of the 10 or 10-plus were operational. So that kind of gives you, I think, a first piece of the puzzle of seeing how that could then be in the 2026 flow. I think the second piece of it is -- it's really that out of the 7 and of course, the remaining 3, 4 products, we still see an acceleration of the flows as we're ramping it up, so to speak. So I think what we're saying is that we expect that number to be significantly above the EUR 4 billion in 2026.

On the brand and marketing topic, in order to have a successful spend of brand and marketing, you first need to build a sort of organization and have the processes, et cetera, in place. And that is what we have been doing over the last few years, and we now have that foundation, which allows us to spend money efficiently externally on marketing campaigns and on brand events and branding more generally. The -- we're not going to go into the specific numbers here on a line-by-line basis, but it's -- the amount we will spend is a multiple of what we have done historically, but from a fairly low base to start with, I would say.

Then it is a science of its own in terms of how this money will be measured, and it's quite different from a directed marketing campaign where you can sort of measure the exact clicks, et cetera, where from a more branding campaign where it's more about brand awareness, et cetera, in the market. But we have a great team focused on that with very specific sort of follow-up processes that are going to be in place.

And the question comes from the line of Isobel Hettrick from Autonomous Research.

Isobel Hettrick from Autonomous Research. So in your presentation, you touched on the significant number of new LP relationships the transaction opens up for both you and Coller. Can you provide some color on how you're thinking about the cross-selling opportunity from both ways, so existing EQT clients investing in new secondary funds and vice versa over time. So perhaps with reference to BPEA, how have you seen cross-selling develop since you acquired that manager? And what can we read across to Coller?

Good question. I'd say it's not only that we have a track record in terms of achieving cross-selling synergies on the institutional side from the merger with Barings. And we, of course, also acquired Exeter before making the Baring's transaction. And I think we have good data points and evidence from both of those transactions in terms of the synergies that we can generate. Gustav can provide more details. And then, of course, what's different also this time around is that the private wealth opportunity has developed further. And here, we really see an opportunity for us to leverage all of the investments that we've been making into our capabilities, into our brand, into our marketing in those areas, right? So -- but Gustav, why don't you elaborate?

Yes. No. But I think as you say, Per, there, we have experienced from it both from Exeter and BPEA. Of course, BPEA is not fully closed yet, but what you will see in the appendix is that around 25% of the capital in BPEA IX is from, let's say, original EQT clients. I think the equivalent number for Exeter on the latest U.S. fundraise there is about 15%. So we -- I think we have good track record of showing that there is significant cross-selling opportunities in these transactions, of course, going both ways in it. And in this specific transaction, as Per points out, the private wealth opportunity, there is significant cross-selling opportunities there. And then, of course, we also have the insurance side where over time, there can also be, let's say, some joint opportunities going forward.

Now we're going to take our next question, and the question comes from the line of Magnus Andersson from ABG Sundal Collier.

Just first of all, on the transaction, if you could, in any way, quantify potential income and cost synergies and any potential structural charges related to this transaction in 2026? And secondly, just on your fundraising, there seems to be very strong demand for infrastructure according to market data. So I was just wondering whether we eventually should expect your flagship infra funds to become larger than your traditional key funds and if we could see that already in the generations that will be on the fundraising in 2026?

Yes. Good questions. I think we're incredibly -- I think as we've mentioned in the past, we're incredibly excited and optimistic about the growth potential across our infrastructure strategies, and we see very good momentum here in the ongoing fundraises that we have. I'm not sure we're going to comment on or give guidance in terms of the sizes for the next generation of these funds. But I leave that to Gustav to comment on further. And then on Coller and the income and cost synergies in '26, maybe, Kim, you want to take that question?

Yes. Well, first of all, on Coller, as you heard, we gave the guidance that we intend to more than double the business in the next 4 years. That's really the income guidance we can give you. And that is based on all of the strengths that we just talked about of the combined business. And this is not a transaction that is done because of cost synergies.

Having said that, as I mentioned, there's a number of, let's say, costs that are of a nature where you can spread them out over a larger base, and that will become more efficient. Then there are some areas of overlap on the back end that we will work together to solve in the most efficient ways, but that's not the reason for the transaction. There's likely to be some transaction costs associated with it, of course, but they are not in the big scheme of things of a magnitude that will move any needle.

And then maybe on the infra side, I think we fully agree with you on the infra opportunity in general terms, so to speak. And that's also why we, in the last couple of years, have been very focused on broadening the infra offering which you've seen both with the Active Core, especially now going open-ended. You've seen it with Transition Infra. We talked today about the EdgeConneX opportunity on the [ CV ] side. So I think you should think about it that -- and I'm not going to comment specifically on Infra VII, so to speak. But we probably think that the large opportunity here is continuing to broaden the infra scope and scaling those things in a way that we can really be a market leader across from, let's say, more infra growth opportunities all the way to core plus.

Now we're going to take our next question and the question comes from the line of Jacob Hesslevik from SEB.

So my first question is on the culture fit. When you acquired both BPEA and Exeter, you talked a fair bit about the strong culture and how EQT and the related partner would fit together. But you have said very limited today with the acquisition of Coller. So what are the key culture and operational integration priorities over the next 12 to 18 months? And how will you maintain both EQT and Coller's entrepreneurial culture while achieving the synergies? That's the first question.

The second one is you highlighted a particularly strong pipeline for Japan for 2026. What makes Japan distinctive from other Asian markets in the upcoming year? And do you need to change your approach to capture the market potential?

Yes. I'll start with the second one. On Japan, the reason why we are particularly excited about the pipeline that we see in Japan right now is because of some of those corporate governance reforms that have been implemented in Japan and that just enable us to pursue opportunities where we can really unlock value creation opportunities. And it allows us to create sources of alpha that are uncorrelated to the type of value creation opportunities that we see elsewhere in Asia. So for instance, in India, there's a lot of tailwind from demographics, capital markets-related tailwinds, whereas in Japan, the alpha-generating opportunities really around unlocking that value creation opportunity, thanks to some of those corporate governance reforms. And of course, we are very well positioned to capture that. Why? Because we have a best-in-class value creation toolbox that we've developed over 30 years.

We have best-in-class sector-based strategies and value creation playbooks that we can apply. And then, of course, in Japan, our brand resonates very well. We've been present in the country for 20 years, thanks to the Wallenberg connection. We were also seen as a very credible long-term player, which is particularly important in a market such as Japan. So for all of those reasons, we're very excited about the opportunity ahead in that country.

When it comes to Coller and the cultural values fit, right, it is as strong as we have seen in previous combinations. We've spent -- Jeremy and I have spent a lot of time together to get to know each other. I'm sure we're going to have an excellent partnership. And we've also spent significant of time together at the next generation of the leadership team between Coller and EQT, exactly like we did it in the combination with Barings and also in the transaction with Exeter, right?

So that's a good way to get to know each other, and that's why we can with confidence say that this fit from a values perspective, culture perspective, the entrepreneurial, the innovation drive, the performance drive, all of that is exactly similar as it is in EQT. And the way, of course, we maintain and retain that culture, that's how we run our business, right? And that's why it was so important that we took those steps in 2025 to simplify our organizational setup.

What I spoke about in my presentation and what I've also talked about in previous instances. So today, we have organized ourselves around a number of highly accountable high-performing business lines. And then we have simplified our governance, our structure in a way so that we have one combined capital markets client relations team on the institutional side that will be very well positioned to serve all of these business lines going forward, including Coller EQT.

And then finally, of course, we have a clear governance around how we run our backbone, our business on the operations side. And those would also then be areas where we can achieve synergies together, right? And so by having those highly accountable business lines, that's also how you can ensure that you retain that entrepreneurial performance-driven culture. Kim and Gustav, anything else you want to say on the synergies?

No, I think maybe one more point, and that's we just had a partner meeting earlier this week where, of course, the real estate and the Asia team was there. And I think it's so clear to see how well those integrations have gone, how much they feel like part of EQT in a real way. There is only one company. And I think it also shows that the model works, and also that we're ready to do the next one. So I think from all of those perspectives, this timing is also a good one, I would say.

And now we'll go and take our last question for today. And it comes from the line of Nicholas Herman from Citi.

Congrats on the deal. Two questions from me, please. One on accretion and synergies and one on cash. On the accretion and synergies, you referred to a doubling of fee-paying AUM in Coller over 4 years. Is that the time frame for the mid-single-digit FRE accretion? Or is the accretion time frame shorter? And related to that, what synergies are in that guidance? And how should we think about the sequencing of adjacencies and synergies. And then a quick one on cash.

I guess given this transaction is almost entirely equity, should investors now have greater confidence that you will announce share buybacks over time? And I guess for avoidance of doubt, I'm assuming you have no ambition for further deals or especially larger deals for now at least?

Thank you. Olof and Kim, do you want to take those questions?

Yes. Do you want to go ahead? So I mean, if you think about the accretion, we're buying, first of all, 100% management fees, right, over the next several years. And as we talked about before, the earn-out mechanics is based on a fee-related growth of close to 30% or high 20s, right? And to Kim's earlier comments on the margins, that means that you're going to have a very rapid top line growth, and that means that our margins are going to scale quite meaningfully over the next several years in this business.

So if you think about this from a fee-related EBITDA multiple, it's based on the guidance that we gave, it's about 16 to 18x multiple that we're paying in '26, but that's not then capturing this significant ramp-up that you have in '27 and '28, right? So to your question, if you think about this transaction in, say, a couple of years' perspective, I'd argue it's high single-digit accretive to our earnings. And that means that this mid-single-digit guidance, that's an average over the next few years.

And in terms of cash and buybacks, yes, you're absolutely right. This is an all-share transaction and will, if anything, strengthen our balance sheet further over time. There's -- last year already, we did about EUR 300 million of share buybacks in 2025. So it's not that we haven't been doing share buybacks already. And what we have said in terms of guidance is that we will use share buybacks or extraordinary dividends for that matter as a tool if we, at any point, become overcapitalized, for example, if cash carry comes in at scale, but I can't give you any specifics around that in terms of timing or how that's going to look. But right now, we have a solid balance sheet, but we're not overcapitalized given the opportunities we have, both organic and inorganic going forward.

That's really helpful, guys. If I could quickly follow up on the synergies. Just what synergies, as you said, are in that guidance? And how should we think about the sequencing there from, I guess, from a -- presuming is it wealth first, then insurance then Asia, I mean how should we think about the way you're going to be tackling those -- the numerous opportunities there?

Yes. And I think we're not going to go into specifics of it. Of course, as always in this, it's going to be evolving development in it. And there are a number of opportunities. But I think we also feel that we're very well equipped, both from a Coller perspective and from an EQT perspective in order to capture many of this. I think you should think about the guidance on, let's say, doubling the business on -- in less than 4 years that, that does not include a very significant new initiatives in that. It's, of course, a development of the business. It's continuing to scale of the PE and credit side. On the institutional side, it's maybe 1 or 2 new initiatives on the institutional side. And then, of course, it's a development of the evergreen as well as the insurance side. But it's a base case that we feel and the Coller team feels comfortable, which I think is good.

Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to management for any closing remarks.

Okay. Well, everybody, thank you very much for great questions and for the discussion. As you can hear, we're extremely excited about this combination with Coller, and we are very pleased with the results that we delivered for 2025. As always, you know where to find us, we're available for any follow-up questions. So thank you very much.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to EQT's Q3 announcement. A quarter where we've continued to deliver on our priorities. We maintained focus on exits and returning liquidity to our clients, having realized EUR 19 billion across the globe over the past 12 months. We continue to deliver on our fundraising agenda with good momentum in our flagship fundraises and certain other strategies. We launched a European long-term investment fund to complement our Nexus product suite and we launched a successor fund within our Active Core Infra strategy, our first open-ended structure for the Institutional segment.

All while continuing to deliver returns for our clients with half of our key funds performing on plan and half performing above plan. Finally, the Nomination Committee has proposed that Jean Salata becomes Chair of EQT, as our Founder and Chair, Conni Jonsson, expects to step down from his role at our AGM in May '26.

And with that, I'll hand it over to you, Per. Next slide, please.

Thank you, Olof, and good morning to you all also from myself, and thanks for joining us. It's now more than 9 months into the year and 8 months post the announcement of the CEO transition. So let me quickly reflect on where we stand in terms of our priorities. Over the last couple of months in the Executive Committee, we've taken a number of actions to maintain a firm-wide focus on excellence in deal-making and value creation across everything we do. We continue to build a client-centric firm that creates the most compelling client experience in the private markets.

The actions taken will also ensure that we stay true to our values that we remain that entrepreneurial and fast-moving organization that we want to be so that we can continue to attract and retain the best people in the industry and that we run EQT with an effective and efficient operating model. Over the past few months, we've made great progress at reducing complexity and driving simplification, merging a number of platforms, such as our capital markets and client relations platforms combining our ventures and our growth teams and integrating our value-creation capabilities further into the investment organization.

This enhanced the near-term focus on efficiencies and will be materially concluded during this quarter. And -- yes, but having said this, of course, working smarter is really part of our DNA. And in this context, we've made and will continue to make significant investments into our Bengaluru and Warsaw operations, also into our tech platform, our AI capabilities, and we will leverage all of those capabilities to find new ways of working smarter also in the future. So I'm confident that also going forward, we will be achieving productivity improvements in our organization.

At the same time, we will continue to invest into our alpha-generating capabilities, our value creation functions and into growing our presence in our target geographies to ensure that we continue to deliver for clients. As long as we maintain our strong performance, we see very attractive growth opportunities in all of our existing strategies. We also see a significant opportunity to broaden and strengthen our client base, and we have strong momentum in our newly launched private wealth products.

Going forward, we will continue to participate in the ongoing consolidation of the industry, and we remain committed to delivering on our margin targets. We have a number of ongoing conversations with well-performing firms in the private markets that want to become a part of EQT. And we are looking to build both existing business lines and to potentially also fill gaps that we have in the platform.

Next slide, please. We want to continue to build EQT to be the most attractive client-centric platform in the industry. We want to be the most attractive counterparty for institutional and individual investors in the private markets focused on delivering global alpha. Today, EQT is the largest private equity firm outside of the U.S. and the second largest private equity firm globally. This gives us unique advantages offering investment opportunities across the U.S., Europe and Asia for our clients.

The first 9 months of the year illustrate the advantages of that diversification. Taking the public markets as an example, Europe outperformed in the first quarter, the U.S. came back in the second quarter. And now Asia has outperformed global markets quite significantly in the third quarter. In FX, we've seen the dollar depreciate approximately 10% versus the euro this year, and that means that in U.S. dollar terms, the European and Asia outperformance year-to-date is quite significant.

In the third quarter, we continued to make progress on our exit agenda, realizing a further EUR 2 billion for fund investors and another EUR 2 billion for EQT co-investors. Over the last 12 months, exits by the EQT funds amount to EUR 19 billion. Including co-investments, we've realized closer to EUR 25 billion of proceeds on behalf of our clients. And geographically, 75% of our fund-based exits were in Europe and Asia, and 25% in North America.

Within EQT Equity, which is a strategy that sits in our private capital business line, and this is our oldest and most well-established strategy, we're currently raising the next flagship fund, EQT XI. Over the last 12 months, in this strategy, realizations have corresponded to approximately 30% of net asset value. And this is 3x more than the industry average. So a remarkable outperformance of the industry. In particular, also, if you take into account the growth that we've had in fund sizes in this strategy, over the past couple of fund cycles.

As we continue to monetize assets, we expect to increasingly also generate real cash for EQT and our shareholders from carried interest. EQT VIII, a fund where we've recognized carry in our financial statements for some time already, is now fast approaching the hurdle for when cash carried interest payouts happen.

And once EQT VIII reaches this hurdle, we enter a so-called catch-up phase, whereby all proceeds are distributed as cash carry until we have a true 80-20 split of the profit. As a result, assuming market conditions remain broadly unchanged compared to where they are today, we expect to receive approximately EUR 500 million of cash from the EQT VIII fund in the near term.

In total, assuming a gross MOIC of 2.5x for EQT VIII, EQT VIII alone, an EUR 11 billion fund would generate cash carry of approximately EUR 1 billion for EQT AB over the lifetime of the fund. In our ongoing fundraises, we're also focused on improving terms related to carried interest, which is expected to shorten the time by when cash carried interest is paid out in the future. And Kim will talk more about this shortly. Our exit track record is really also a testament to the quality of our portfolio and our differentiated exit capabilities.

As a result, we continue to have strong DPIs across our key funds, and that puts us in a differentiated position when it comes to our fundraisings. But performance is really not enough to be able to secure client commitments in today's market. Investors are continuing to consolidate their GP relationships. And with the remaining core relationships that they keep, investors really want to build close strategic partnerships. They want to have counterparties that can help them achieve their strategic objectives.

EQT is well positioned also in this regard, being one of a few of truly client-centric scale players in the industry. We want to provide our clients with the best experience, offering attractive new thematic investment strategies producing the most attractive co-invest opportunities in the industry and finding new innovative ways to stay invested together in our winners. Thanks to our global scale, we can also help investors rebalance their portfolios, and we can offer global diversification and access to international alpha.

There's been a real mindset shift among private market investors to focus again on portfolio diversification. And given that investors today are significantly over-allocated U.S. dollar-based assets, this presents a real opportunity for private markets platforms that can offer attractive investment opportunities, attractive alpha in Asia and in Europe.

Being one of the largest private markets firms across private equity, infrastructure and real estate in Europe and Asia with a strong investment track record, we're benefiting from this trend. In Europe, a good example is the ongoing fundraising of our Real Estate Europe Logistics Value Fund, where investor demand has exceeded our most optimistic assumptions. In Asia, we're currently investing the largest pool of dry powder, and Asia is a very attractive region for private market investors.

The Asian buyout market is expected to double by 2030 compared to 2023. Average allocations to alternatives are expected to increase significantly from the current 8% level and get closer to the levels that we see in North America, which are at 37% and Europe at 26%. The strength of our global deal engine also positions us nicely for the private wealth opportunity. In the last 12 months, EQT has created co-investment opportunities of more than EUR 17 billion across strategies.

This makes us the most attractive provider of co-invest deal flow in the private markets industry. Our co-invest to fund commitment ratios over the last 12 months are significantly above really any player in the industry. And this means that at EQT, the deal flow already exists today to provide attractive investment opportunities to private wealth and retail investors. We don't have to manufacture deals or opportunities specifically for this client segment.

Instead, we will maintain the same underwriting standards as we have in the institutional part of our business. And we will simply offer private wealth clients access to the attractive investment opportunities that attractive alpha that we're producing in our fund products and in the co-investments that we provide already today.

Next slide, please. During the third quarter, we've remained focused on executing on a range of prioritized organic growth opportunities. For instance, we launched the second generation of the Active Core Infrastructure Fund. This will be an open-ended active core Infrastructure Fund, actually our first open-ended structure targeted to institutional investors. This is a natural evolution of the first Active Core Infrastructure Fund, which was a longer hold strategy that we launched in 2022.

We're excited about this opportunity to introduce more perpetual institutional capital into our fee-based assets under management. During the quarter, we also continued to build and strengthen our franchise and to strengthen our geographical presence. A very good example of this is Japan. Japan is really a strategic growth opportunity for EQT. In Q3, we launched 2 public tender offers a Fujitec and CareNet, having followed those companies for several years.

Japan is today one of the most attractive opportunities for EQT, governance reforms and structural shifts in the market are creating highly attractive investment opportunities for our active ownership focused private equity strategies. In addition, we also see an attractive opportunity for EQT to significantly strengthen our private wealth investor base in the country. In the context of private wealth, in the third quarter, we added another attractive product to the portfolio, the Nexus Private Equity ELTIF product that Gustav will now talk more about.

Gustav, over to you. And next slide, please.

Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. We continue to make progress on our ongoing fundraising in the third quarter. BPEA IX raised USD 1 billion in the third quarter and has USD 12 billion of commitments today. Including closed and pending commitments, the fund has exceeded its USD 12.5 billion target size, and we continue to expect the fund to reach its hard cap of USD 14.5 billion upon final close in early 2026. Following the launch of EQT XI in June, client reception has been very good, further supported by the strong exit track record for EQT Private Capital Europe and North America during 2025.

As previously communicated, EQT XI has a target fund size of EUR 23 billion. We continue fundraising for 2 of our first-time funds in EQT Transition Infrastructure and EQT Healthcare Growth. Between these funds, we expect to raise north of EUR 4 billion, of which more than half has been closed to date.

And as Per mentioned earlier, during the quarter, we also launched fundraising for the successor fund within Active Core Infra, our first open-ended structure for the Institutional segment, where we're seeing very encouraging dialogue with our clients. Furthermore, we continue to raise capital for EQT Real Estate Logistics Europe V, for which we had a strong first close in July, at EUR 1.7 billion. The fund will become fee-generating after activation expected later this year; hence, not included in the gross inflow for the quarter.

As a reminder, the predecessor fund was closed in 2021 at EUR 2.1 billion, and we expect a fairly significant increase of fund size for Fund V. We currently have dry powder of approximately EUR 50 billion and with around EUR 10 billion still to become fee-generating upon deployment.

Next slide, please. We're continuing to develop our evergreen platform. Earlier in the year, as previously communicated, we launched EQT Nexus Infrastructure, providing access to our Infrastructure platform to clients in EMEA, Asia and Canada. We also launched our U.S. evergreen vehicle, investing into EQT's global private equity investments, where we have raised some USD 350 million since the start in June. And we have just launched EQT Nexus PE ELTIF.

The ELTIF offers a new way to access private markets for nonprofessional individual investors in Europe with a lower minimum threshold than our Nexus suite. We're seeing very promising initial signs from both distributors and end clients on the ELTIF. We're also expecting to launch a U.S. evergreen structure for infrastructure around year-end with several strong distributors lined up. In total, the current evergreen strategies have attracted around EUR 1.2 billion in subscription year-to-date, and we expect to raise around EUR 2 billion across the evergreen vehicles during 2025.

We think that the expected inflows for Q4 is likely a relatively good quarterly benchmark looking into 2026; however, adjusted also for the fact that we will have a U.S. infrastructure vehicle coming live. Of that, you should expect that approximately 2/3 are incremental AUM and 1/3 will be invested through the underlying funds.

As Per mentioned, we're also seeing a change with distributors, which so far has been very focused on U.S. managers and now they're shifting that mindset to include more Europe and Asia, which we expect will benefit us. We feel that we're in a good position to win in this channel as we can provide a true global exposure through locally anchored products.

And with that, I will hand over to Olof. Next slide, please.

Thank you very much, Gustav. Let's next turn to the investment and exit activity. So over the past 12 months, we have announced about EUR 16 billion of investments across our global platform, of which about EUR 5 billion was announced in the third quarter of this year. Looking at the past 12 months, Europe and North America each represented about 40% of the investments, and APAC some 20%. And in the last quarter, APAC represented a slightly higher share of the volumes invested.

At the same time, we provided about EUR 2 billion of co-invest opportunities for our clients in the quarter or EUR 17 billion over the last 12 months. Investment activity was primarily driven by private capital during the third quarter as EQT X announced 3 significant investments across health care and technology, taking the fund to an investment level of about 60% to 65%. In the third quarter, BPEA IX, as Per previously mentioned, also announced its public tender offer for Fujitec, which marks EQT's largest buyout in Japan since the office was established in Tokyo in 2006.

And in real estate, we continue to invest selectively with total investment volumes of just over EUR 2 billion over the past 12 months. The pipeline for new deals continues to be strong across the platform. We continue to expect that EQT XI and Infrastructure VII will be activated during the first and the second half of 2026, respectively.

Next slide, please. Looking at the realization volumes, they continue to exceed the investment volumes on an LTM basis with EUR 2 billion of announced exits in Q3. Realization volumes exceeded the investment volumes, as I said. Over the past 12 months, we have realized about EUR 19 billion, roughly 45% of this was in Europe, 1/4 in North America and about 30% across Asia. And these exits have delivered a weighted average gross MOIC of about 2.3x.

Notably, none of these exits were through continuation vehicles, and this is an area we are exploring that will allow our clients to retain exposure to our winners. Approximately 40% of the exit volumes in Q3 were from funds in carry mode; and as you may have seen, we were particularly active realizing our listed assets. Over the first 3 quarters of the year, EQT was once again the most active private markets firms globally when it comes to ECM activity, being almost twice as active as the #2 in terms of transaction volume.

Recent exits also include AI-powered portfolio companies such as TELUS Digital by BPEA VI and the sale of Sana Labs and EQT Ventures II investment to Workday at north of EUR 1 billion. In September, Sana was 1 of 2 EQT Ventures portfolio companies to reach unicorn status along with smartphone brand, Nothing. Two highlights in the European tech ecosystem.

Let me lastly also highlight that we have finalized the remaining syndications for Nord Anglia; in total, external capital was close to $9 billion across over 80 investors. If we look ahead, we remain focused on executing on our exit agenda. Equity capital markets are strong, we think credit spreads are tight and M&A activity is picking up across the globe. In particular, corporate confidence is improving and the appetite for corporates to engage in M&A and other corporate actions is picking up.

Having said that, we continue to face macro and political uncertainties, including around global trade as we saw last week, which can create pockets of volatility. In recent quarters, exits have been paced by private capital and our exit pipeline ahead is more tilted towards infrastructure. Finally, and as a reminder, we had several large exits in H1, and H1 is, therefore, not necessarily a good proxy for H2 in terms of total exit volumes. And any exit activity in Q4 would most likely only close in 2026 and does not impact carry for '25.

But more on this from Kim on the next slide, please.

Thank you, Olof, and good morning, everyone. All of our key funds continue to perform on or above plan. And during the period, key fund valuations increased by an average 3%. The more mature vintages, which are at the later stage of their value creation journey, showed healthy performance. The 2020 to '21 vintages had a strong quarter driven by strong underlying operating performance and supportive multiples, although with some pockets of underperformance.

Equity infrastructure funds across the board showed strong performance in the quarter. The most recent vintages, which are currently being invested, continue to perform according to plan. And as a reminder, new investments are added at 1x gross MOIC. Year-to-date, key fund valuations have increased by just north of 3% on average. The first half of the year was heavily impacted by the weaker U.S. dollar versus the euro. And adjusting for the FX, key fund valuations are up more than 8% from the start of the year.

Next slide, please. In Q3, the number of FTEs amounted to 1,941, equivalent to a net increase of 33 FTEs during the quarter. Hires were primarily made within the infrastructure and capital raising teams to support EQT's growth agenda. We will continue to invest to capture future growth opportunities, both in the private wealth space and in selected geographies of strategic importance, primarily across Asia and the U.S., but also in Europe.

At the same time, actions are being taken and implemented during the third and fourth quarter to ensure we remain a streamlined and high-performing organization. As a result, by year-end, we expect the number of FTEs to return towards the number we had at the start of the year. And in addition, we expect to reduce the number of contractors working for us by approximately 80 roles or about 3/4 of the roles.

Let me also recap a few points as it relates to our outlook cost guidance for 2025 -- sorry, our outlook. Cost guidance for 2025 is unchanged. We expect total OpEx growth rate in 2025 to be at least at a similar level as 2024. In our H1 update, we stated that we expect H1 carry to be a reasonable proxy for H2 carry. With the Q3 exit activity, we have derisked this statement, and we expect H2 carry to be at least in line with H1. As previously stated, we do not expect Infrastructure IV or EQT IX to be in carry mode in 2026.

As Per mentioned, if we continue to realize investments, our larger funds will gradually approach cash carry mode. And let me go through this in some more detail on the next page, please. As you know, we currently have 4 key funds where we are recognizing carried interest in our financial statements, EQT VII and VIII, Infra II and BPEA VII. The total carry potential in these funds is about EUR 2 billion, of which EUR 1 billion has already been recognized in our financial statements as of H1 2025. The rest is expected to be recognized over a multiyear period.

Infra III and EQT VII have generated around EUR 500 million of cash carry in total to EQT AB, but EQT VIII and BPEA VII have not yet generated cash carry. In other words, expect another EUR 1.5 billion of cash carry for EQT over the lifetime of these 4 funds. About EUR 1 billion of this is related to EQT VIII. EQT VIII has primarily a whole fund carry component. And once we reach the hurdle on a cash basis, we have a catch-up phase until cash returns are distributed 20% between carry holders and 80% to our fund investors.

Equity VIII will be the first major flagship fund, so above EUR 10 billion in size since our IPO in 2019 to enter cash carry mode. This is a fund that is currently marked at 2.4x, and we expect the fund to generate above plan returns are more than 2.5x gross MOIC. We expect EQT VIII to soon enter the catch-up phase for cash carry. And based on our current exit plans, we expect to realize cash carry of up to EUR 500 million over the near term. Today, most of our funds are predominantly whole fund carry, which means cash carry tends to be quite back-end loaded.

For BPEA IX, we will move to a deal-by-deal basis. For EQT XI, we expect to have 50-50 deal-by-deal and whole fund carry, and this means that cash distribution related to carry will come earlier for both funds than with what otherwise would have been the case.

With that, I hand over to Per for some concluding remarks.

Thank you, Kim. So to summarize the key takeaways from today's webcast. In the third quarter, we stayed disciplined in our investment pacing and in continuing to monetize deals, managing cash flows on behalf of our clients and significantly outperforming the industry. Over the past 12 months, the vast majority of monetizations have been achieved in the private capital business line. And in the next couple of quarters, we expect a pickup in realizations in EQT Infrastructure.

We continue to execute on our fundraising agenda. We see very healthy momentum in our flagship fundraisings in BPEA IX and EQT XI, and we're also making excellent progress in our other strategies. We continued to grow the number of open-ended investment strategies and build the evergreen offering, both for institutional and private investors. We launched the Active Core Infrastructure fund and the EQT Nexus PE ELTIF product. And this year, we expect total inflows of EUR 2 billion across the 5 private wealth focused EQT evergreen products, implying a significant step-up in momentum in this part of our business during the second half.

When it comes to our organization, we're delivering on the priorities that we set out in the first half, streamlining EQT to ensure that we stay that fast paced than entrepreneurial firm. This is important for our ability to continue to build the most attractive platform in the private markets and also to continue to scale EQT in the right way. It also puts us in the best possible position to participate in the ongoing consolidation of the industry and our reputation as a consolidator has never been stronger. All in all, we remain focused on building the most attractive client-centric scaled platform in the private markets industry.

With that, I'd like to open it up for Q&A. Operator, please.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question from the line of Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

I've got 3 of them. Firstly, on headcount and costs. So where are the headcount cuts being made in Q4? Is it mainly consultants or any other areas? And how should we think about 2026 headcount growth? And what's the read across that to cost growth guidance in 2026? That's the first question. The second question is on cash. Just given that you have more cash coming through from the carry, what do you plan on doing with the cash you'll be generating? Does this increase the possibilities for more M&A? Or will you also consider special distributions?

And lastly, a question on evergreen. So for this year, you're expected to probably get around EUR 2 billion of inflows into evergreens, but that's still like some ways off the EUR 10 billion you're targeting over the next fundraising cycle, which is 10% of the EUR 100 billion you spoke of previously. So how should we bridge the gap between what you're getting today and what you're targeting in the future?

Can I pick up on the headcount. Well, on the headcount reductions that are being made, it's a trimming. It's across the organization. So it is in all parts of the organization. Then in addition to those FTEs that are actually on our payroll, we have then -- we have also -- we are also in the process of, I should say, reducing the number of contractors, consultants that are sort of working for us in other means. They would typically be in sort of other parts of the organization, mainly in tech, if you sort of take one part of the organization that has more. What we've said on cost guidance is that this year, we expect to have at least the same level of cost growth as last year, whereas next year, that cost growth is expected to be lower in the single digits.

Thank you, Kim. And then Gustav, maybe you take the one on the evergreen question.

Yes. So I think as I talked about, I think what we said is we are at EUR 1.2 billion for the year. We think that we will be at EUR 2 billion. So you have a gap of EUR 800 million expected for Q4. And as I said, I think you should see this as a pretty good quarterly benchmark and then adjust it also for the fact that we will launch the U.S. infrastructure vehicle by the start of the next year, so to speak. I think that those components will give you kind of the rollout to 2026.

Should I comment on cash?

Yes. Maybe I'll just make like a general statement. Of course, it's always better to have a stronger balance sheet that will give us more flexibility. We're constantly evaluating how to leverage our balance sheet in the best possible way, whether it's for continued strategic growth investments or adjusting our dividend policy. Kim, anything you want to add?

No, that's a fair comment. And we've said that we want to have a continuously growing dividend per share. We want to stick to that. And we have not ruled out any extraordinary sort of distributions to shareholders, should we be overcapitalized at some point in time.

Yes. Sorry, just a quick follow-up on the headcount. So how should we think about '26 headcount growth? I know you gave the cost growth, but headcount...

I think, the cost growth is probably a better way to think of it than the headcount growth. There's a very broad set of costs associated with heads in our organization. So...

We will now take the next question from the line of Angeliki Bairaktari from JPMorgan.

If I can just go back to the carry guidance for the second half of the year. Can I please check, is the Sana Labs exit that you mentioned, which sounds like it's a pretty good exit going to contribute to that in the second half? And is that sort of the reason why you now feel that the guidance has been derisked? Then a second question with regards to the exit and IPO pipeline that you're seeing for 2026. Can you perhaps give us a little bit more color?

I mean, this year, you said you're on track to reach the 30 exits that you had planned in the beginning of the year. What is your expectation for next year, also considering that we have seen an acceleration in IPOs also in September. And third question with regards to M&A, which areas would be of interest to you now? I think last year, we were talking more about liquidity solutions and secondaries. Is that still sort of the primary focus? Or would you consider doing something in another asset class?

Maybe I'll start with the exit environment pipeline for the second half of this year and what we're seeing also first half, and then Kim can comment further on the carry guidance for this year. So when it comes to the exit environment, as you rightly said, we've seen encouraging signs of a pickup in activity levels in the IPO markets really globally, but certainly also here in Europe, a number of sponsor-backed IPOs, larger ones have been done and the aftermarket performance has been very encouraging.

And we're seeing that also now positively impacting the pipeline in particular of activity in the private markets. For us, we have a very healthy pipeline of exits that we are working on in the next couple of quarters, I'd say. It's maybe a little bit more tilted now towards infrastructure, as we mentioned earlier in the webcast presentation.

But also in private capital, we continue to stay disciplined in our monetizations. And in terms of the routes that we're pursuing, it's really a mix of IPO-led exit processes and trade sale-based exit process. So we feel good about the market environment. If anything, today, it's slightly more positive compared to Q2, and we continue to feel good about executing on our pipeline of monetization opportunities. Kim?

Yes. on carry, as you know, we typically don't comment on specific deals, but Ventures II is not in carry mode. So this is not the reason for us feeling more comfortable with our carry forecast. Having said that, it's amazing to have 2 unicorns on the same day, and it has been a very, very attractive transaction.

Yes. And exactly. And so given the exit pipeline that we're seeing, also all of the exits that we completed and the sell-downs that we had during the third quarter, we feel good about the carried interest guidance also that Kim gave earlier. When it comes to the strategic priorities for EQT, as I think I mentioned in my presentation, we see this industry continuing to consolidate. If anything, it's accelerating. And what we're focused on is just continuing to build the most attractive client-centric platform in the industry.

The areas where we see opportunities for us also to accelerate our growth inorganically. It's both in existing business lines, but also to fill gaps that we have in the platform. And as we spoke about, I think, last time in the Q2 webcast, one area where we do think that we need to strengthen our capabilities and Olof also alluded to it earlier on in the presentation is around solutions and secondary. So this continues to be a space that is of interest to us. And we feel good about sort of the conversations that we're having and also our reputation as a consolidator in the industry.

If I may, just a small follow-up on Ventures II because we don't have a lot of details on the smaller fund. When approximately should we expect this fund to get in carry mode?

No, we don't give that kind of detail on the smaller funds. It will not move the needle for the firm as a whole. Ventures is an amazing business because it helps us to be smarter investors across the board in our other funds, but it doesn't really move the needle for the group as a whole.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ermin Keric from DNB Carnegie.

So maybe first, if you could provide any kind of size expectations you have for the Active Infra fund. And if you have any additional comments on kind of when we should expect the target for Infra VII and kind of how we should think about hard cap for EQT XI. And maybe just if you could generally talk a little bit about the Active Infra kind of return targets and how the revenue model will look for that one?

Then question 2 would be just if we look on the rolling 12-month investments, we see them trending downwards. Is that by coincidence? Or do you see less opportunities than you did, I don't know, a year ago or so? And then maybe just lastly, on the value creation we're seeing the 8% adjusting for FX, it's still quite a bit down from your historical value creation. Is that simply attributed to a challenging market? Or do you see any challenges with kind of repeating what you've created historically?

Maybe you want to start with the Active Core Infrastructure question?

Yes, I'll do that. And so maybe just taking -- so Infra VII, we will -- we haven't set, let's say, a timing of when we will go out with the fundraising of Infra VII, so to speak, specifically. But I think you should probably think about it. Of course, what -- as we said, activation will -- is expected to happen in the second half of next year. So we will go out before that, so to speak. I think that's the guidance that we can give. And then when it comes to EQT XI, a little bit same answer, so to speak, we'll not set -- we haven't set the hard cap yet.

When we do, we will communicate it. And I think you should probably expect it to be in, let's say, around the connection of the first close of EQT XI. When it comes to ACI II, as we said, it will be -- it's going to be an open-ended structure. So of course, it's hard to give a guidance on size because it will be evolving every year, so to speak, and we'll take in money continuously in that structure. ACI I, as you know, was around EUR 3 billion in a closed-ended form. So if you think about that on a year-by-year basis, it was kind of invested EUR 1 billion per year, so to speak.

I think that's some form of guidance. Of course, we probably think that with an open-ended structure that we will be able to take in more money than we would have done in a close-ended format, I think. So that probably gives you a little bit of a sense of the expectation of it. When it comes to the fund terms, I think you should think about it as that the percentage charged is lower than what we see in general, but it's charged on NAV. So over time, it will grow. And that's, I think, in line with the core plus market that we see in general, so to speak.

And maybe I'll take the one on value creation. Value creation in -- across our funds is never linear. And there's always a little bit of volatility around it. I'd also add that many of the more mature funds are really materially derisked, right? And we have locked in very, very attractive returns, net IRRs. And all of the key flagship funds that are more mature are really -- or continue to be on track to reach or exceed our base case guidance in terms of gross MOIC.

Also, the post-pandemic 2020, 2021 vintage funds continue to make very good progress on value creation, both the Infrastructure V fund that saw a 6% value increase in the quarter, but also EQT IX, and we feel increasingly confident also about the outlook of those funds and that they will deliver the targeted MOICs. And then the funds that we're currently investing, what's important to keep in mind here is that, of course, we've been quite active in the last couple of quarters, putting capital to work, in particular, in EQT X.

And all of that -- those investments that we make, they remain valued at cost for the first couple of quarters, and that has an overall negative impact on the value creation in any single quarter. So we stay very close to all of our portfolio companies and all of our investments, and remain confident about our alpha-generating capabilities also going forward. In fact, we've also had a third-party provider look at this. And that third-party provider was particularly impressed by our alpha-generating capabilities and how they've also improved over the last couple of fund cycles.

And then in terms of the pipeline of deals going forward and the investment activity, again, a little bit the same comment. Investment and deal activity is never linear. There's some lumpiness to it. We were very active in our infrastructure strategies, putting capital to work in the Infrastructure VI fund, and we are at the targeted investment levels there, really 6 months post the final close of that fund. And in EQT X, we also had a healthy activity level during Q3 and continue to feel very good and confident about the pipeline of opportunities that we see ahead.

We will now take the next question from the line of Arnaud Giblat from BNP Paribas Exane.

I've got 3 questions, please. Could I start with the exits? So quite a lot of exits going on, yet limited value creation. I'm just wondering what sort of uplifts you're seeing on the exits you've had this year? And how should we think about the potential for uplifts in Q4 and H1? I think you're talking about a strong pipeline there.

Secondly, on the evergreen vehicles, I mean, the guidance is very clear. So I don't need further explanation there. But I'm just wondering how should we think about capacity of these products in the long term? I think you've talked a lot about investing pari passu and wanting the vintage diversification, et cetera. Does that impact at all the capacity of these products in the longer term?

And if so, do you just grow the evergreen channel then by launching incremental products? And finally, on the EUR 9 billion of overall carry in slide, I think, sorry, 12. I'm just wondering, which funds are included there? Is that including, I suppose, the 3 flagship funds that are being raised now?

Thank you for those questions. I'll start with the first one on exits. Again, it's never linear. But overall, the statement I would make is that the vast majority of the exits that we've had over the last 12 months have been in line with or above where we had marked those investments in our books. And that also explains part of the value creation that you have seen in many of the funds during that time where we have achieved those exits.

It also depends on during a quarter, what type of investments you monetize. Of course, if you monetize a larger share of publicly listed investments, you will not have a direct positive impact in the value creation in a fund. Sometimes it can actually be the opposite, even though you're doing the right thing in terms of locking in returns and derisking the funds and managing cash flows on behalf of investors long term.

And then, of course, what you're also seeing is that we're preparing a number of our assets and investments for exits, and we feel very confident about the performance of those assets and those investments. And you're seeing some of that also reflected in the value creation or in the value uplift, in particular, in the infrastructure strategies.

Second question on the capacity in the evergreens. I'll start and Gustav, maybe you fill in. As we spoke about in the webcast presentation, right, we're in a slightly different position compared to most other players in the industry that are focused on this private wealth opportunity. Our deal-making engine is so strong today, and we generate a co-invest to fund commitment ratio that is way above, way, way above the average of the industry.

So it means that really, we've already built the capacity in our existing organization to create attractive opportunities and to offer private wealth investors to participate in those investment opportunities. So a large part, if you will, of the cost related to tapping into that opportunity, relatively speaking, we've taken a larger share already because we've already built that deal engine, if you will. Gustav, anything you want to add to it?

No. I think that's the answer, so to speak. We're -- it's always going to be performance first in this, so to speak. So I think what's crucial for us is that we create vehicles that can really generate strong performance. We think that's going to be an increasing -- the first generation of private welfare was really focused on brand. The second generation is really going to be focused on the ability to create long-term sustainable returns in those vehicles. And we think that, that move is also going to benefit us from a size perspective in it.

And I can comment on the technical question there. We have -- the EUR 9 billion includes all the active funds -- active key funds, sorry. So BPEA IX is included, but not the EQT XI, for example. But also remember about that number that it is in order to give you and the market a sense of order of magnitude. It's not an exact calculation. There are simplified assumptions behind it, and we've footnoted those, and we can talk about them offline, if you'd like.

That's super helpful. Just a very quick follow-up. Very simple one. Do you have any exits for EQT IX and Infra IV in the pipeline?

The answer is yes, quite a few. So -- but I don't think we want to provide more guidance than that.

We will now take the next question from the line of Jacob Hesslevik from SEB.

So 2 questions from my side. The first one is on AI implementation. You're right, you have made AI a strategic priority, both internally and in portfolio companies. Can you articulate the expected impact on your operating model decision-making and competitive positioning? And what's a realistic time line for any material benefits from AI?

Second, on the European defense and critical infrastructure themes, given the significant increase in EU spending commitment within cybersecurity and infrastructure needs, you mentioned Germany and U.K. in the report. Does EQT see an opportunity to create a dedicated fund focused on these defense, cybersecurity and infrastructure investments in Europe? Or will these themes rather be invested in using Infra VII?

Good. I'll start with the first question. So AI implementation is definitely a strategic priority for us, both in our portfolio companies and internally. In fact, we're really putting AI at the center of any new investment underwritings that we have. It's always the #1 topic that we start and I see discussion with. And then, of course, we also follow up on it in our portfolio review committees. And whenever we're not comfortable that it's more of a value creation opportunity than a disruptive threat, then we would decline an investment opportunity.

The same mindset we apply to how we're future-proofing EQT. So we're making significant investments in this area into our tech stack, making sure that our tech stack is set up to leverage all of the global data that we sit on to apply tailor-made AI tools in our sourcing, in our portfolio review processes, in how we run our business in the best possible way. I don't think we're in a position today to quantify exactly what that potential is in terms of how we will manage our FTE and costs going forward.

But of course, we are tracking this in terms of KPIs in our executive leadership team. And this is just an attractive opportunity for us, a little bit what I referred to earlier to just continue on this journey to improve our operating model and to achieve productivity improvements over time. In terms of the defense opportunity and critical infrastructure opportunity, we are not planning to raise a dedicated fund for this.

We are seeing an attractive pipeline of opportunities, both in more tech related -- in the more tech-related part of that segment in our early-stage strategies. So that's something that we're looking at there. And then, of course, also in the infrastructure business. But we would be investing out of existing funds into that opportunity.

We will now take the next question from the line of Nicholas Herman from Citi.

Three questions from me, please. One on cost, one on evergreens and one on the open-ended ACI II. On costs, it seems like a relatively material optimization of FTE in the fourth quarter. I think the market expects 2026 to be the low point of your operating margins given the nature of your fundraising cycle. But do you think you can stay above a 50% fee-related EBITDA margin next year? On the evergreens, we're talking about moving from, I guess, 0.4 billion per quarter of evergreen subscriptions to 8 billion (sic) [ 0.8 billion ] per quarter. I mean the guidance is pretty clear.

I mean, but just what I'm interested in here is, I appreciate you broadened your range, but where is that step-up coming from, please, by both by product and region? Just interested whether you're seeing the biggest uplift in momentum. And then finally, on ACI II, which institutional client segment has shown notable interest in ACI II in that open-ended format, please? And is there any difference in fee rate versus ACI I?

If I start with the first one, Nicholas, we do not give sort of year-by-year fee-related EBITDA margin guidance, as you know. What we have been very firm about is though, that we expect to reach our 55% target during the course of this fundraising cycle. So that stays, and I think we reiterated it again in this report, and you will have to live with that. But it's, of course, not a linear sort of road from where we were to the 55%.

But having said that, of course, today, we're -- yes, we've put us in an even better position to deliver against that target with the actions that we've taken. Gustav, do you want to take the other ones?

Yes. So I think on the evergreen side, so I think in Q3 here, we have around 500 million of inflow. And as we said, we think Q4 is going to be around 800 million. I think that the step-up in between is really related to the ELTIF launch as well as, let's say, building more and more momentum in some of the other products. As we said, Nexus Infrastructure was launched in Q2. The U.S. evergreen vehicle for PE was launched at the end of Q2.

So I think all of this is just building momentum here, having a broader more countries to access from, let's say, the Nexus suite and on the U.S. side, just adding more distributors to it, so to speak. So I think you'll continue to see that buildup here in Q4 and going into 2026. And as I said, in 2026, we're then also launching the U.S. vehicle for infrastructure. So I think you'll see that being fairly broad-based and with a good diversification on a global basis.

And when it comes to ACI II, I think you should think about the margin or the fee rate in somewhat in line with what we have on ACI I. The institutional interest is really broad-based. It's a global fund raise, and we're seeing global interest for it. I think everything else being equal, we'll probably see more interest from North America in the open-ended structure compared to the closed-ended structure, which was from a U.S. perspective, a little bit trickier to access for them. So I think that's probably where we see the biggest upside versus what we had in ACI I.

So very strong interest really in ACI II. And I think also benefiting a little bit from private market investors wanting to diversify away also from only having credit exposure, so to speak, right, and focusing again on that diversification. So ACI II also benefiting from that.

That's very helpful. If I could just have a quick follow-up on the evergreens question. I mean, have you also seen any benefit in some of these strategies if you come out of, let's say, an exclusivity period and then it starts to really ramp up? And I guess, in that context, are there any kind of exclusivity periods that we should be mindful of from your U.S. products beyond which there could also be a material ramp-up thereafter?

I wouldn't say that there is a significant ramp-up due to exclusivity. I think it's more in general, just broadening the base. I think there's probably going to be some form of exclusivity for the U.S. infrastructure product. But at the same time, it's the distributors that we've lined up is also global and sizable. So I don't think that you should expect that to be, let's say, different from what we've seen on the previous launches.

We will now take the next question from the line of Haley Tam from UBS.

I have 3, please, if I can. Firstly, on Nexus. Secondly, on maybe some knock-on impact from other things happening in the market. And then thirdly, just a clarification on fundraising and activation. So just firstly, on Nexus, can I confirm, am I right in thinking that in the first 2 years after an investment has been made that investors cannot redeem from the fund? And is this also true for the ELTIF structure, just so we can try and understand how to think about that?

And I also wondered, are there any specifics in terms of placement fees or fee holidays in the early stages of a fund, evergreen fund life, which means that potentially the revenue uplift going forward could be a lot higher than the fee-paying AUM growth? Second question, just in terms of knock-on effects. I mean, there have been a lot of private credit concerns in the market. And I just wondered, are you seeing any knock-on impact for your exit environment, the availability of credit perhaps or perhaps even just in terms of appetite for your evergreen funds versus maybe those in other asset classes like private credit?

And then the third and final question, just on fundraising. Sorry, just to understand the semantics of this. EQT Transition Infrastructure, EQT Healthcare Growth, have those both activated already, the fundraising you're talking about, are we already seeing that in fee-paying AUM growth? And then similarly, with the real estate Europe V that you mentioned, you had a strong first close, but we won't see that until activates later this year. Can you give us any guide as to, is that at the end of this year or into next year, just to understand how we should think about that flow?

Maybe I'll start with a question just on the broader private credit market dynamics, and then I'll hand it over to Gustav to comment on Nexus and also the impact that we're seeing on the evergreen side. So in terms of private credit as an asset class, what I would say is that margins and spreads remain very, very tight, very attractive, certainly from an issue perspective. So when it comes to our business, access to financing is readily available, and it's really also fueling deal-making and activity levels across the platform.

And we've seen no signs of that dynamic changing in any way. We're closely monitoring, of course, what's happening in the broader private credit market. But as of today, we see no change in dynamic, and we also certainly see no like systemic risks or issues to -- for the broader industry. So maybe in that spirit, Gustav, do you want to comment on Nexus and evergreen?

Yes, I'll do that. And maybe I'll also take the fundraising questions on that. So for I think in general, you should think about all evergreen products that we have that they have either 18- or 24-month soft lockup, so to speak, meaning that investors can redeem, but it comes with a cost associated with it, which means that in practice, you will see fairly limited redemptions in the first 18, 24 months, so to speak. When it comes to fee holidays, I would say that in -- for the U.S. products, you would see somewhere between a 6- to 12-month fee holiday normally in the market.

So that's also true for our products. So you will see a ramp-up in terms of revenues in that regard being a little bit delayed for those launches. For our European products, there is -- and European and Asia products, there is no fee holiday as such. And then when it comes to Healthcare Growth and Transition, correct, they are all activated. And as I said, the guidance is that they will reach north of EUR 4 billion and that we have raised a bit more than half of that, so to speak. But that number is included in the fee-paying AUM. And when it comes to the European real estate fund, the guidance is that, that will be activated in Q4.

We will now take the last question from the line of Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs.

Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. I've got 3 questions left, please. The first question, on having this high co-invest commitment ratio that you spoke about, interested in your thoughts on how wealth could affect this. Really, if Nexus vehicles continue to scale and effectively become your biggest co-investors, is there the potential for this to shift the economics of co-invest for your institutional LPs given that this has become fee-free by industry norm? Effectively, is there a potential for you to start charging? Some of your institutes are charging their institutional clients for this or at the very least for this to become more of an exclusive part of your client offering on the institutional side? So that's the first question.

The second question, on the back of what you're doing with ACI II, can we expect EQT Future to go down the open-ended route for your institutional clients as well so that you have a longer-dated open-ended PE product as well as infra? And then the third final question, sorry to come back on the consultants point, but just trying to map out the spend associated with the 80 consultants or the 75% that you're looking to fade, if I go back to your half year report, you showed EUR 50 million of costs associated with external services and consultants for the first 6 months. Are you able to give us a rough proportion or indication of what chunk of this is consultants?

Good. Thank you, Oliver, for those questions. I'll start with the first 2, and then I'll hand it over to Kim. So when it comes to our co-invested deal flow, yes, there is an opportunity to monetize this also more as we are growing with our private wealth and retail clients and investors. Of course, we will continue to offer the most attractive co-investor fund commitment ratio in the industry to our important institutional investors, and we're committed to that. But just given the deal engine that we have today, we feel very, very good about our ability to create a win-win-win, if you will, between those 2 client segments as well as EQT over time.

And then in relation to the ability to potentially monetize even more of the institutional co-invest deal flow also over time and our longer hold strategies and riding the winner strategies, what I'd say is what we've discussed in the executive leadership team and also with the Board is that this is a huge growth opportunity for us. At EQT, we sit on many of the most attractive scaled assets in the private markets that operate in the most attractive parts of infrastructure and health care and technology.

So there's clearly an opportunity for us to become more sophisticated over time in terms of how we monetize these investments and how we enable our clients, our investors to stay invested in those businesses, right? And as Olof said earlier on in the presentation, we're probably the only scale player in the industry that hasn't done a continuation vehicle yet, right? And of course, it's in the interest of EQT and also our clients, our investor base that we build those capabilities. And once we do that and when we do that, that will also help us monetize those opportunities and those amazing assets in a much better way going forward compared to today.

And then when it comes to private equity long-hold strategy, specifically that we have today in the pipeline and whether we would consider sort of making some of those or turning some of those also into more open-ended structures, this is something that we are evaluating and discussing. We will be launching a second generation of our long-hold strategy in private equity next year. And exactly then how we design that product will also depend on the feedback that we're getting from clients. So we will keep you updated on that and revert to you on that question over time.

And on the cost topic, the vast majority of the EUR 50 million you referred to is external services. So it's services we buy from accounting firms and fund administrators and law firms, et cetera. So less than 1/4 of it is for consultants. That's as much guidance I can give.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand back over to the speakers for closing remarks.

Okay. Excellent. Thank you very much for joining today. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your interest, and thanks for excellent questions, and see you next time. Thank you.