Pantheon International Participations’ interim figures, covering the second half of 2014, are pretty good. The net asset value rose by 11% and the share price by 10% (over a time when the FTSE All-Share didn’t deliver much of a return and the MSCI World returned 9.7%). The net asset value is now just shy of £1bn (£995m). The portfolio threw off £113m of cash and they made new investment commitments of £132m. Uncalled commitments stood at £240m at the year end, up from £176m at 30 June. They had £223m of available financing at the year end.
Most of the new commitments arise because of purchases they have made of secondary investments although they did invest £45m in six primary transactions – Altor Fund IV (Nordic mid-market buyout), ECI 10 (buyout fund focused on UK mid-market space), ABRY Partners VIII (US mid-market buyout fund focused on media, communications and IT), Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners VIII (Large buyout manager with global exposure), Baring Asia Fund VI (Pan-Asian buyout and growth fund) and Growth Fund (3) (US growth equity fund).
Quite a bit of the return came from positive moves in exchange rates, reflecting their 56% weighting to the US, but the portfolio generated gains of 4.2%. There is no mention of the underlying companies that might have contributed to these returns but the largest part of distributions came from the US and from Large / Mega cap buyout funds. The largest underlying investments are in Spotify, King.com, Zoe’s Kitchen, Attendo and CPL Industries. Although such is the diversification in the fund that these top five account for just 3.5% of the portfolio.
PIN : Pantheon close to £1bn of assets