NB Private Equity has announced results for the year ended 31 December 2014 and an estimated net asset value for 28 February 2015. The total return on net asset value over the course of 2014 was 16.2%. The discount narrowed and this propelled the total return to shareholders up to 26.9%.
They say strong performance in the equity co-investment portfolio was driven by the IPO of Sabre Holdings, which occurred in April, as well as write-ups of several private companies, as a result of strong operating performance. other notable IPOs in the portfolio included Callidus Capital, Fairmount Minerals, Enable Midstream Partners and Lending Club. They got around $200m of distributions from the portfolio during the year and invested $275m (of a total of $284m) in direct investments, bringing that part of the portfolio up to 89% of asset value.
$186m of the investments went into “income investments”. These have a yield to maturity of 10.3% and a cash yield of 8.7%. They have been paying dividends at a rate of 45 cents per share which works out as a 4% yield on the share price. They say this dividend was covered 1.3x by cash generated by income investments within the portfolio.
At the end of February they reckon the NAV was $14.11. This was a little lower than the NAV at the end of December of $14.24.
NBPE : NB Private Equity has profitable and transformational year