Pantheon commits $888m to secondaries

Pantheon invested $888 million across 13 secondaries deals in the year to 30 June mainly by acquiring individual fund stakes, according to its listed fund of funds’ annual report.

London-listed Pantheon International Participations (PIP) also committed £173.2 million ($225 million; €201 million) to 13 secondaries and late primary funds during the same period and sold a mature portfolio of mainly North American buyout and venture capital funds in the first half of the year, according to the vehicle’s Annual Report and Accounts 2016 released on Tuesday.

The portfolio it sold had a net asset value of £32.9 million as of September last year and comprised 34 interests formed between 2000 and 2007. Opportunistic sales were part of PIP’s active portfolio management, the report noted.

“Our portfolio strategy emphasises secondaries investments in order to maintain a mature portfolio profile and thus benefit from the cash distributions that allow us to maintain our financial strength and investment pace,” the report noted. “We continue to see interesting opportunities in the secondaries market where pricing has seen a modest decrease.”

PIP’s largest secondaries deal was a £34 million transaction in June where it acquired a portfolio of 11 global buyout and growth stakes in 1998 to 2013-vintage funds. The deal contained a mix of established portfolio companies in their value creation phase and tail-end funds that are expected to deliver early distributions, the report noted.

Other secondaries deals in the period include:

• a £33 million portfolio of US and European buyout funds
• a £16 million portfolio of US growth equity funds focusing on financial services
• a £14 million Asian growth equity fund
• a £4 million special situations portfolio of energy assets
• a £3 million US large buyout fund focusing on healthcare and business services

Pantheon screened over $45 billion of deals during the 12 month period and expects an increase in secondaries activity due to the improvement in public market sentiment and sellers who had delayed activity in the first half coming to market in the second half.

Secondaries were the largest component of PIP’s portfolio, accounting for 46 percent of investments, up from 44 percent a year earlier. The strategy accounted for 50 percent of all new deals.

PIP can co-invest alongside Pantheon Global Secondary Fund V, Pantheon’s latest secondaries fund, which gives it access to larger secondaries opportunities that it would not have had the capacity to complete alone, the report noted. Pantheon has around $3.5 billion in investable capital for its Fund V programme, as Secondaries Investor previously reported.

Pantheon, which has $34 billion in assets under management, has acted as PIP‘s manager since inception in 1997.