15 May 2025

3i Group plc announces results for the year

to 31 March 2025

A year of consistently strong growth

Financial highlights

1 Gearing is net debt as a percentage of net assets.

ENDS

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For further information regarding the announcement of 3i's annual results to 31 March 2025, including a live webcast of the results presentation at 10.00am, please visit www.3i.com.

Notes to editors

3i is a leading international investment manager focused on mid-market Private Equity and Infrastructure. Our core investment markets are Europe and North America. For further information, please visit: www.3i.com.

Notes to the announcement of the results

Note 1

All of the financial data in this announcement is taken from the Investment basis financial statements. The statutory accounts are prepared under IFRS for the year to 31 March 2025 and have not yet been delivered to the Registrar of Companies. The statutory accounts for the year to 31 March 2024 have been delivered to the Registrar of Companies. The auditor's reports on the statutory accounts for these years are unqualified and do not contain any matters to which the auditor drew attention by way of emphasis or any statements under section 498(2) or (3) of the Companies Act 2006. This announcement does not constitute statutory accounts.

Note 2

Copies of the Annual report and accounts 2025 will be posted to shareholders on or soon after Wednesday 28 May 2025.

Note 3

This announcement may contain statements about the future including certain statements about the future outlook for 3i Group plc and its subsidiaries ("3i"). These are not guarantees of future performance and will not be updated. Although we believe our expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, any statements about the future outlook may be influenced by factors that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different.

Note 4

Subject to shareholder approval, the proposed second dividend is expected to be paid on Friday 25 July 2025 to holders of ordinary shares on the register on Friday 20 June 2025. The ex-dividend date will be Thursday 19 June 2025.

significant progress in relation to our portfolio engagement target, with seven portfolio companies across 3i Group and 3i Infrastructure plc ("3iN") having set approved science-based targets as at 31 March 2025, including most notably Action.

Outlook

We enter FY2026 with a carefully constructed portfolio that is underpinned by two very strong long-term hold assets that are delivering consistent compounding growth and a broader portfolio that is operating in sectors that have proven their resilience through many periods of market disruption.

Whilst we expect the ongoing market uncertainty to disrupt transactions across the wider private market, we will continue to be disciplined in our approach to new investment and realisations under these conditions in FY2026.

David Hutchison

Chair

14 May 2025

Chief Executive's statement

"In FY2025, we generated a total return on shareholders' funds of £5,049 million, or 25%, ending the year with a NAV per share of 2,542 pence. This is the fifth consecutive year we have delivered a total return over 20%; over this same period, our average annual total return was 30%."

FY2025 was another successful year for 3i, continuing our track record of consistently delivering strong shareholder returns, against what remains a challenging macro-economic and geopolitical backdrop.

Our FY2025 result was underpinned by the powerful compounding growth from our long-term hold assets Action and Royal Sanders, and by the performance of several other larger portfolio companies. This reinforces our conviction in allocating additional capital to our best performing assets.

Amid some improvement in private market transaction activity, we maintained a highly selective and disciplined investment approach, strategically deploying capital into several existing and new portfolio companies. We also executed a number of strong realisations across Private Equity and Infrastructure, which met or exceeded our target money multiple return of 2x.

Action continued to be the main driver of the Group's overall financial performance in FY2025, underpinned by another excellent year of earnings growth, substantial cash generation and strategic expansion. This result was particularly impressive, as the business operated against a backdrop of muted economic growth across many of its markets. As a result of this strong performance Action undertook another refinancing and pro-rata buyback exercise, returning significant proceeds to 3i. 3i, in turn, recycled a portion of these proceeds into further Action equity. Additionally, we completed the final payment of the associated carried interest liability, ensuring that the full economic benefit of Action's performance is now passed through to shareholders with no dilution. Royal Sanders, our other long-term hold asset, continued its impressive trajectory of organic growth, coupled with further value-accretive bolt-on acquisitions.

Our proprietary capital model and disciplined balance sheet strategy offer a distinct competitive advantage in navigating an increasingly complex macro-economic and geopolitical landscape. We have remained extremely disciplined in capital deployment, completing three new Private Equity investments in sectors that we know well. We also continued our focus on deploying capital into some of our most successful portfolio companies. Our Private Equity portfolio companies remained acquisitive, completing 12 bolt-on acquisitions.

In Infrastructure, 3iN completed a strong realisation at a money multiple of 3.6x, two sizeable refinancings and further investments across two portfolio companies, whilst our North American Infrastructure Fund ("NAIF") completed three bolt-on acquisitions through existing portfolio companies.

We generated total realised proceeds and portfolio income of £2.4 billion across our portfolios in FY2025, including £1.6 billion of total refinancing and dividend proceeds from Action and two strong Private Equity realisations, both at sterling money multiples of 2x or greater.

Private Equity performance

In the year to 31 March 2025, our Private Equity portfolio, including Action, generated a GIR of £5,113 million, or 26% on opening value (2024: £4,059 million or 25%). In the last 12 months ("LTM") to the end of 31 December 2024, 97% of our portfolio companies by value grew earnings.

Long-term hold portfolio companies

Action

Action generated a GIR of £4,551 million, or 32%, on its opening value.

Action, Europe's fastest-growing non-food discount retailer and our largest portfolio company, delivered strong growth in 2024, underpinned by its customer-centric value-for-money proposition. Action's commitment to consistently share the benefits of scale with customers, through highly competitive pricing and a dynamic and flexible product assortment, enabled the business to reduce prices across 2,000 products in 2024. As a result, Action maintained, and in a number of markets increased, its price advantage over its competitors in 2024.

In the 12 months to 29 December 2024, Action generated net sales of €13,781 million (2023: €11,324 million) 22% ahead of 2023, and like-for-like ("LFL") sales growth of 10.3% (2023: 16.7%). Transaction volumes accounted for 102% of the LFL sales growth over the year as the business benefitted from new customer gains and more frequent visits from existing customers. Operating EBITDA was €2,076 million (2023: €1,615 million) in 2024, 29% ahead of 2023. Action's improved EBITDA margin of 15.1%, compared to 14.3% in the previous year, reflects scale benefits and its continuous focus on cost control.

Action added 352 new stores in 2024, another store opening record, taking its total store footprint to 2,918 at 29 December 2024. The largest contributions to store growth in the year were from some of Action's more recent expansion markets, such as Italy and Spain, which added 65 and 40 new stores respectively, whilst Action's newest country, Portugal, opened a further 10 stores. Importantly, the payback period for new stores remains materially below one year. Action's estimate of additional white space potential, in existing and identified in-scope countries, increased to c.4,850 stores, including Switzerland, where the first store opened in April 2025.

In the first three periods of 2025 (P3 2025 ending 30 March 2025), Action added a further 49 new stores, meaning the business had 2,967 stores across 12 countries at that date.

To support its vast and growing store network, Action continues to invest in its IT infrastructure, systems and distribution channels. In 2024, the business opened two new distribution centres ("DCs") in Illescas, Spain and Altedo, Italy, increasing its DC network to 15 across Europe, with a further three new DCs planned for 2025. Action also invested in a new enterprise resource planning ("ERP") system, which was successfully implemented at the end of 2024. The implementation had a minor impact on store availability in the first quarter of 2025 and the issues were resolved by March 2025.

Action continues to make good progress in delivering its sustainability programme, which is focused on the four pillars of people, planet, product and partnerships. It created over 10,000 jobs in 2024, and continues to invest in its people. It delivered a 51% reduction of CO2 emissions from its own operations (Scope 1 and 2) against 2021 and 90% of its electricity is now sourced from renewables. The business continues to improve its product circularity and expand its community partnerships. For further details on Action's sustainability progress, see the Sustainability section of our Annual report and accounts 2025.

Action continued to optimise its debt profile throughout the year. In July 2024, it successfully completed a refinancing event with proceeds used for a capital restructuring. The company raised €2.1 billion equivalent of incremental term debt, comprising a US$1.5 billion term loan and a €700 million term loan. At the same time, it undertook a pro-rata share redemption, returning £1,164 million in gross proceeds to 3i. Alongside some existing LPs in the 3i 2020 Co-Investment Programme, 3i took the opportunity to increase its ownership in Action. Including a subsequent small purchase of an LP stake, 3i reinvested £768 million into Action, increasing its gross equity stake from 54.8% to 57.9%.

In November 2024 and March 2025, Action completed leverage-neutral amend-and-extend and repricing transactions across all €6.6 billion of its senior-term debt facilities. This extended maturities on €2,545 million of Action's term debt and delivered approximately €33 million in recurring annual interest cost savings.

Action's conversion of EBITDA to free cash flow remains strong, with cash conversion of 81% in 2024. The business made two dividend distributions to all shareholders in December 2024 and March 2025, returning £433 million to 3i. In total, 3i received over £1.6 billion in cash from Action in FY2025. After paying the dividends, Action had a cash balance of €347 million as of 30 March 2025 and a net debt-to-run-rate earnings ratio of 2.7x.

At 31 March 2025, we valued our 57.9% stake in Action at £17,831 million. This valuation reflects the continued strong growth in Action's LTM run-rate EBITDA, its low leverage and an unchanged LTM run-rate EBITDA valuation multiple of 18.5x, net of the liquidity discount. Further detail on the Action run-rate EBITDA methodology can be found in the Private Equity business review in our Annual report and accounts 2025. We benchmark our long-term, through-the-cycle view on Action's multiple against a broad peer group of discounters, with a higher weighting towards the top

quartile subset of North American value-for-money retailers, noting that Action's operating KPIs continue to be better than those of its peer group.

In the first three periods of 2025, Action delivered net sales of €3,521 million and operating EBITDA of €464 million, both 17% ahead of the same period last year, primarily driven by the increased volume of transactions. LFL sales growth was 6.2% and the operating EBITDA margin was 13.2%.

Royal Sanders

Showing its strategic potential, Royal Sanders generated strong performance in 2024, driven by volume growth and prior bolt-on acquisitions, including Karium which completed earlier in the year. At the end of FY2025, Royal Sanders completed the acquisition of Treaclemoon, an established UK-based value-for-money personal care brand with a strong strategic fit with its existing portfolio of brands. This was Royal Sanders' eighth bolt-on acquisition since 3i's investment. These strategic acquisitions, combined with strong operational execution, have contributed significantly to Royal Sanders' performance and success.

Private Equity portfolio companies

During the year, we refined our Private Equity sector-led investment, origination and active management approach, aligning our resources to focus on the consumer and private label, healthcare, industrial and services and software sectors.

Healthcare portfolio companies

Cirtec Medical delivered strong top-line growth in 2024, fuelled by increasing customer demand across its product portfolio and enhanced operational efficiency. The business made good progress on several key initiatives in the year and maintains a robust pipeline of new opportunities across its target markets.

The broader bioprocessing market experienced an anticipated recovery in demand through the second half of 2024 and into the first quarter of 2025, as post-pandemic destocking subsided. Against this backdrop, SaniSure saw a solid rebound in bookings while also making substantial progress on multiple strategic initiatives and investing to strengthen its long-term market position.

Our contract development and manufacturing organisation ("CDMO") ten23 health is making good progress in establishing itself as a significant presence in the pharmaceutical industry. We continued to support this platform, investing a further £54 million in FY2025. The remaining business of Q Holding, Q Medical Devices, also performed well in the year.

Consumer and private label portfolio companies

European Bakery Group ("EBG") maintained resilient performance during the year, despite persistent pressures on input pricing and wage inflation. Following robust cash generation, EBG returned £22 million to 3i within 12 months of its additional investment in support of the acquisition of coolback in 2023.

Audley Travel performed strongly across its US and UK markets in 2024. Its order book into 2025 is strong, albeit we are monitoring the impact on US travel sentiment, following heightened uncertainty in US policy. MPM continued to grow well across its markets in 2024. Whilst MPM has a significant presence in the US, we expect the business to be able to mitigate the impacts of current proposed changes in US tariffs.

Mepal delivered encouraging performance across its omnichannel offering and Luqom made good progress in operational and financial delivery in 2024 and continues to win market share in a relatively subdued market. The prolonged impact of low discretionary consumer confidence continued to impact the franchisee base in some countries for BoConcept for the majority of 2024. Recent order intake in the final quarter of 2024 and into the start of 2025 has been more stable.

Industrial portfolio companies

After a challenging 2023, Tato's sales volumes and profitability recovered well in 2024, despite relatively muted demand across its end-markets and a more challenging competitive environment. The business continues to generate a good level of cash flow, and returned a further £13 million of dividends to 3i in FY2025, meaning we have received £75 million in total dividend distributions over the last seven years. AES delivered another year of consistent financial, strategic and operational performance, as a result of increased demand across energy and industrials, its most prominent markets. The business continued to target strategic acquisitions, completing two bolt-on acquisitions in FY2025, and also returned dividends of £4 million to 3i. Dynatect's performance was stable, despite delays in the ramp-up of a significant contract.

Services and software portfolio companies

Against a fairly muted third-party maintenance ("TPM") market, Evernex saw a positive TPM top-line performance in 2024 and remains well positioned for an anticipated normalisation of market conditions in the near term. Also operating in the IT services market, MAIT's 2024 outcome was resilient despite a more cautious climate among customers. The business completed another three bolt-on acquisitions in FY2025, taking its total to 13 since we first invested in 2021. Since our investment in xSuite in 2022, the business has made good progress in its development towards a SaaS model. During the year, we invested £5 million to support xSuite's bolt-on acquisition of tangro, which is also performing well.

Due to persisting market uncertainty, the expected recruitment process outsourcing market recovery has not yet materialised. As a result, Wilson continued to see significant challenges across its markets. Although the business continues to generate new wins and optimise its operations, we expect the near term to remain difficult. We invested £6 million to support the business during the year and recognised an unrealised value reduction of £88 million.

Private Equity investment

The Private Equity transaction market saw a steady improvement in 2024 driven by easing debt markets and stabilising interest rates. Our investment approach remained disciplined and consistent, as we continued to use our network and local expertise to source high-quality, well-priced opportunities, including value-enhancing bolt-on acquisitions for our portfolio companies.

In addition to the reinvestment in Action, in FY2025 we completed three new private equity investments totalling £318 million. We invested £121 million in WaterWipes, a global, premium, limited ingredient wet wipe brand, reinforcing our strategy of backing international branded consumer businesses. Our £98 million investment in Constellation, a specialist in hybrid cloud and cybersecurity managed services, aligns with our focus on IT services. We have a long and successful investment track record in inspection and testing, and we were pleased to invest £99 million in OMS Prüfservice, a leading provider of electrical testing services for B2B customers in the DACH region.

Across the Private Equity portfolio, we completed 12 bolt-on acquisitions in the year for six portfolio companies, the majority of which were self-funded.

Private Equity realisations

We completed two significant realisations during the year, generating total proceeds of £659 million. Since acquiring nexeye in 2017, the company has driven growth both organically and through a buy-and-build strategy, expanding its store base from approximately 400 to over 700 across five countries. As a result, both sales and EBITDA doubled under our ownership. This realisation, which completed in July 2024, delivered a modest profit over its 31 March 2024 valuation, generating proceeds of £382 million. When combined with distributions received during our ownership, this resulted in a sterling money multiple of 2.0x.

We also completed the realisation of WP, an asset we had held since 2015. Throughout our ownership, we supported its international growth strategy by expanding into new product categories and executing four bolt-on acquisitions, nearly doubling its EBITDA. The transaction generated total proceeds of £280 million, including interest income of £3 million, reflecting an 18% profit over its 31 March 2024 valuation. Including the £45 million received earlier in our ownership period, this resulted in a sterling money multiple of 2.2x

Infrastructure performance

In the year to 31 March 2025, our Infrastructure portfolio generated a GIR of £52 million, or 3% on the opening portfolio value (2024: £99 million, 7%), reflecting good performance from our infrastructure funds and increased dividend income primarily from 3iN. However, this result was significantly impacted by 3iN's share price performance that continues to underwhelm, with a decrease of 3% in the year to 318 pence at 31 March 2025, even though the underlying 3iN portfolio continues to trade well and deliver strong realisations, at good uplifts to opening value.

In the year to 31 March 2025, 3iN generated a total return on opening NAV of 10.1%, again exceeding its 8 to 10% return objective, and delivered its dividend target of 12.65 pence, a 6.3% increase on last year. 3iN's underlying portfolio continues to benefit from its exposure to long-term sustainable growth trends.

Our proprietary capital investment in Smarte Carte achieved record-high revenue and EBITDA in 2024, driven by strong performance across its business segments. Notably, the company's new long-term carts contract at London's Heathrow Airport performed well.

Scandlines performance

The performance of Scandlines was resilient in FY2025, and our investment generated a GIR of £46 million, or 9% of opening portfolio value (2024: £10 million, 2%). Leisure revenues were strong, whilst freight volumes were softer

compared to the prior year. The business continued to be cash generative and returned £22 million of dividends to 3i. Since our reinvestment in 2018, we have received £232 million of total distributions.

Sustainability

We continue to make good progress on our climate agenda. Our science-based targets, which cover our direct GHG emissions and those associated with our portfolio, were approved by the SBTi in March 2024. We are particularly pleased with the progress we made in FY2025 towards the achievement of our portfolio engagement target, which involves 3i using its influence to encourage portfolio companies to set their own science-based targets. Seven of our portfolio companies across 3i Group and 3iN have now set approved science-based targets. Notably, Action had its near-term science-based targets approved in February 2025.

We continue to refine our assessment of climate-related risks and opportunities in our investment and portfolio management processes. This helps us support portfolio companies in positioning themselves on the right side of the climate transition, while safeguarding 3i and its portfolio companies from a broad range of operational, commercial and reputational risks. In addition to our focus on climate-related issues, we have also improved our assessment of nature considerations within our portfolio, alongside our continued focus on human rights.

Charitable donations

3i continues to support charities which relieve poverty, address homelessness, promote education and youth development and support elderly and disabled people. We donated £1.2 million across these initiatives as part of our ordinary charitable activities. Our portfolio companies also supported a variety of charities relevant to them and their operations, with donations totalling £4.8 million.

Balance sheet and foreign exchange movement

Our proprietary capital strategy affords us the benefit of agility in capital deployment and flexibility in holding periods, which puts us in a good position to optimise returns over the long term. We successfully executed the final payments of the carried interest liability related to Action, totalling £428 million over the year. This marks an important milestone for the Group and our shareholders, eliminating a substantial financial obligation from the balance sheet and ensuring that going forward, Action's returns flow through to shareholders with no dilution.

We ended FY2025 with net debt of £771 million and 3% gearing, after returning £625 million of cash dividends to shareholders in the year and with liquidity, including our undrawn RCF, of £1,323 million. We remain disciplined on costs and generated an operating cash profit of £469 million in the year, or £36 million excluding dividends received from Action. Due to the strengthening of sterling against the euro and US dollar in the year, we recorded a total foreign exchange translation loss of £259 million (March 2024: £316 million loss), including a gain on foreign exchange hedging of £82 million (March 2024: £116 million gain).

In April 2025, we increased the notional value of the Group's Euro foreign exchange hedging programme by €400 million, securing favourable rates, taking our total Euro hedge to €3.0 billion.

Outlook

We expect the market environment in FY2026 to remain complex, with heightened geopolitical uncertainty as major economies respond to changes in US policy.

Over many years we have deliberately allocated our capital into some of our best performing assets, such as Action and Royal Sanders, as well as assets in sectors such as value-for-money, private label consumer, healthcare and infrastructure, all of which have proven their resilience over many years of market shocks and headwinds. This provides us with confidence in the overall portfolio's ability to continue to operate effectively through volatile conditions and generate resilient returns for our shareholders. Similarly, over the same period of time, our policy of taking a long-term view on valuation multiples has been consistently applied across market peaks and troughs. This approach remains very relevant in the current market conditions.

We expect transaction activity across the private market to be slower over the near term given the increased macro-economic and geopolitical uncertainty. We will maintain our pricing discipline and continue to be highly selective across new investment and realisation opportunities as we continue to optimise long-term value growth for our shareholders.

We remain confident in our ability to compound growth across the portfolio in the years to come, and I would like to close by thanking the team at 3i and the teams in our portfolio companies for another year of strong performance.

Simon Borrows

Chief Executive

14 May 2025

Private Equity

1 LTM adjusted earnings to 31 December 2024. Includes 30 portfolio companies.

We invest our proprietary capital in mid-market businesses headquartered in Europe and North America. Once invested, we work closely with our portfolio companies to deliver ambitious growth plans and aim to compound value from our best investments over the longer term.

Against a complex and uncertain macro-economic and geopolitical environment across Europe and the US, our Private Equity portfolio delivered a GIR of £5,113 million, or 26%, on the opening portfolio value (2024: £4,059 million or 25%) in the year to 31 March 2025. This return included a £273 million foreign exchange translation loss, net of a gain from foreign exchange hedging.

Action had another very strong year and was the principal driver of the return, generating GIR of £4,551 million or 32% of its opening value. We also received significant realised proceeds from Action, with a portion of these proceeds reinvested to acquire an additional stake in the business. Our other long-term hold Private Equity asset, Royal Sanders, delivered another year of strong organic and acquisitive growth.

Across the remaining portfolio, a number of assets within the consumer and private label sectors performed well and we saw an encouraging trajectory for several of our healthcare assets. The majority of our industrial assets continue to pay cash dividends and performed well, whilst our services and software assets were largely resilient against a difficult IT market backdrop. We saw underperformance from a limited number of assets exposed to weaker end markets.

We maintained disciplined pricing, completing three new investments, invested further capital across several existing portfolio companies and enhanced our existing portfolio through 12 strategic bolt-on acquisitions. In addition to proceeds received from Action, we also generated significant realised proceeds from the exit of two portfolio companies at money multiples of 2x or greater.

Overall, the Private Equity portfolio value increased to £23,558 million at 31 March 2025 (31 March 2024: £19,629 million).

Table 1: Gross investment return for the year to 31 March

Investment and realisation activity

We maintained a selective and disciplined investment approach, allocating £881 million to our existing portfolio companies and £318 million across three new investments.

In July 2024, Action raised €2.1 billion through a refinancing event and completed a capital restructuring with a pro-rata share redemption. As a result, 3i received total proceeds of £1,164 million. Alongside several existing LPs in the 2020 Co-Investor Programme, 3i took the opportunity to acquire an additional stake in Action. Including a small subsequent purchase of an existing LP stake later in the year, 3i reinvested  £768 million, increasing its gross equity stake from 54.8% to 57.9%.

In July 2024, we invested £98 million to acquire Constellation, a hybrid cloud and cybersecurity managed services provider based in France. In addition to Endexar, which was acquired on closing, Constellation has completed three bolt-on acquisitions since our investment and remains well positioned to be a key consolidator in a fragmented French IT services market. In January 2025, we invested £121 million for the acquisition of WaterWipes, a global, premium, limited ingredient, natural wet wipe brand focused on the baby category, with new product innovation in the adult category. Finally, in February 2025, we completed the £99 million investment in OMS Prüfservice, the largest specialised service provider in testing of electrical systems and equipment for B2B customers in the DACH region.

We invested a further £54 million in ten23 health, as we continue to develop the CDMO platform and a further £39 million in Royal Sanders. We also provided £6 million of capital to support Wilson through challenging trading conditions. EBG returned £22 million of funding within 12 months of our investment to support its acquisition of coolback in 2023.

Our buy-and-build strategy remains fundamental to the successful delivery of the investment case for many of our portfolio companies. In FY2025, we completed 12 bolt-on acquisitions across six portfolio companies, with only one requiring additional 3i investment. Further details of selected bolt-on acquisitions can be found in the Private Equity business review section of our Annual report and accounts 2025.

We completed two realisations in FY2025, generating total proceeds of £659 million. In July 2024 we completed the sale of nexeye for proceeds of £382 million, achieving a modest profit over its 31 March 2024 valuation. When combined with distributions received during our investment period, this resulted in a sterling money multiple of 2.0x. We also completed the realisation of WP in October 2024, delivering total proceeds of £280 million which, including interest income of £3 million, represented an 18% premium to its 31 March 2024 valuation. Including the £45 million received earlier in our ownership, this resulted in a sterling money multiple of 2.2x. Further details for both of these portfolio companies can be found in our Annual report and accounts 2025.

In total, in the year to 31 March 2025, our Private Equity team invested £1,177 million (2024: £556 million) and generated total proceeds of £1,827 million (2024: £866 million).

Performance in 2024 was softer, as a result of lower footfall in stores and net store closures. Recent order intake has been more positive. In February 2025, we passed our holding in YDEON to Tikehau Capital for no proceeds.

Healthcare portfolio companies

Our healthcare portfolio saw good commercial momentum in 2024. Cirtec Medical delivered strong performance across the majority of its core sites in 2024, driven by elevated demand from its key customers. The business won a number of attractive programmes in 2024, which have the potential to be significant revenue contributors in the near to medium term. SaniSure saw demand patterns normalise for the majority of its business lines through the second half of 2024, as the bioprocessing market stabilised following a period of prolonged destocking after the pandemic. Over the last two years, the business has made significant investment in long-term initiatives and operational excellence that is already delivering good momentum.

ten23 health continued to make good progress. Its Basel site continues to develop well, with a number of new programmes signed from new and existing customers. Its existing Visp site is expected to achieve 100% utilisation in 2025, following a facility remediation at the end of 2024, which will facilitate the fulfilment of its strong order book. Q Medical Devices (Q Holding) performed well in 2024, with good demand from most of its customers across its business units.

Industrial portfolio companies

Our industrial portfolio delivered good overall performance in the year. Tato saw good volume growth and improved margin performance in 2024, despite operating in a market that is showing relatively muted demand and a tougher regulatory and competitor dynamic. Tato's cash conversion remained strong and we received £13 million of dividends in FY2025. AES produced another good result in 2024, as end-market conditions improved and the business continued to make gains on larger competitors in its sector. The business also completed two bolt-on acquisitions in FY2025, strengthening its offering in North America. Cash generation remained strong, and we recorded dividends of £4 million from the business in FY2025. Dynatect delivered a stable performance in the year, despite delays in the ramp-up of a key contract.

Services and software portfolio companies

The global third-party IT equipment maintenance market was weaker in 2024, largely as a result of a dip in acquired new equipment in 2020-21, which is then typically serviced three to four years post-acquisition. Operating in this market, Evernex saw positive performance in 2024 and the business completed the acquisition of Ultra Support, a pure third-party maintenance player for data centres, servers and networking equipment in the UK. MAIT's buy-and-build strategy continued in 2024, with the business completing a further three bolt-on acquisitions at accretive multiples. The business maintained a good level of overall performance, despite weaker market demand across IT solutions. xSuite had a good 2024, characterised by annualised software bookings growth, and we have reflected its progress towards a SaaS model via its valuation multiple. Its recent acquisition of tangro is already delivering a positive contribution.

The recruitment market has experienced a very challenging two years. More recent geopolitical uncertainty has pushed out expectations of a near-term market recovery. Operating in this environment has proved challenging. As a result, Wilson has seen significant pressure on its top line and overall profitability. Whilst it continues to generate new wins, it has undertaken a number of operational initiatives and efficiencies to ensure the business is well positioned to ramp up quickly when the wider market rebounds. We have reflected the challenges Wilson has experienced through our valuation, resulting in a total unrealised value reduction of £88 million for FY2025. During the year, arrivia and Redweek legally separated, and we retained our stake in Redweek. arrivia is no longer part of the 3i portfolio.

Overall, 97% of the portfolio by value grew LTM adjusted earnings in the year (31 March 2024: 93%). Table 4 shows the earnings growth of our top 20 Private Equity investments.

Excluding Action, the Private Equity portfolio valued on an earnings basis generated £642 million (2024: £689 million) of value growth from performance increases, offsetting £138 million of performance decreases (2024: £368 million).

Table 3: Unrealised profits on the revaluation of Private Equity investments¹ in the year to 31 March

Table 4: Portfolio earnings growth of the top 20 Private Equity¹ investments

Leverage

Our Private Equity portfolio is funded with all-senior debt structures, with long-dated maturity profiles. As at 31 March 2025, 91% of portfolio company debt was repayable from 2028 to 2032.

Average leverage across the portfolio was 2.9x (31 March 2024: 2.7x). Excluding Action, leverage across the portfolio was 3.5x (31 March 2024: 3.9x).

Table 5: Ratio of net debt to adjusted earnings¹

Multiple movements

When selecting multiples to value our portfolio companies, we take a long-term, through-the-cycle approach and consider a number of factors including recent performance, outlook and bolt-on activity, comparable recent market transactions and exit plans, and the performance of quoted comparable companies. At each reporting date, our valuation multiples are considered as part of a robust valuation process, which includes independent challenge throughout, including from our external auditor, culminating in the quarterly Valuations Committee of the Board.

Global markets saw a strong rally in 2024, as inflation stabilised and central banks began easing interest rates. However, the start of 2025 has been marked by increased volatility, driven by geopolitical uncertainty and shifting trade policies.

Against this backdrop, we have remained cautious in considering the valuation multiples we use for our portfolio companies. We increased the multiple for two of our portfolio companies in the year to reflect their performance against their respective investment cases and adjusted four multiples downwards, largely to reflect trading and the dynamics of their respective end-markets. In total, we recognised a net nil unrealised value movement from multiple movements in the year (March 2024: £39 million loss). At 31 March 2025, our current weighted average post-discount multiple (excluding Action) was 13.4x (31 March 2024: 13.0x).

We have made no changes to our approach to the valuation of Action. Action's performance and KPIs continue to compare favourably to its peer group's, which consists of North American and European value-for-money retailers. This supports our post-discount valuation multiple of 18.5x, which is unchanged from the prior year. We take comfort from the fact that Action's continued growth meant that its valuation at 31 March 2024 translated to only 14.7x (post-discount) the run-rate EBITDA achieved one year later. Based on the valuation at 31 March 2025, a 1.0x movement in Action's post-discount multiple would increase or decrease the valuation of 3i's investment by £1,129 million.

Quoted portfolio

Basic-Fit is the only quoted investment in our Private Equity portfolio. In 2024, Basic-Fit's memberships increased by 12% year-on-year and it added 173 clubs to its network.

Our remaining 5.7% stake in Basic-Fit was valued at £60 million at 31 March 2025 (31 March 2024: £67 million), following an 8.8% decrease in its share price to €18.86 (31 March 2024: €20.68).

Sum of the parts

At 31 March 2025, ten23 health was valued on a sum of the parts basis, using a discounted cash flow ("DCF") methodology for its operating lines. We continued to invest in the platform during the year and the business is making good progress across each of its operating lines.

Assets under management

The assets under management of the Private Equity portfolio, including third-party capital, increased to £31.9 billion (31 March 2024: £27.5 billion), primarily due to unrealised value movements in the year.

Table 6: Private Equity assets by sector as at 31 March 2025

Infrastructure

We manage funds investing principally in mid-market economic infrastructure in Europe and North America. Infrastructure is a defensive asset class that provides a good source of income and fund management fees for the Group as well as long-term capital gains.

Our Infrastructure portfolio generated a GIR of £52 million, or 3% on the opening portfolio value (2024: £99 million, 7%). This performance was principally driven by a good level of dividend and interest income alongside value growth from our infrastructure funds, which more than offset the subdued share price performance of our quoted stake in 3iN.

3iN's underlying portfolio continues to deliver good performance, and 3iN completed a significant realisation in the year, achieving an impressive money multiple of 3.6x, reaffirming the strong market demand for high-quality infrastructure assets. In addition, 3iN successfully executed two significant refinancings which returned cash proceeds and completed two strategic further investments and a syndication within its portfolio companies.

Our North American Infrastructure Fund ("NAIF") continued to advance its buy-and-build strategy, with two portfolio companies completing three acquisitions, further enhancing their growth trajectory and operational scale.

Table 7: Gross investment return for the year to 31 March

Fund management

3iN

3iN generated a total return on opening NAV of 10.1% for the year to 31 March 2025, ahead of its total return target of 8% to 10% per annum, and delivered its dividend target of 12.65 pence per share, a 6.3% increase on last year.

This result was driven by good performance and momentum across the majority of 3iN's portfolio companies, as the portfolio continues to benefit from long-term growth drivers.

advancing various business development initiatives. This includes the successful rollout of 450 new United States Postal Service lockers and securing several ancillary service wins across its international locations.

At 31 March 2025, Smarte Carte was valued at £308 million on a DCF basis (31 March 2024: £306 million). We also received cash interest income of £6 million in the year from the business.

Table 8: Assets under management as at 31 March 2025

Table 9: Infrastructure portfolio movement for the year to 31 March 2025

Financial review

Table 11: Total return for the year to 31 March

Interest payable

The Group recognised interest payable of £65 million (2024: £61 million). Interest payable includes interest on the Group's loans and borrowings and amortisation of capitalised fees.

Operating cash profit

We generated an operating cash profit of £469 million in the year (2024: £467 million). Cash income increased to £598 million (2024: £594 million), principally due to an increase in dividend income, which included £433 million of cash dividends from Action (2024: £375 million). We also received cash dividends from 3iN, Scandlines and Tato, as well as cash fees from our external funds. Excluding the dividends received from Action, the operating cash profit was £36 million (2024: £92 million).

We paid cash operating expenses of £129 million (2024: £127 million) in the year. Cash operating expenses were lower than the £150 million (2024: £147 million) of operating expenses recognised in the Consolidated statement of comprehensive income as a result of share-based payments and other non-cash expenses.

Table 13: Operating cash profit for the year to 31 March

Carried interest and performance fees

We receive carried interest and performance fees from third-party funds and 3iN. We also pay carried interest and performance fees to participants in plans relating to returns from investments. These are received and/or paid subject to meeting certain performance conditions and when cash proceeds have been received following a realisation, refinancing event or other cash distribution and performance hurdles are passed in cash terms. Due to the passage of time between investment and realisation, the schemes are usually active for a number of years and their participants include both current and previous employees of 3i. In Private Equity (excluding Action), we typically accrue net carried interest payable of c.12% of GIR, once the performance hurdle is achieved, based on the assumption that all investments are realised at their balance sheet value.

The overall strong performance of the Private Equity portfolio resulted in a £70 million increase in the carried interest payable expense. During the year, we reduced our carried interest and performance fees payable liability following the full crystallisation of the remaining carried interest liability of £428 million relating to Action. Going forward, we have no carried interest dilution to our 57.9% gross stake in Action.

In Infrastructure, 3iN pays a performance fee based on its NAV on an annual basis, subject to a hurdle rate of return. The continued strong performance of the assets held by 3iN resulted in the recognition of £29 million (2024: £62 million) of performance fees receivable, with £42 million received during the year.

Overall, the effect of the income statement charge of £81 million (2024: £305 million), cash payments of £521 million (2024: £778 million), as well as currency translation meant that the balance sheet carried interest and performance fees payable was £360 million (31 March 2024: £818 million).