CapMan Q1'26 flash comment: Good start to the year

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 5/6/2026 at 8:45 am EEST.

CapMan’s Q1 report, published this morning, was better than we expected across the board. The company's recurring fees once again grew faster than we anticipated, despite new sales remaining sluggish during the review period as expected. Investment income was also higher than anticipated. The market outlook appears better than we feared, and the company expects to make progress in key fundraising processes in the coming months. Preliminarily, we see only limited need to revise our estimates, and the investment case still relies heavily on successful new sales this year.

Revenue growth was brisker than expected

CapMan's revenue increased by 25% to 16.3 MEUR year-on-year (Q1'25: 13.0 MEUR), exceeding our forecast of 15.3 MEUR. The forecast beat was largely driven by recurring fees, which again grew faster than we expected. Subdued new sales do not explain this difference, and we believe that the explanation again lies with the Midstar arrangement of the hotel fund. Additionally, the company recorded marginal carried interest income of 0.3 MEUR for the first part of the year, whereas we had anticipated it to be essentially zero.

As expected, new sales were sluggish in the first months of the year, and gross sales totaled 60 MEUR. Due to capital returns, assets under management remained at the year-end level of 7.2 BEUR, as expected.

Adjusted EBIT exceeded expectations, supported by investment income

Although the company's comparable EBIT decreased slightly from the strong comparison period, it still reached 6.1 MEUR, surpassing our expectation of 4.9 MEUR. This earnings beat was primarily due to higher-than-expected investment income. Despite market uncertainty, investment income was at a moderate level. We note that the significance of investment income for CapMan is minimal on a quarterly basis.

The essential core of the investment case, fee profit, improved by 48% year-on-year, landing exactly at our estimated 2.2 MEUR (Q1'25: 1.5 MEUR). Costs were slightly higher than we expected, but this was offset by stronger-than-expected growth. The company states in its report that the scalability of the business will be fully realized when large funds reach their target size. There were no surprises in the income statement's bottom lines, and EPS was 2 cents (Q1'26e: 1 cent).

Market outlook better than feared

CapMan reiterated its familiar estimate for the current year’s outlook: "CapMan estimates assets under management to grow in 2026. The company estimates fee profit also to grow in 2026." The company's comments on the fundraising market were surprisingly positive, despite the war in Iran and rising interest rates. This supports our view that investors are becoming increasingly tolerant of geopolitical uncertainty. The company also stated that it expects the first close of the Nordic Real Estate 4 and Infra 3 funds in the coming months. The schedule for Infra would be especially rapid, indicating strong demand for the fund.