Very interesting interview. Great to see Schneider Electric making an intelligent go at the CVC model. Due to Climate and the need for intelligent low carbon technology, the opportunities this will open up will be massive. I’d really have loved to have dug into the specifics about the fund type and how long term the incentives really are for the team. Is it effectively a 2 and 20 / 10 year fund, or is it structured differently - such as a permanent or patient capital pool? This in my view would give the characteristic that is so important - which true longevity and continuity. That said, I really like how you dug into the detail to uncover the performance criterial, which is double bottom line and with revenue, business, avoided R&D and other targets. Super impressive - and Heriberto clearly has a vision for what he and the team are doing.
Thank you for your question. The way we measure the strategic fit includes: R&D Savings due to licensing technology from our start-ups rather than building it in house (typical make VS buy decision), the time to market we save (hard to put a dollar figure on that but we have a qualitative sentence), sales of new solutions/offers coming from our start-ups and pull-through from our existing businesses/offers that is achieved by selling these new offers or supplying our start-ups. On the financial side it is very simple, what is the MoIC (Multiple of Invested Capital) and IRR. Our main long term compensation is carried interest and we have a hurdle rate under which we get cero carry, so we are very incentivized to make good investments and create value for our portfolio companies. What we have not solved is what you mention of putting incentives to invest in technologies or other type of innovation that has a very long payback. In that dimension ours behaves like a typical VC fund that is not suited to invest in companies where the payback is more than 10 years away. We do have more flexibility on returning the capital than a typical purely financial fund, we can be more patient and will never pressure a company to reach a liquidity event prematurely, however as mentioned we have an IRR threshold so very long payback periods kill the IRR and we will not invest with a very long investment horizon, our limit is around 10 years Max at the beginning of the fund and we must have conviction that the outcome/multiple will be very very attractive in case we succeed.
Felicidades Heriberto por ésta interesante entrevista.
thanks
Thank you
Very interesting interview. Great to see Schneider Electric making an intelligent go at the CVC model. Due to Climate and the need for intelligent low carbon technology, the opportunities this will open up will be massive. I’d really have loved to have dug into the specifics about the fund type and how long term the incentives really are for the team. Is it effectively a 2 and 20 / 10 year fund, or is it structured differently - such as a permanent or patient capital pool? This in my view would give the characteristic that is so important - which true longevity and continuity. That said, I really like how you dug into the detail to uncover the performance criterial, which is double bottom line and with revenue, business, avoided R&D and other targets. Super impressive - and Heriberto clearly has a vision for what he and the team are doing.
Thanks - indeed its early days and some of the lessons are being implemented as we speak. Let me see if i can bring Heriberto into the discussion.
Thank you for your question. The way we measure the strategic fit includes: R&D Savings due to licensing technology from our start-ups rather than building it in house (typical make VS buy decision), the time to market we save (hard to put a dollar figure on that but we have a qualitative sentence), sales of new solutions/offers coming from our start-ups and pull-through from our existing businesses/offers that is achieved by selling these new offers or supplying our start-ups. On the financial side it is very simple, what is the MoIC (Multiple of Invested Capital) and IRR. Our main long term compensation is carried interest and we have a hurdle rate under which we get cero carry, so we are very incentivized to make good investments and create value for our portfolio companies. What we have not solved is what you mention of putting incentives to invest in technologies or other type of innovation that has a very long payback. In that dimension ours behaves like a typical VC fund that is not suited to invest in companies where the payback is more than 10 years away. We do have more flexibility on returning the capital than a typical purely financial fund, we can be more patient and will never pressure a company to reach a liquidity event prematurely, however as mentioned we have an IRR threshold so very long payback periods kill the IRR and we will not invest with a very long investment horizon, our limit is around 10 years Max at the beginning of the fund and we must have conviction that the outcome/multiple will be very very attractive in case we succeed.