Key takeaways

Portfolio scale: Fund now invested across 70+ portfolio companies, fifteen underlying funds and five managers; €70 million committed capital.

Performance: Unaudited NAV up approximately 5% in the first quarter of operations (Q4 2025; 20% on an annualised basis); acquisition discounts unwound gradually rather than marked up on day one.

Capital activity: 99% invested at 31 March 2026, with no standing cash drag; one early realisation expected to distribute to investors in September 2026.

Transactions: Two further secondary acquisitions closed on 31 March (DACH mid-market; Nordic sustainability) at a blended ~20% discount to NAV.

Market backdrop: Higher-for-longer rates continue to suppress exits and fundraising; mid-market secondaries operate as a buyer’s market for disciplined capital.

Outlook: Luxembourg vehicle on track to open within coming months; stock-exchange listing application submitted and under regulatory review.

Dear investors, friends, and colleagues,

Welcome to the second edition (Q2 2026) of the GateVest quarterly fund update. The first three months of 2026 have been a period of both portfolio consolidation and forward progress on structural priorities: we have added two new managers to the portfolio, deepened our exposure across vintages and themes, recorded our first interim valuation marks for the inaugural quarter of operations, and made meaningful progress on the structural initiatives that will define our scaling path through 2026 and beyond. We have taken delivery of the first set of portfolio reports for Q4 2025 from our underlying managers and are currently working through our first annual audit cycle with Deloitte. The fund is now invested across more than 70 portfolio companies, fifteen underlying funds and five managers, representing €70 million of committed capital managed by GateVest. On geography, largest-single-holding and sector concentration measures, the portfolio is broadly diversified, in several respects more so than concentrated public equity benchmarks such as S&P500.

Market commentary

The global private equity landscape over the first five months of 2026 has continued to transition from an era of multiple expansion driven by cheap leverage to a mature phase strictly reliant on operational value creation. Unexpectedly hot April inflation prints have effectively collapsed market probabilities for near-term Federal Reserve rate cuts, cementing a higher-for-longer cost of capital that continues to suppress traditional M&A and IPO exit channels. The market consequently remains in a selective recovery rather than a broad-based rebound, operating under an pronounced liquidity constraint. While exit activity has improved in aggregate value terms, underlying transaction volumes have contracted to their lowest levels since Q1 2021, and global private equity fundraising has fallen to $373 billion, the lowest threshold since Q1 2017. This distribution drought has compounded structural strains for institutional limited partners. Awaiting delayed exits and heavily impacted by the denominator effect, these LPs find themselves structurally overallocated to illiquid private equity strategies. As a result, they are increasingly compelled to sell down established positions not only to manage immediate cash flows and rebalance portfolios, but to actively lower their total exposure to the private equity sector down to mandated target levels.

This systemic pressure has driven distinct dynamics across the secondary market, where Q1 transaction volumes declined modestly year-over-year as buyers exercised rigorous underwriting restraint amid wide bid-ask spreads. Concurrently, massive inflows of retail capital are flowing into the asset class, but this liquidity is heavily concentrated, primarily impacting large-cap managers and mega funds while leaving mid-market pricing largely insulated. This concentration acts as a structural tailwind for GateVest; it aggressively capitalizes the largest players, ensuring they remain well-funded off-takers equipped to buy graduating portfolio assets from our mid-market funds. Meanwhile, the mid-market itself operates as a pronounced buyer’s market, where GateVest is regularly one of a small number of bidders on portfolios of this profile, sometimes the sole bidder. The slower distribution environment continually yields liquidity-driven selling of older fund vintages by overallocated LPs. By maintaining strict price discipline and deploying differentiated underwriting, we are uniquely positioned to convert these isolated processes into highly attractive entry points across seasoned, strong mid-market funds.

A sustained oil price shock through the rest of this year would weigh on roughly 12–13% of the portfolio, concentrated in our position in a car wash operator whose customer traffic is directly sensitive to gasoline prices, plus several energy-intensive industrial and delivery-led holdings, partially offset by a small tailwind in our energy-transition, grid and surplus-food exposures. Management estimates the net NAV drag at around €1-2 million. Direct and indirect SaaS exposure represents about 10% of NAV (~€6 million), split between AI-beneficiary software that should hold up better in a re-rating, AI-neutral subscription names that would track a broad multiple compression, and one position structurally exposed to LLM disruption. Fully reflecting a 2022-style public-market software repricing in our marks, net of the AI-beneficiary cushion, management estimates the hit at up to €2-3 million. Combined, the two scenarios together put €3–4 million, or 4–5% of portfolio NAV, at risk, and while both developments are negative for us in the abstract, management’s view is that the direct impact on the Fund’s valuation in these scenarios should be limited, in the low single-digit percent of NAV.

Performance update

For the first quarter of operations, covering the period from 30 September to 31 December 2025, the fund’s NAV has increased by approx. 5% (20% on an annualised basis). This figure represents management’s preliminary estimate and remains subject to the ongoing audit being completed by Deloitte. While the reporting window is short and not a basis from which to extrapolate to imaginary 20% annual returns, this initial mark is consistent with our expectation that the portfolio would begin to recognise value steadily as underlying funds report their year-end valuations.

It is worth highlighting what this 5% interim performance figure does not include. In line with our valuation policy, the figure does not reflect the full immediate revaluation of our acquired stakes back up from our purchase price to the underlying funds’ reported NAVs, which is the standard market practice followed by virtually all of our competitors. We instead unwind acquisition discounts gradually over the remaining life of each underlying fund, as discussed in our first quarterly fund update. We believe this approach more accurately reflects the underlying economic value of the Fund’s assets and represents a deliberate point of differentiation from standard market practice.

We have crystallised two further value-realisation events during the period. In one of our recent secondary acquisitions, the manager has announced that the single largest asset in our acquired portfolio (representing approximately €4.3 million of NAV) is being contributed to a continuation vehicle at a value uplift of approximately 34% on this asset alone relative to our acquisition cost from 31 December 2025, equivalent to a ~50%+ IRR depending on the timing of the continuation vehicle’s launch.

Separately, in another recently acquired fund, a junior equity stake held in one of the underlying portfolio companies was sold approximately two weeks after our investment closed, generating proceeds of more than 6x our cost (a 500% uplift) from 31 March 2026. While the absolute quantum is small (representing roughly 10% of the relevant fund investment), the early realisation is an encouraging early signal that is expected to result in a distribution to GateVest in September 2026, following regulatory approvals.
Taken together with the realisation we reported in our first quarterly fund update, these are now three early realisations, all materially in our favour. Without exaggeration, the first three exits the fund has experienced have all without exception been an outsized success. We do not expect every realisation to follow this pattern, and these three positions represent a relatively small portion of the overall fund’s asset base, but the signal they send about the quality of the portfolio and the underwriting that produced it is encouraging.

Capital deployment

A defining feature of our structure is that we are not constrained by the large liquidity reserves that typically weigh on evergreen private equity fund-of-funds vehicles. Because our liquidity mechanism allows us to fund outstanding redemptions out of incoming subscriptions, we are not required to hold the 15–20% cash buffer that is standard at competing evergreen products. As of 31 March 2026, GateVest is approximately 99% invested in private market strategies, with the residual held in cash and listed securities. This allows us to deploy substantially more of our investors’ capital into private equity strategies and removes a meaningful source of return drag relative to peers.

Acquisitions update

We completed two further secondary acquisitions during the first quarter, both closing on 31 March 2026, taking the fund to a portfolio invested across five managers and fifteen underlying funds. Both transactions were sourced from institutional sellers seeking liquidity for portfolio-rebalancing reasons and were acquired at a blended discount of nearly 20% to the underlying funds’ NAV.

DACH mid-market specialist
A mid-market buyout manager focused on the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). The manager pursues complex situations including corporate carve-outs, succession-driven buyouts, and turnaround acquisitions across industrials, healthcare, business services, and technology, a strategy that depends on operational change rather than financial engineering for value creation. The manager’s prior funds have delivered a net money multiple of roughly 3.0x and a net IRR of approximately 30%. Three exits are currently being actively prepared by the manager for completion before the autumn of 2026, creating the potential for an accelerated distribution profile in the near term.

Nordic sustainability specialist
A Nordic-focused sustainability specialist that invests exclusively in companies whose business models address structural global challenges. The manager’s first two funds have delivered an average net IRR of 28% and a 2.2x net multiple, both placing firmly in the top quartile of European buyout benchmarks. We acquired LP interests across various vintages of the manager at a substantial discount to the most recent NAV mark, providing immediate exposure to a meaningful number of additional underlying portfolio companies and the diversification benefit of a thematically distinct, sustainability-aligned strategy that is largely uncorrelated with the rest of our portfolio.

Reporting calendar

Investor account statements for Q4 2025 are currently in preparation by our fund administrator. As this is the Fund’s inaugural audit cycle, the auditor is completing a one-off setup, classification and policy validation work before the first set of fund financials can be signed off, and we accordingly expect the first investor account statements to be circulated by the end of June. Going forward, we expect to circulate the year-end (31 December) investor account statements by the end of May each year, and the statements for each of the other three quarter-ends within approximately 2.5 months of the relevant quarter-end. This timing reflects the structural reality of secondary funds: the fund cannot finalise its own statements until the underlying funds have validated their numbers.

Structural initiatives

The Luxembourg initiative continues to progress on track. We are working towards opening the Luxembourg gates for new and existing investors within the coming months. Luxembourg is a substantially more recognised jurisdiction than Malta amongst institutional investors across Continental Europe and the Middle East, and will materially broaden our capital-raising reach while adding only modest incremental running cost (less than 15 basis points of NAV per annum).

In parallel, GateVest has completed and submitted the application for a listing on a stock exchange and is currently awaiting processing by the regulator. The listing, once approved, will add an additional layer of transparency for investors, provide a publicly visible reference for the fund, and expand the universe of capital allocators able to invest, particularly amongst those with a listed-fund eligibility requirement.

We are grateful for the partnership of our investors as the platform matures from launch into a more institutional, multi-jurisdictional structure. Our focus over the coming quarter remains unchanged: deploying capital with discipline, building the operational backbone needed to scale the platform thoughtfully, and keeping our communications honest and substance-driven. We will be in touch again in Q3 of this year.

Kind regards,
Michael Kollar

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
This quarterly fund update may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or passed to any other person without GateVest’s prior written consent. This quarterly fund update is provided for information purposes only. It does not constitute, and may not be used for the purposes of, an offer or invitation to subscribe for or purchase any Fund Shares or other securities, nor a recommendation or investment advice. The GateVest Global Private Equity Fund is a Professional Investor Fund regulated in Malta and may only be promoted to Qualifying Investors. The Malta Financial Services Authority has made no assessment or value judgement in respect of this communication, the Fund or the Fund Shares. Investors are not protected by any statutory compensation arrangements. Any NAV, performance, valuation or other portfolio information is based on underlying investments’ reported information and, except at fiscal year-end, is generally unaudited and may be estimated and subject to revision. Performance figures presented in this quarterly fund update are calculated on a blended, time-weighted, chain-linked basis across all share classes of the Fund, and reflect Fund-level returns rather than the experience of any individual share class or investor. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Investors should refer to the latest Offering Memorandum and Offering Supplement and obtain independent professional advice before making any investment decisions.