Brookfield Business Partners - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Brookfield Business Partners Second Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call and Webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, simply press star one one on your touchtone phone. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alan Fleming, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Fleming.

Alan Fleming (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator, and good morning. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that in responding to questions and talking about our growth initiatives and our financial operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and future results may differ materially. For further information on known risk factors, I encourage you to review our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S., which are available on our website.

Joining me on the call today is Cyrus Madon Chief Executive Officer, Anuj Ranjan, President, and Jaspreet Dehl, our Chief Financial Officer. We're also joined today by Pat McHugh, the Chief Executive Officer of Scientific Games, our lottery services and technology operation. Cyrus will lead off the call today and provide an update on our strategic initiatives, followed by Anuj, who will discuss the evolution of our technology strategy. Patrick will provide an update on Scientific Games, and Jaspreet will finish with a review of our financial results. The team will then be available to take your questions. With that, I'll pass it along to Cyrus.

Cyrus Madon (CEO)

Thanks, Alan. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us on the call today. We had a good quarter. Adjusted EBITDA increased 15% over last year, and our Adjusted EBITDA margin continues to improve. Our largest businesses are performing well. Most of these are industry leaders. They're critical to their customers. They can't be easily replaced, and they have strong pricing power, which is really important during periods of inflation. This has all contributed to their stable earnings and resilient cash flows. While the operating environment still has its challenges today, things seem to be normalizing. Energy costs have eased. In most cases, material prices are down from last year. Freight rates are well below where they were below peak levels, and the worst of the global supply chain issues seem to be behind us.

Labor markets, though, are still very tight, although wage rates are stabilizing in most regions, and we're seeing slight reductions in absenteeism and turnover rates across our businesses. For the most part, volumes are holding up. We have some pockets of softness, but for the most part, they're holding up. The pricing we put in place across many of our operations is contributing to resilient margins. Global capital markets are also turning the corner. The risk of material increases to short-term interest rates is lower as inflation subsides, and longer-term rates are still at a reasonable level. Credit markets are opening for higher quality issuers to extend or refinance existing borrowings, which is a benefit for most of our businesses. In fact, over the last few weeks, we refinanced about $5 billion of debt at four of our businesses.

four of these refinancings were done at an all-in, Sorry, three of these refinancings were done at an all-in cost, slightly less than the cost of debt that was replaced. We're also continuing to make progress on sales processes. Greenergy, our road fuels distribution operation, reached an agreement to sell its North American gas station assets during the quarter. The sale will deleverage that business, enable it to focus on the growth of its European renewable fuels business, and generate about $75 million of proceeds for us. In July, we sold a majority of Cardone, our automotive aftermarket parts remanufacturing operation, to a larger competitor. Cardone was subscaled, and it struggled to fully recover from the severe impacts of the pandemic.

Merging it with a larger competitor, taking back a royalty interest on the performance of a bigger business, was the best path forward for a tough investment. The sale of Westinghouse remains on track. We're working through the remaining regulatory approvals. We're targeting to close the transaction in the next several months. All in all, we're pleased with our continued progress. Our operations are well-positioned as we look forward. We may have some opportunities to acquire high-quality businesses from owners who don't have access to capital, as the impacts of recent rate increases continue to work their way through the system. With that, I'm gonna hand it over to Anuj to talk about the evolution of our strategy in the technology, in technology and the recent acquisition of Network International. Thanks, Anuj.

Anuj Ranjan (President)

Thanks, Cyrus. Good morning, everyone. Most of our value creation over the years has been achieved by acquiring high-quality industrial and services businesses at reasonable prices and improving their operating performance. The returns we've generated over the last two decades have been excellent, and we're now applying this very same playbook to the technology sector. We're targeting mature software and technology services businesses that have all the same qualities which Cyrus talked about earlier. These are market leaders with strong pricing power and durable competitive positions, which provide products and services that customers need in any environment. Over the past few years, we spent a lot of time building out dedicated capability to grow our technology presence. We started on a smaller scale, acquiring businesses like Everise, a tech-enabled customer experience company for large global healthcare and technology clients.

In a short amount of time, we've tripled the EBITDA of the business by scaling its servicing capabilities, growing its addressable market, and increasing its margins. There's good interest for this business from potential buyers, and we think an eventual sale is likely to generate multiples of what we bought it for. More recently, we've acquired larger-scale technology businesses. As you know, last year, we acquired CDK Global, our dealer software and technology services operation. Since then, we've made excellent progress in our value creation plans, improving margins by 10% and increasing annualized EBITDA by over $200 million. In June, we agreed to acquire Network International for about $3 billion. Network is the market-leading payment processor in the Middle East. The business provides services to support the financial backbone of the economies in which it operates.

Technology allows businesses and governments to securely process both physical and online payments. It also acts on behalf of banks to manage transactions for 18 million credit and debit cards. The business has all the hallmarks of an essential service provider and a strong track record, supported by a leading technology stack and relationships with more than 150,000 enterprise customers. Payments are an enormous industry, benefiting from strong secular tailwinds. The global digital payment space is more than $2 trillion today and growing at an estimated 10% annually. The shift in consumer spending from traditional cash to digital and online transactions is underpinning the strong industry fundamentals and growth.

The opportunity for us is to combine Network with Magnati, the Middle East payment processor we acquired last year. These are two highly complementary businesses with limited overlap in customer footprints. We expect that combining them will result in meaningful operational synergies and create a platform with significant scale that is the clear industry leader in the region. With that, I'll pass it off to Pat and be available to take your questions.

Pat McHugh (CEO)

Thank you, Anuj. Good morning, everyone. Scientific Games is a trusted leader in the lottery industry, offering a broad suite of innovative technology products, analytics, and services. We have a truly global reach, serving over 140 customers across 50 countries. Our customers view us as an essential service provider and an important strategic partner. As a result, we've been able to foster long-term relationships with government lotteries, many of which have developed over multiple decades. Fundamentally, lotteries exist to support funding for good causes. On an annual basis, lotteries around the world generate over $100 billion of proceeds, which are directed at important social initiatives, including healthcare, infrastructure development, education, and senior and veteran services. Lotteries have been around for hundreds of years.

A little-known fact is that Scientific Games owns the largest collection of historic lottery tickets and artifacts, some of which have been signed by the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Lotteries have funded much of the early infrastructure investment in the US and other nations. We expect these funding sources to become increasingly important, particularly as governments around the world continue to deal with fiscal challenges. At Scientific Games, we have designed comprehensive solutions to support the entire lottery ecosystem. Our largest segment is instant products, where we provide products and services to scratch-card lotteries, including marketing, data analytics, logistics, and printing. We are by far the market leader in instant products, with approximately 4x the market share of our nearest competitor.

Our success in this segment is partially attributed to our unique Scientific Games Enhanced Partnership model, or SGEP, a comprehensive and value-added solution for lotteries, which has proven to deliver above-market performance while generating increased economics for Scientific Games. Complementing our instant products is our systems and iLottery segments. Through these segments, we provide essential technology and hardware systems that are the backbone for many lottery programs around the globe. We also have a full suite of digital capabilities to support the development and operation of government-sponsored iLottery programs. The combination of our unique differentiated solutions and attractive industry fundamentals creates a compelling business model with favorable margins, low ongoing capital requirements, and stable recurring revenue. Our earnings are underpinned by resilient lottery sales, which have grown consistently across economic cycles over the past 30 years.

We're also well-positioned to meet strict regulatory framework and oversights mandated by government lotteries, which require high standards of service and security. We believe these attractive characteristics position the business well for future growth. Over the last year, we've focused on leveraging our strong commercial offering to secure several contract wins. These include new contracts to provide products, services, and technology to global operators, including the UK, Vietnam, and Brazil. Each of these is strategically important wins for the business, which will allow us to greatly expand our global competitive position. In the UK, we were able to secure contracts to support the entire lottery ecosystem across both retail and digital channels. In Vietnam, we secured a national instant products contract by demonstrating the success of our SGEP program across the world.

In Brazil, we secured a greenfield opportunity in a country which has limited existing lottery offerings, positioning us well for larger upcoming contracts. Together, these contracts should increase annual EBITDA by 10% once fully ramped. Over the past 12 months, we've also focused on addressing short-term headwinds related to input cost inflation and electronic component availability. To accomplish this, we've implemented a series of targeted actions, which included, one, executing inflation pass-through mechanics that existed in our contracts. two, repricing contracts ahead of inflation. three, renegotiating key vendor contracts as input costs have started to decline. four, advanced ordering of long lead components, and five, strengthening our supply chain to increase diversity and flexibility. We believe the worst of the headwinds are behind us and expect the full benefit of these actions to be realized by 2024.

We plan to execute on the next phase of growth through four key pillars: converting customers to our high-performing SGEP model, securing new customers and markets, expanding our iLottery offering, and executing on identified operational enhancements. iLottery is a particular area of focus where we expect meaningful growth from the adoption of government-run lottery programs. In simple terms, iLottery is the digital equivalent of physical lotteries, providing consumers with access to lotteries on their smartphones, tablets, and computers. iLottery is still in its infancy in the U.S. today with only 11 active programs. These programs have proven to be highly successful at generating growth, which is incremental to the existing lottery sales. Over time, we expect broader adoption of iLottery programs.

We believe we're well-positioned to capitalize on this growth by virtue of our industry experience, which includes supporting three of the top iLottery programs, our leading capabilities, and the long-term relationships we've developed with many of the existing physical lottery programs. It's an exciting time for Scientific Games. Our unique value proposition has been resonating with customers, as evidenced by the recent commercial wins. This success is creating momentum for future opportunities, including significant anticipated expansion in iLottery. As a result of these efforts, we are primed for sustained and profitable growth as a leader in the technology-driven, omnichannel solutions for government lotteries around the world. With that, I'll hand it over to Jaspreet, and I'll be available to answer questions during the Q&A.

Jaspreet Dehl (CFO)

Thanks, Pat. Good morning, everyone. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $606 million. Adjusted EFO was $185 million. Looking at segment performance, our industrial segment generated second quarter Adjusted EBITDA of $196 million, compared to $204 million last year. Strong performance at our advanced energy storage operation was offset by lower contributions from our smaller, more cyclical natural gas producer and graphite electrode operations. Adjusted EFO was $63 million and included the impact of higher interest and higher tax expense at our advanced energy storage operation. Performance at our advanced energy storage operation remained strong, generating increased Adjusted EBITDA of $113 million for the second quarter.

Results benefited from improved technology mix, driven by the growing demand for higher-margin advanced batteries and the impact of pricing actions, which are more than offsetting inflationary pressures. Our engineered components manufacturing operation is performing well and contributed $44 million to Adjusted EBITDA. While volumes have softened, margins continue to improve, driven by ongoing cost saving and commercial optimization initiatives. Moving to infrastructure services. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter increased to $216 million from $205 million last year. Results benefited from improved performance at our work access services operation and higher contributions from our lottery services operations. Adjusted EFO was $88 million and included a $19 million impact from higher interest expense at our nuclear technology services operation, primarily due to higher borrowings and higher rates.

Performance at our work access services operations have improved meaningfully since last year, generating Adjusted EBITDA of $31 million in the quarter. We're working closely with management on accelerating initiatives to reduce costs, optimize commercial terms, and reposition the business in the current environment. Our modular building leasing services operations generated $41 million of Adjusted EBITDA, in line with last year. Utilization of our units is mixed. The U.K. continues to be soft, given a downturn in broader construction activity, while Germany, France, and Asia Pacific have remained resilient. Strong demand for higher-margin, value-added products and services is contributing to performance. Finally, our business services segment generated second-quarter Adjusted EBITDA of $223 million, which increased from $153 million last year, primarily driven by the contribution from our dealer software and technology services operation.

Adjusted EFO was $119 million includes the impact of a $15 million increase in taxes at our residential mortgage insurer. Our dealer software and technology services business generated Adjusted EBITDA of $56 million. Performance continues to benefit from growth of the business's subscription-based service offering and progress achieved on value creation initiatives to optimize the organizational structure. Our residential mortgage insurer generated $46 million of Adjusted EBITDA. Results are normalizing compared to exceptionally strong levels last year, given the impact of higher mortgage rates on borrowers. Mortgage delinquencies and loss ratios remained low compared to historical levels, are expected to revert to the long-term averages over time. Our Australian healthcare services operation generated EBIT of $16 million. Activity levels improved, higher labor and medical and surgical costs impacted overall performance during the quarter. Turning to our balance sheet.

As Cyrus mentioned, over the last few weeks, we've completed a number of refinancings within our business. To give you a bit more color, in July, we completed a $1.2 billion refinancing at One Toronto, our GTA casino business, and a $300 million refinancing at DexKo. This week, we priced about a $750 million refinancing of a term loan at CDK Global, our dealer software business. All of these were done at a cost of about 8%. In addition, we refinanced about $2.7 billion of BrandSafway's, our work access solutions business, their existing debt. This was done at about 1% higher cost and allowed us to extend maturities of the debt. We did put capital into the business. Our share was about $195 million.

The additional capital we provided will delever the business and give it flexibility to continue to execute on its growth plans. Finally, we ended the quarter with approximately $2.2 billion of corporate liquidity, after accounting for planned funding commitments and expected proceeds from announced business sales. With that, I'd like to close out our comments and turn the call back over to the operator for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one, one on your telephone. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one, one. Our first question comes from the line of Gary Ho with Desjardins Capital Markets.

Gary Ho (Research Analyst and Financial Services)

Thanks, good morning. Maybe I'll just start off with a question for Cyrus. I just wanted to get an update on what you're seeing on both the deployment and monetization side. Just hearing from, from other corporates that, you know, there's a bit of a pickup in activity as of late. Just wanna hear your thoughts. Perhaps you can tie that into kind of where you stand with monetizations for Clarios and BRK as well.

Cyrus Madon (CEO)

Look, I would say as a general comment, the credit markets have definitely improved. You, you can see it in the activity, the substantial activity we've had, and leverage finance is starting to become available for transactions, which will all ultimately lead to more activity in the market. I also think many sponsors, many private equity sponsors are under some pressure from their limited partners to generate proceeds, so there's some motivation to transact. As for our own activity, we've told you what we're up to. We don't have any specific timeline for BRK and Clarios. They are both excellent candidates, for an eventual monetization. We're making progress in both of them, but there are still some things we wanna do in each of those businesses before an eventual monetization. We don't have any specific timeline there.

Gary Ho (Research Analyst and Financial Services)

Okay. Great. Thanks for the color. My second question, maybe for Pat, just on the Scientific Games, specifically the iLottery side, wondering if you can elaborate. I think you mentioned 11 programs for the iLottery right now. Do you envision kind of most of the U.S. states would move to having a program over time? Just wanna gauge the potential market growth opportunity. Do most of the primary providers also service both the physical and the iLottery side, or are there other players that only cater to the iLottery products? Maybe just lastly, just competitive landscape. I know Pollard and others are in the space. Just wondering if they're kind of fairly rational in terms of pricing.

Pat McHugh (CEO)

Yeah, great, great question. We're, we're incredibly focused on expanding the iLottery presence, both our, our position in the market and have continued to support the passage of legislation across the U.S. for our government relations team, working with our government partners to educate them on the value of iLottery. Eventually, we do see the market continuing to open, and all states, at some point, we expect will be selling iLottery along with traditional retail, retail sales. We've had great performance on that. The, you know, every, every place where the industry has introduced internet lottery sales, retail sales have grown. We've had great history of that.

I think we're, we're uniquely positioned, to answer your question competitively, in, in being a full line provider, being able to provide the entire ecosystem for lotteries to leverage our analytics and consumer insights to drive performance seamlessly across the retail and digital channels. That's been a key differentiator for us. The traditional systems providers do provide iLottery. I think our performance in, in particularly being the market leader in instant win games is gives us a unique differentiator. There are some new entrants, just one in particular, that is Pure Play iLottery. I think our position, particularly in being able to service the full ecosystem seamlessly for lotteries, gives us a very unique advantage. We're very bullish on the opportunity.

Gary Ho (Research Analyst and Financial Services)

Okay, great. Then maybe just the last question, either for Cyrus or Jaspreet. Surprised to hear the refi of three of the four recent investments at rates below the last issue. Kind of what's, what's driving that, and what were the maturity dates on these? Maybe just a general comment, can you just remind us the cost of borrowings and the length of maturity overall?

Jaspreet Dehl (CFO)

Yeah, I'll, I'll take that, and then Cyrus can add to it. You know, we're, we're really pleased with the outcomes on the refinancings that we've been able to accomplish, and really, it's a testament to the types of businesses that we own. You know, we've, we've said this before, but these businesses have strong market positions, they're cash flowing, and they perform well in any environment. Quite frankly, they're, you know, the credit investors really like these businesses, which has supported refinancings. You know, we're seeing, we're seeing a real differentiation now between the high-quality businesses versus businesses that are not as high quality around the availability of financings.

I think being able to do these refinancings at the rates that we've been able to accomplish is really a testament to the types of businesses that we own and that we've refinanced. In terms of, you know, the overall cost, as Cyrus said, three of the four that we did more recently were done at an all-in cost lower than where they were. DexKo and CDK, you know, both of these, we've taken financing to do some tuck-in acquisition.

At CDK, we did a refinancing to on a smaller piece of debt, about $750 million of the total cap stack. Again, it was just, both of these businesses have been performing really well, and we were able to refinance at about 8% all-in cost. Sorry, just on your last piece on the maturity. All of the maturities are in that five-seven-year range.

Cyrus Madon (CEO)

The only thing, the only thing I'd add, Cyrus here, is, you know, that there is a very clear flight to quality that we're observing in the markets, and high-quality issuers, meaning high-quality businesses, can raise capital, and then businesses that aren't so over-levered can also raise capital. The flip side of that is we're seeing a lot of good companies that are over-levered or companies that aren't performing so well, really struggling, and their yields have really ballooned out. That's probably gonna create quite a bit of opportunity for new investments as well.

Gary Ho (Research Analyst and Financial Services)

Okay. Thanks for those, those answers. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Kuske with Credit Suisse.

Andrew Kuske (Managing Director)

Thanks. Good morning. I think my first question is really directed to Pat, and it's just on the iLottery transition. As you go from, say, more physical sales to, or physical model to an iLottery model, does that ultimately involve margin expansion? Are you in the sort of transitionary phase where you're really running both systems right now, or it could be a bit more expensive, but ultimately you get to a, an end state that just has higher margins?

Pat McHugh (CEO)

Yeah, great, great question. Let me start with a broader view of iLottery and how it impacts, which I think may be part of it. What we're finding very consistently when we expand into iLottery, is that we see growth in the overall portfolio. A great example is in Pennsylvania, where we launched one of the most successful iLottery programs in the industry in 2018. That quickly grew to $1 billion in sales via the iLottery program. In parallel with that, operating the retail lottery systems, we grew that business from $4 billion-$5 billion, by 20%. Over that period of time, the lottery's gone from $4 billion-$6 billion. It shows the ability to drive that.

We personally, as we've done a carve-out from our previous structure, we re-had shared resources across our iCasino and iLottery business. We're much more nimble now. We expect to continue to see efficiencies and economy of scale with, you know, with just focusing 100% on lottery pure play. As we scale the business, we continue to expect to see margins increase in that, in that area as well. Hopefully, that answers your questions.

Andrew Kuske (Managing Director)

That does. That's excellent. I'm gonna take the second question, a different track, and maybe to Cyrus, just on the market environment. You mentioned the refis that you've done and the, the desire for high yield to go to more quality credits and how that's helped you. More broadly, you know, where are you seeing just sort of better investment opportunities on the debt side, with the toeholds or really equity market dislocations that may exist?

Pat McHugh (CEO)

Yeah. What we see are many, many, many companies that are, continue to be, I'll call, use the word orphaned in the capital markets from an equity perspective. Some of them are great businesses trading at really good valuations. That's an opportunity set. Yet, we found opportunities there before, and we continue to look there. The other side, as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of businesses that are perhaps overlevered, perhaps not, hitting their full potential in terms of margins and cash flows. Many of them are struggling.

In fact, I can't recall the exact number, but there are, you know, I recently saw a list with 200 names of different businesses that had very high yielding debt, like double-digit plus yielding yield to worse. The, the owners of those businesses, are gonna need help to delever if they don't have the wherewithal to come up with the capital themselves. That's really where we're focused today, I would say, on stressed, perhaps distressed situations.

Andrew Kuske (Managing Director)

Okay, appreciate that. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Jaeme Gloyn with National Bank.

Jaeme Gloyn (Analyst, Equity Research, and Diversified Financials)

Yeah, thanks. Question on SG Lottery, or maybe a couple. You know, first one, I guess, is I would have thought that iLottery might cannibalize the physical retail, and clearly in Pennsylvania, the example is otherwise. I guess maybe a little bit of color as to, like, why do you think that is? Do you think that's maybe just a temporary temporary outcome, and eventually it will start to cannibalize physical? Just a little bit more of your perspective on that dynamic.

Pat McHugh (CEO)

Sure. It's a great, great question. The end of... I'll cut to the chase, the answer is no, we don't, as you've noted, it doesn't cannibalize. We don't expect it in the long term, to cannibalize either. We think it's incremental. There's a long history. The outside the U.S., Europe, in particular, where lotteries have been selling on the internet, for quite a period of time, more than a decade. What we've seen is those lotteries that introduced internet and mobile sales accelerated faster on their retail sales of lotteries that hadn't. Here in the U.S., where the first states have been live for about seven years, the same dynamic. They've had record retail sales and outpaced the industry, those lotteries have launched iLottery.

There's a couple reasons for that in our, our belief. Number 1 is this broad appeal of the products, of lottery products. We find both in the retail segment and in digital, when you expand points of distribution and make it easier to purchase a product, we see increase in sales without cannibalization. Again, that's true in retail and, and digital. More than, more than 50% of adult, of the adult population, play this lottery.

Jaeme Gloyn (Analyst, Equity Research, and Diversified Financials)

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Pat McHugh (CEO)

Broad appeal, to a, you know, a small purchase and distribution, expanded distribution makes it easier. The other piece, and I think this is consistent with any consumer product, is that when lotteries start reaching out via internet, you get more presence digitally, digital advertising, awareness of the product, and so you're not only selling on retail, people see the product, I'm sorry, on digital.

When they see the product at retail, they're more adept to buy it because it's top of mind. Many lotteries are still traditional lotteries without an internet presence. They're still doing much of their advertising in traditional markets like media and TV, media, and print. They move into the digital world, they continue to expand that presence. We see this as a long-term dynamic, and it's, it's been very, very, very consistent for, for quite some time.

Jaeme Gloyn (Analyst, Equity Research, and Diversified Financials)

Okay, great. In terms of the growth outlook, you know, the letter in your commentary mentions the UK, Vietnam, Brazil, and the ramping, once fully ramped, should increase EBITDA by 10%. I guess the first question tied to that is, like, what kind of timeframe does it take to get these operations fully, fully ramped? And then the next part of the question is, you know, are these, are these kind of toehold positions in those jurisdictions with an opportunity to kind of land and expand? Or, or how does that, how, how do these, these new relationships set up those jurisdictions, those regions?

Pat McHugh (CEO)

Yeah, great, great question. In established regions like UK and New Zealand, for example, we're going in and displacing a competitor. Generally, look at, you know, one year of implementation, then ramping up over the next year. It's, you know, it's pretty short, short, short term. In greenfield markets, like, you know, Brazil may take a little longer, but again, adoption, once we roll out, is generally over the, kind of the first, the first couple of years, and green market may be slightly longer, but not far off that. We've been very successful and especially when we, when we move into a managed service environment with our, with our customers to find incremental growth, both for our customers with, you know, analytic-driven products and gains and the add-on value.

We're, we go into the market, as you say, get a, you know, even in an established jurisdiction with a contract, base contract, out of the gate, we're providing products and services that are add on on top of the base contract. Everything's around driving performance for our, our lottery customer. It also drives economic performance for us, adding on top of the base and accelerating, not only increased revenue from the sale of the product, but those- all of those products increase, sales of lottery tickets. We're in participation contracts. It's a, it's a multiplier effect.

Jaeme Gloyn (Analyst, Equity Research, and Diversified Financials)

Sorry, just to get a sense as to, like, the geographic expansion opportunities. Are these-- forgive me for not not having the deep dive here, but, like, is the UK a beachhead into Europe? Is Vietnam a beachhead into Asia, Brazil, LatAm? Like, or, or are you well established elsewhere in those in those areas?

Pat McHugh (CEO)

Yeah, different markets in Europe are well established as a technology provider. We provide systems to probably 30 lotteries throughout Europe. What's unique about the UK, not only its size, it's one of the largest lotteries in the world, but we'll be providing the entire ecosystem, and it's a services-based contract as well. It's. You know, in some jurisdictions, we're just providing the technology. In Europe, this is an example of taking the ecosystem, putting in game category management, analytics, and other services to drive performance and being incented on a % of sales.

It's much like taking the US model that we've been successful with and moving it into the European region. In New Zealand, Australia, we have almost no penetration on the technology standpoint, so we, that's, you know, moving into those markets, moving into Africa, Latin America, there's other areas where we could, you know, pick up significant market share, but we don't have that penetration on that, on that side of the stand.

Jaeme Gloyn (Analyst, Equity Research, and Diversified Financials)

Okay. Got it. Good. Just switching gears over to to Cyrus, just in in one of your other answers, you talked about perhaps having a few things to do before eventual monetizations in in Clarios and BRK. Clarios, obviously, still still some costing initiatives to do the BRK dive last last Investor Day. That seemed to hint that maybe that was, that was pretty close to a monetization. With the Brazilian stock market doing a little better this year, or improving through the, from the beginning of the year, maybe a little bit more color on what those like, some things that need to be done might be, and how, you know, how much time you need to execute on that front.

Cyrus Madon (CEO)

Look, on BRK, we are in the middle of a, a efficiency program and cost out program, that's still progressing. You know, we, we think there's another leg up there. As to timing to get all that done, well, maybe it's 6 months sort of timeline, maybe one year, probably six months. Then as to when's the right time to sell it, the markets there are still pretty weak. Now, rates are starting to come down. They've just started to come down. We expect them to drop further throughout the year there. That should lead to a recovery in their capital markets and create all sorts of options for us at that time. We're not, we're not in any rush. The business is cash flowing, it's performing well, we think it can perform better. That's where we stand today.

Jaeme Gloyn (Analyst, Equity Research, and Diversified Financials)

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Devin Dodge with BMO Capital Markets.

Devin Dodge (Director and Equity Research)

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to start with a question on CDK. Anuj, I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks there's been a lot of progress in terms of improving profitability and at really in a short amount of time. Just can you talk about where you've seen the most success so far, and what other parts of the value creation plan still need to play out?

Anuj Ranjan (President)

Yeah, why don't, why don't I start on this one? Look, our team has done a terrific job here, and the management team's done a terrific job. Number one, just reducing overhead, grabbing low-hanging fruit with, you know, part of our playbook when we buy a new business. Number two, we're making a lot of progress on offshoring a bunch of services.

Number three, they put in place a more logical go-to-market strategy, providing better value to their customers where they, where they need this product and service, and also putting in place more rational pricing where it makes sense, and we can still provide great value for our customers. That's, that's sort of been the initial effort at CDK. The ongoing effort now is to conduct a technology transformation and really upgrade the technology stack, so the company can provide even better products and services to its customer base.

Devin Dodge (Director and Equity Research)

Okay, excellent. Very good, good color. Just switching over to Jaspreet. I think in your comments about refinancing, I think one of the ones you talked about was BrandSafway, and we saw that, you know, BBU, I think, contributed some more capital to reduce leverage and improve flexibility there. I believe we saw something similar at Healthscope earlier this year. Just, you know, looking forward, when you look across the portfolio, where do you see the most upcoming refinancings, are you expecting to commit additional equity to facilitate that rollover of debt?

Jaspreet Dehl (CFO)

Yeah, thanks for the question. You're right, we did put some additional capital into brands, and it helped delever the business, provided a bit more flexibility. We're seeing a really strong kind of growth in that business now over the last few quarters. It's really to kind of support the overall business and then help the refinancing as well. You know, at Healthscope, the capital that we put in was very small. Again, you know, it helped pay down some of the RCF that was borrowed within the business, and just gives it a bit more flexibility.

As I'm looking forward, you know, we've got circa a 5% of our debt now maturing in the next 12 months, so it's not a whole lot, and it's very much manageable. Nothing in any of the businesses, where, you know, we, we'd have to put any capital in. At this point, I'm not anticipating that if we did, you know, opportunistically look to refinance something to get pri-better pricing, push out maturities, that we'd need to put capital in. Quite frankly, there's not a whole lot that we have to do. This will be more opportunistic, where it just helps the capital structure for our businesses if we, if we did do anything more.

Devin Dodge (Director and Equity Research)

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. I'll turn it over.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Reid with CIBC Capital Markets.

Michael Reid (Investment Advisor)

Okay, thanks for the question. Just stepping back for a moment, I'd be interested to hear a little of color on what you've been hearing from private LPs in the Brookfield-sponsored private equity funds. Like, some LPs have become over-allocated to the asset class. Are LPs actively asking for capital return, or is their primary concern capital preservation? I'd just be interested to hear some of that feedback and maybe how that factors in, if at all, to the hold versus sell decision-making process more generally.

Cyrus Madon (CEO)

Well, sure. Cyrus here, and why don't I talk a little bit about what we're hearing from North American LPs, and then, Anuj, maybe you can comment on some of our, our other LPs.

Michael Reid (Investment Advisor)

Sure.

Cyrus Madon (CEO)

around the world. But I, I would say, nobody's, nobody's demanding capital back, and LPs just don't do that. They understand when they make a commitment, it's for 10, 12 years, and they fully expect that to play out. The comment I made earlier was in light of the fact that a lot of GPs want to raise their next fund, and when they go have the conversation with their LPs, the LPs in North America will say, "We're already quite allocated, fully allocated to our PE program.

We'd be happy to invest in your next fund, but we really need some realizations from you, so we can fund you for the next fund." So the conversation is more along that, that sort of line, and it's pretty consistent, I'd say, in North America. That, that message is pretty consistent for all, for all GPs.

Anuj Ranjan (President)

Yeah, it's Anuj here. In North America, while they're in many cases over-allocated, what we're finding in the Middle East and Asia, for example, is they're actually quite active in deploying probably more capital in this environment. They see it as a good opportunity to get exposure to private equity businesses and the portfolio companies. There's been an uptick there. But they are deciding to partner with a lesser number of managers.

Instead of having as many managers across a very broad spectrum of investments, they're choosing fewer and fewer GPs to partner with and partnering in a much bigger way with those those lesser number of sponsors and GPs. We're thrilled that we're on the right side of that trend, and it's been quite a good relationship we've had with these clients.

Michael Reid (Investment Advisor)

Yeah. Okay, that's, that's great, very helpful. Just my second question: you alluded to the success you've experienced driving earnings growth at Everise, and I'm aware that that's a relatively smaller investment. I was wondering if you could just expand on the specific initiatives that drove that step change in earnings, and whether those are things that you would or could seek to replicate for some of your larger investments in the technology sector. I-I'm just trying to understand that investment a little bit better.

Anuj Ranjan (President)

Yeah, absolutely. It's Anuj again, I'll, I'll take that. We've owned Everise for about two and a half years, and we've managed to triple EBITDA in that time. It's been a combination of a whole bunch of different efforts that are very similar to what we do in our playbook across the board. One aspect of it was growing its addressable market. How we did that was by doing more what we call nearshoring and offshoring, which is similar to, for example, what we've done in CDK. Having centers in markets closer to the Americas, but in, for example, Latin America, with a lower cost, or in Asia, like the Philippines, where we can provide these services, that's been a big benefit to the business.

We've focused it on the healthcare sector primarily, and grown quite a bit within... by providing more and more different service capabilities to the healthcare sector, but focusing on one that, you know, was quite resilient. The U.S. healthcare sector has grown and continues to grow, and we've been a beneficiary of that. I'd say that by a combination of that and a large exercise we had on operational value creation, which again, is something we've done with many businesses in the past, we could apply to other technology services business in the future. Paired with some growth, of course, in the underlying markets and Everise's market share, we've been able to do quite well.

Michael Reid (Investment Advisor)

Okay, that's good color. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I would now like to hand the call back over to CEO, Cyrus Madon, for any closing remarks.

Cyrus Madon (CEO)

Thank you, everyone, for joining us this quarter, and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Of course, in the interim, if you have questions, please do contact Alan Fleming, who heads up our investor relations. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call and webcast. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.