Earnings Call Transcript - TPG Q1 2022

Operator, Operator

Good morning, and welcome to TPG's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Currently, all callers have been placed in a listen-only mode, and following management's prepared remarks, the call will be opened up for your questions. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. Please go to TPG's IR website to obtain earnings materials. I will now turn the call over to Gary Stein, Head of Investor Relations at TPG. Thank you. You may begin.

Gary Stein, Head of Investor Relations

Great. Thanks, operator. Welcome to our first-quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me this morning are Jon Winkelried, Chief Executive Officer; and Jack Weingart, Chief Financial Officer. In addition, our Executive Chairman and Co-Founder, Jim Coulter; and our President, Todd Sisitsky, are also here with us and will be available for the Q&A portion of this morning's call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this call may include forward-looking statements that do not guarantee future events or performance. Please refer to TPG's earnings release and SEC filings for factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. TPG undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Within our discussion and earnings release, we are presenting GAAP measures, non-GAAP measures, and pro forma GAAP and non-GAAP measures, reflecting the reorganization that was completed during 2021 and immediately prior to TPG's IPO. We believe it's helpful for investors and analysts to understand the historic results through the lens of our go-forward structure, and please refer to TPG's earnings release for details on the pro forma financial information. We will also be discussing certain non-GAAP measures on this call that management believes are relevant in assessing the financial performance of the business. These non-GAAP measures are reconciled to the nearest GAAP figures in TPG's earnings release, which is available on the Company's website. Please note that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any TPG fund. I'd now like to turn the call over to Jon Winkelried, Chief Executive Officer.

Jon Winkelried, CEO

Thanks, Gary, and good morning, everyone. Following our IPO in January, we hosted our first public earnings call at the end of March. Since we spoke with you just about six weeks ago, we're going to keep today's prepared remarks relatively brief. I'll touch on our recent performance and discuss a few highlights across our business. I'll then turn the call over to Jack to provide more detail on our financial results, and then we'll take your questions. As of March 31, we had more than $120 billion of total assets under management, which increased 6% versus the prior quarter and 26% year-over-year. This growth was driven by a combination of strong investment performance and fundraising across our five platforms, partially offset by a continued pace of significant realization activity. We raised $5 billion during the quarter, driven primarily by strong demand for our fourth opportunistic real estate fund, and we raised $24 billion over the last 12 months. We invested $4 billion in the first quarter and $22 billion during the last 12 months. We also had nearly $5 billion of realizations in the quarter and $29 billion over the last 12 months. In aggregate, our investments generated value creation of 33% for the last 12 months and 7% in the first quarter. Approximately two-thirds of the Q1 value creation is attributable to exit agreements signed during the quarter at significant valuations. Adjusting for these realization events, our value creation for the quarter would have been approximately 2%. In connection with our earnings release this morning, we announced our first quarterly cash dividend of $0.44 per share of Class A common stock, representing 85% of TPG's after-tax distributable earnings. Jack will provide some more detail on the dividend. As we discussed when we spoke with you six weeks ago, the global geopolitical and economic landscape remains highly uncertain due to a number of significant macro factors, including the ongoing tragic conflict in Ukraine, a U.S. inflation rate that has reached a four-year high and a rising interest rate environment that has driven U.S. mortgage rates up 5% for the first time in more than a decade. As an investment-led organization operating in this volatile environment, we are continuing to adhere to our strategy and rigorous approach across all our platforms. We have been anticipating the onset of choppier markets, and this expectation has shaped how we've been investing our funds and managing our portfolios. We've been proactively monetizing investments and have returned significant amounts of capital to our limited partners. Over the last 12 months, during a period of very active capital deployment, we have, in fact, returned materially more capital than we invested. The current market reset is presenting us with a range of investment opportunities at more interesting valuations, and our pipeline of actionable opportunities is growing at a time when there are fewer competitive sources of capital such as IPOs and SPACs. We are fortunate to have a substantial amount of committed but uncalled capital available to invest, $30 billion as of March 31. With this backdrop in mind, I'd like to spend a few minutes walking you through some highlights across our business, starting with our largest platform, Capital, which had $57 billion of total AUM at the end of the first quarter. Our Capital funds had value accretion of 11% during the quarter. As I mentioned a moment ago, this value creation reflects several significant signed exits. Adjusting for those exits, the first quarter value creation for our Capital portfolio was approximately 2%, outperforming broader market indices. The ongoing value creation in our portfolio underscores our distinct investing style and our focus on companies and sectors that continue to grow revenue and earnings despite the volatile macro environment. During the first quarter, our capital funds invested nearly $2 billion in companies such as Confluent Medical Technologies, a leading contract development and manufacturing partner to medical device companies. This investment leverages our capabilities as one of the most active and experienced healthcare private equity investors and builds on our multi-decade thematic focus on value-added outsourced medical products dating back to our original investment in Quintiles. Also during the quarter, TPG Capital Asia announced an investment in Fractal Analytics, India's largest outsourced provider of artificial intelligence solutions to Fortune 500 companies. This investment stems from our position as a leading technology investor and our thematic coverage of digital services on a global scale. For the quarter, our capital funds generated total realizations of approximately $4 billion, including the $14 billion take-private of McAfee and the recapitalizations of both Novatek Health Holdings, Asia's largest biotech-focused contract research organization; and Greencross, Australia's largest pet care company. Let me turn to our Growth platform, which had $22 billion of total AUM at the end of the first quarter. This platform provides flexible capital at scale for growing businesses through our growth, tech adjacencies and digital media funds. Despite the broader market weakness we have been discussing this morning, our Growth funds continue to perform well, with aggregate value creation of 1.5% in the first quarter and 23% for the last 12 months. We have built our Growth portfolio with a late cycle mindset and a focus on sectors and themes like cybersecurity, ad tech and healthcare where secular rather than cyclical growth is the driver of performance. In addition, given the scale of capital we're deploying, we are generally investing in later-stage companies that have strong financial profiles and where we can help bend their growth curves with the substantial resources TPG brings to bear. Looking at capital invested in the Growth platform during the quarter. In addition to the investments in project44 and express fees that we mentioned on our last call, I'd also like to highlight the investment in Acorns, a leading mobile savings and investment platform with more than 4.7 million subscribers. This investment is a great example of how the recent market reset is accelerating the pace of investment opportunities for us as competitive sources of capital have been sidelined. Acorns were planning to raise capital through a SPAC transaction, but with that market experiencing significant volatility, we were able to invest capital on attractive terms and position the Company for continued growth. During the first quarter, we also returned capital to our Growth fund investors through several transactions, including the full monetization of our stake in Toast, a leading SaaS provider for the restaurant industry, and a partial monetization of our investment in Asia Healthcare Holdings. Moving on, I'd like to briefly discuss our Impact platform, which had total AUM of $14 billion as of March 31. This includes our inaugural Rise Climate Fund, which recently announced its final close at its hard cap of $7.3 billion. TPG Rise Climate has already committed more than $2 billion of capital to catalyze climate action and scale companies across the sector. Our Impact funds had aggregate value creation of 1% in the first quarter and 31% for the last 12 months. During the quarter, our Impact funds invested $1.5 billion, including the first tranche of Rise Climate's investment in a newly created electrical vehicle subsidiary of India's Tata Motors. In addition, our Rise and Rise Climate Funds announced a $500 million investment in Nextracker, the number one global provider of solar tracker and software solutions for utility scale solar projects around the world. Turning to Real Estate, this platform ended the first quarter with $18 billion of total AUM, which increased more than 40% from the prior quarter, primarily due to raising an additional $4.3 billion of capital for our current opportunistic fund, which now stands at $6.4 billion raised. TPG's Real Estate platform delivered value creation of 6% for the first quarter and 26% for the last 12 months across our Opportunistic and Core Plus funds. In the first quarter, our Opportunistic fund made a follow-on investment in Dogwood Industrial Properties, a platform we established in 2019 to build a portfolio of multi-tenant logistics facilities throughout the United States. In addition, our Core Plus funds completed an investment through Dunewood Residential Properties, which is a new platform that is building a portfolio of differentiated multifamily assets in markets with attractive secular growth dynamics and supply constraints. Finally, I'd like to touch on our Market Solutions platform, which had $10 billion of total AUM at the end of the first quarter across several strategies, including our long, short, and long-only public investing funds and Private Market Solutions, which is our secondaries business focused on GP solutions. In addition, during the first quarter, our debt Capital Markets Group led seven fee-generating transactions, including the recapitalization of Greencross, which we believe was the first covenant-light direct lender deal completed in Australia and one of the largest unitranche deals ever done in Asia. Taking a step back, I'd like to highlight our talent strategy, a key element of our firm's culture and a topic we discussed in detail with many of you leading up to our IPO in January. Retaining and recruiting the best talent continues to be an important strategic area of focus for us, particularly in this increasingly competitive job market. The strength of our culture, which is enabled by an exceptional group of talented and diverse people, is the result of deep investment over the years, and we work hard to constantly reinforce it. This manifests itself in several ways. For instance, in March, several firm leaders and I hosted a global promotions program where 140 members of the TPG team were promoted at the end of 2021. Among this promote class, 48% identify as diverse across gender, race or ethnicity. Our focus on creating career paths with enhanced opportunity and upward mobility has never been more important and it will continue to be an area of focus for our entire team. Our effort to continuously develop and engage talent goes beyond the four walls of TPG. Last month, along with a number of our peers, we engaged as a founding partner of Ownership Works, a nonprofit that seeks to accelerate the development of broad employee ownership programs. Two senior members of our management team have joined the Board of Ownership Works: our President, Todd Sisitsky, and Maryanne Hancock, CEO of Y Analytics. We believe it is important to express our commitment to our people both at TPG and across our portfolio, and Ownership Works is one important example of how we can drive meaningful engagement beyond our firm. Overall, we're very pleased with our financial and operational results for the first quarter of 2022, which highlights the momentum we are continuing to generate across our five platforms despite a more challenging operating environment. We also remain intently focused on capital formation risk with our broad-based fundraising campaigns. I'd now like to turn the call over to Jack.

Jack Weingart, CFO

Thanks, Jon, and good morning, everyone. I will briefly review our financial results and highlight key points from our first quarter performance. Total assets under management increased from $95 billion at the end of Q1 2021 to over $120 billion. This 26% growth over the past year was driven by $29 billion of value creation from our fund investments and $24 billion from capital raising, partially offset by $29 billion in returns to fund investors. Fee-earning assets under management rose from $51 billion in March 2021 to about $64 billion as of March 31, 2022, primarily due to increased fee-earning assets. By the end of Q1 2022, approximately 84% of our total assets under management and 79% of our fee-earning assets were in perpetual or long-dated funds, with a duration of 10 years or more. Furthermore, 78% of our fee-earning assets had a duration of five years or longer. As of March 31, we had roughly $9 billion of assets under management eligible for fee-earning growth, including nearly $7 billion that has yet to earn fees. Our funds also had over $30 billion of capital available for future investments. Looking at our income statement, we reported a GAAP net income of $163 million for the first quarter. On our last call, I provided guidance for our Q1 non-GAAP results, and I’m pleased to say that our actual results met or exceeded that guidance across all key metrics. We reported fee-related revenues of $241 million for the first quarter, with fee-related earnings of $92 million. Our fee-related earnings grew by 38% compared to the same quarter last year, driven by a rise in management fees, which supported our margins as we scaled our business and achieved substantial growth. Our after-tax distributable earnings more than tripled compared to the previous year, propelled by the growth in fee-related earnings and realized performance allocations, which totaled $122 million. Regarding our non-GAAP balance sheet for TPG Operating Group as of March 31, we are well-capitalized with $583 million in cash and $450 million in long-term debt, reflecting our balance sheet-light business model. We also had a balance of accrued performance allocations of $796 million, up from $769 million at the end of 2021. As of March 31, $107 billion, or 89% of our total assets under management, was eligible for performance allocations, and $85 billion or 71% was generating these allocations. On the fundraising front, my previous comments about the market conditions still hold true. The market is quite competitive, with many managers raising capital, some earlier than anticipated by clients, leading to temporary over-allocation in certain segments. Fundraising efforts industry-wide are likely to take longer than usual. However, our fundraising momentum remains robust. As Jon mentioned, we raised over $5 billion in the first quarter, which is over three times what we raised in Q1 2021. On the Impact platform, we recently completed the final close of our Rise Climate Fund at the hard cap of $7.3 billion, and we expect to close on our next broad-based Impact fund around midyear. Our opportunistic Real Estate fund is oversubscribed, and we’ll soon have a final close at the hard cap of $6.5 billion. On the Capital platform, demand for our three core products—TPG Capital, Healthcare Partners, and TPG Asia—remains strong. We expect to finalize accelerated first closings for TPG Capital and Healthcare Partners around midyear, followed by TPG Asia’s first close shortly after that. We will provide more updates on these campaigns in our second quarter call. Before I conclude, I want to share some details about our first cash dividend as a public company. We aim to distribute at least 85% of the after-tax distributable earnings attributable to TPG Inc. on a quarterly basis, pending necessary approvals. Today, we announced a cash dividend of $0.44 per share of Class A common stock, payable on June 3 to shareholders on record as of May 20. I should mention that the non-GAAP effective tax rate in Q1 was slightly higher than previously indicated due to certain deferred IPO-related costs recognized during the quarter. Lastly, our fully diluted share count at the end of Q1, including unvested RSUs, was approximately 320 million shares. In summary, we are very pleased with our first quarter results and the progress we are making in driving growth across our business. Our investment portfolio has generated strong value creation. Despite a challenging market environment, we have maintained a steady pace of capital deployment while returning substantial amounts of capital and profits to our investors. We also anticipate strong growth in assets under management and fee-related earnings, thanks to our broad-based fundraising campaigns. With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator for questions.

Operator, Operator

We'll take our first question from Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America.

Craig Siegenthaler, Analyst

Craig Siegenthaler. So just starting with fundraising, and I heard the comments on certain verticals were over-allocated, but you do have a busy calendar this year. It looks like maybe private equity may be the most crowded, plus you're also dealing with the denominator effect of lower public markets. How does this impact the timing of your raises? And then also, coming back to what you said, which verticals do you view as the most over-allocated?

Jack Weingart, CFO

Yes. Thanks, Craig. When you say verticals, I would think about it more in terms of segments of the LP marketplace. Consistent with other discussions that have been had in the industry, the most impacted part of the market we see is in the traditional U.S. pension fund market kind of most over-allocated based on the metrics that you talked about. The outperformance, the alternatives in their portfolio, combined with the sell-off in the public markets, causing the denominator effect. The third piece is a lot of GPs coming back to market faster than they had planned. So it's a crowded fundraising market. That segment of the market, in particular, is having to make choices for the first time in a while. And what we see happening is those choices are benefiting the largest, most established GPs with the strongest relationships. We are fortunate to be a part of that group. I think anyone who's returned a lot of capital to LPs as opposed to just drawing down capital and coming back to ask for more is also seeing the benefit, and we are clearly in that camp. The other segments of the market, there are lots of pockets of continued growth despite the crowded market, mostly in some of the international segments of the market, Asia, Middle East, even in Europe. So I think I would expect the result of these fundraising campaigns, in part, to reflect the different dynamics in those different segments. So that's how I would describe the fundraising market overall. As it relates to our timing, at the IPO, we articulated an expected close for the Capital funds, which are the largest pools of capital, around midyear. We continue to see good momentum in those campaigns and expect a first close in the Capital and Healthcare fund around midyear. So we'll have more to talk about the size of those closings in the Q2 call.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Ken Worthington from JPMorgan.

Ken Worthington, Analyst

Great. TPG had an interest in rounding out its product offering, possibly creditor infrastructure via M&A. Maybe talk about how this challenging market environment really means for the interest in actually getting something done there. And maybe what you're seeing in the private market valuations versus what we're seeing in the public side at this point?

Jon Winkelried, CEO

Yes. I think we talked about this on our last call. We do have an interest in continuing to grow our platform and diversifying the product base. We've been in a reasonable level of dialogue just in terms of continuing to understand the market. I think we're going to be very thoughtful about what we do, both from the perspective of fit in terms of how it aligns with our firm as well as value. Clearly, we've been through a substantial revaluation in our own space. Like anything else, I would expect there to be some time for value expectations in terms of where sellers are and where buyers are to adjust. But we remain focused.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Alex Blostein from Goldman Sachs.

Alex Blostein, Analyst

Well, I was hoping you could spend a couple of minutes on the valuation framework in super volatile markets that we've seen, obviously, over the last several months. And here, you pointed out positioning the portfolio to be kind of late cycle proof, and it sounds like the fundamentals of the portfolio companies are doing quite well. But I'm more curious about impacts of higher interest rates and just lower growth multiples that we're seeing in the market today and how that flows through the valuation technology you guys have in the portfolio and whether or not that's a headwind we need to be thinking about over the next couple of quarters?

Jon Winkelried, CEO

Yes. Thanks, Alex. I think Todd Sisitsky, who's actually in our London office, is going to respond to that.

Todd Sisitsky, President

Sure. Yes, I hope you can hear me well. Thank you for the question. I think there's a few sort of questions built into that. I would tell you that we actually find we feel very good about our strategy and our brand of growth and transformation investing in the current market and feel like the companies, as you suggested, are doing quite well. It sounds like your question's a little bit more about the go-forward approach. I would tell you that in general, there are a lot of positives in this market for us, so this is a pretty exciting time. We have seen historically, over the last 30 years, that really some of our best investments and vintages following our strategy have come after a public market reset. The first big investment that was done after the global financial crisis in 2009 was IMS, which we've followed for seven years before that. It was only in this environment that we were able to come up with the appropriate transaction management and the Board that worked. That company is now IQVIA, a $40-plus billion market cap company. So the question of whether we are able to find interesting growth opportunities following our strategy in this environment, I understand the macro concerns of growth. But I would tell you the way we think about it is that we distinguish between what we think of as interesting to us as investors, the themes and the segments that we want to follow and study every year; and what's actionable, what happens to be for sale. We find it actually to be a very interesting market moment for us given the strategy that we have.

Jim Coulter, Executive Chairman

Yes. Alex, it's Jim Coulter. Let me take you into the front lines of the market for a second, particularly in climate. The experience last year was often that a company would come in saying that they would like to be financed at a price of X. We would say, 'No, we're much below that.' It would be financed in the SPAC for through a momentum investor at X plus 25%. This year has been a complete about-face where that company, which needs financing given its capital plan in this environment, is coming in and saying they'd like to be financed at X. We say half X. They go away and come back to us pretty quickly. So the market is resetting as you're seeing a series of competitors that were market-based in their valuation techniques or momentum-based lose share in the growth marketplace. What we're seeing here is a fundamental reset. As net sellers last year, there are opportunities to be very disciplined net buyers this year.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Robert Lee from KBW.

Robert Lee, Analyst

Jack, maybe a question for you indicating that a chunk of the value creation is coming from some signed contracts on potential exits. Can you update us on what we should be thinking about for utilization at the Q2, Q3, just given that you already signed and kind of in the bucket, so to speak?

Jack Weingart, CFO

Sure. Thank you for the question, Rob. In the last call, I mentioned that we had over $200 million in performance allocations to TPG Inc. that were already secured through signed contracts. In the first quarter, we recorded $122 million of performance allocations, which included about half of that $200 million—around $100 million—from the transactions I referred to previously, with the remainder coming from additional monetizations during the quarter. Looking ahead, while we do not predict performance based on potential future sales, I can say that for the companies we have already agreed to sell, we expect at least $125 million in additional performance allocations in the upcoming quarters this year. A significant portion of this is related to the Wind River deal I mentioned in the first quarter call, which we anticipate will close either late in Q2 or in Q3. Additionally, we have more monetization activities taking place across our platforms that we expect will contribute to that figure as the year progresses, and we will provide updates on those as they occur.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Cyprys from Morgan Stanley.

Michael Cyprys, Analyst

I was hoping we could spend a moment on the Impact platform with Rise and Rise Climate. Just curious how you think about building that out further from here. It would seem that there could be some opportunities for other dedicated fund strategies. So just curious where that stands in terms of the build-out. How are you thinking about that opportunity set? And to what extent is the more challenging market backdrop that you alluded to impacting the timing and ability to raise these newer strategies?

Jim Coulter, Executive Chairman

Michael, as we've talked about, we think there is substantial opportunity to expand the Rise platform in several directions. We've been doing that over the last year while also building up for future expansion. Over time, we find interest within our client base for Impact-related investing in infrastructure, Impact-related investing in public markets, Impact-related investing in credit markets. All of those involve a build and are in the future, but I believe this trend will accelerate. Coming out of some recent activity we've seen. The investment activity within the sectors we focus on in Rise is flattered and continues. If you think about the climate transition, higher oil prices and concerns about energy security suggests a forward build and acceleration into a green climate framework. In areas like online education, we see substantial opportunity in providing free Internet to underprivileged families. This is an area where I think there are substantial investment opportunities to come. Healthcare access with the rise of telehealth as well, where we can actively seek notable opportunities.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Fin O'Shea from Wells Fargo.

Fin O'Shea, Analyst

Last quarter, you guys touched on the opportunity in preferred equity in the growth market. Just seeing if you could provide an update on that pipeline if it's expanding as expected. And also, is Private Credit increasingly a competitor in that arena?

Jon Winkelried, CEO

Well, maybe I can just comment. I think that the pipeline continues to be reasonably healthy in the growth equity market. I think that just reinforcing what I said, the stage of the company, the type of company, the type of opportunity we're focused on, tends to be later-stage companies that are generating earnings and cash flow. But I think when you look at the reset that's gone on in the public markets, it's not unusual. You see a progression go on where the public markets begin to reset, and you see uncertainty in how deep the reset might go. So things slow down a little with companies that are looking for funding or transactions or sponsors taking a breather to try to figure out their next move. Then the reset continues. When you look at the population of companies that have been very fast growers that have not been profitable, the reset is very broad and deep. We see some interesting opportunities, particularly for our form of capital. Our ability to provide growth capital and also bring additional resources is still attractive to the types of companies we like to back. As far as Private Credit, there are strategies crossing into growth equity types of opportunities. The reason we grew our growth platform is that we have flexible capital across the spectrum to be a solutions provider to companies depending on their needs. I’d say that any incursion into this market by the credit businesses is more than offset by the retreat of funds that have been very active in this type of investing.

Operator, Operator

Next question comes from Brian Bedell from Deutsche Bank.

Brian Bedell, Analyst

Great. I have a two-part question. First, this is for either Jon or Jack. Given that pension plans are slowing down and nearly half of your capital comes from pension funds, you mentioned earlier that the international side might help fill that gap in the near term. Could you elaborate on that? Also, I’d like to hear your expectations for growth in the retail channel. The second question is for Jim. Regarding the Rise Climate fund, I understand you have $2 billion committed. You've previously discussed the strong demand for carbon investing and decarbonization. Do you foresee that demand increasing to the point where you might consider launching another Rise Climate fund sooner than expected?

Jack Weingart, CFO

Brian, it's Jack. Thanks for the question. You're right about the dynamics I referred to. So I won't reiterate the point about the shifting of capital towards more international pools of capital. On the high-net-worth side, it is an important growth area for us. We expect to place more of our funds with that channel in this wave of fundraising than we did in the last wave. We are building out a team to address that opportunity. The vast majority of our products are only applicable to the highest end of that market. And as we move towards credit and other yield-oriented products, I think we'll see significant expansion of our penetration of that client base.

Jim Coulter, Executive Chairman

On the Rise Climate question, we launched a little over a year ago. There were questions on both sides about the demand for this product and whether we would reach $7 billion. A year in, we have seen substantial demand on the product side and continue to see good deployment pace. The need in climate financing is strong, and we would expect both the strategy to scale and for opportunities to bring our thinking forward regarding market opportunity.

Operator, Operator

And our last question comes from Adam Beatty from UBS.

Adam Beatty, Analyst

I wanted to ask about the business in Asia. There are some idiosyncratic challenges there recently in addition to some of the global challenges we've talked about. I want to get your thoughts on portfolio company operations there, how that's going, also in terms of deployment opportunity. Lastly, you mentioned that international markets, and I expect Asia is included, might be a source of more resilient fundraising opportunity. Can you talk about that as well?

Jon Winkelried, CEO

Sure. We've been in the Asian markets for a very long time, starting our business there in '94. Our focus in our Asia franchise is across several markets. In the recent past, we’ve been much lighter with our exposure to China, recognizing that it has become a more challenging place to invest. If you look at our performance in Asia, it’s been very strong. Notable opportunities include exciting prospects across numerous sectors in India, Australia, New Zealand, and Korea. We feel pretty good about Asia as a place where we expect to see high growth. The growth there may even exceed that of other parts of the world. We are themed-oriented investors, allocating capital to certain themes and industries with long-term secular growth. That being said, it’s hard to say how the fluctuation in China's position might shape the region overall.

Todd Sisitsky, President

I would like to add that our portfolio in Asia has held up quite well overall, but we certainly see effects from inflation and the war for talent. Our focus on secular growth enables us to target higher value-added companies that have less commodity exposure, which leads to stronger gross margins and better relationships with customers.

Jon Winkelried, CEO

It's worth noting that one of the investments out of our growth fund in India was a company called Campus Activewear, which just successfully went public in India at an attractive multiple relative to our investment.

Operator, Operator

I would now like to turn the call back over to Gary Stein for any additional or closing remarks.

Gary Stein, Head of Investor Relations

Great. Thanks, operator. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Please feel free to follow up directly with me or Ebony if you have any additional questions. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

Jon Winkelried, CEO

Thanks, everyone.

Jack Weingart, CFO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today's TPG's First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call and Webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.