Well, good morning, everybody. I'm Matt Masters, CEO of Caledonia Investments. And myself and my colleague, Rob Memmott, our Chief Financial Officer, will take you through the results for a full year to March 2025. Now we're a long-term investment business, so we'll balance this results presentation by providing you information for the year as well as a reminder of the strategy and our longer-term performance. Important cautionary stand, and then I'll bring out the key features of Caledonia that makes a really great place to do long-term investing.
The first area is that we're a self-managed investment company meaning all the investments and all the funds are selected by our in-house team. And that means they're only working for our shareholders, and they are wholly aligned with them. We're targeting absolute returns, so long-term compounding returns, aiming to keep NAV per share and dividend per share ahead of inflation.
Now despite elevated inflation in recent years, we have managed to keep pace with it. And our track record shows that over the longer term, we have managed to exceed this target by some margin. The company traces its history back to the Cayzer family shipping business, which dates back to late 1800s, and the family remains supportive shareholders and their long-term investment approach underpins what we do at Caledonia.
Now we're very grateful to all shareholders for enabling the family holding to go through 50% at the special AGM at the end of last year in December. And this provides us with the flexibility to carry on making NAV per share enhancing share buybacks. And you will see later on that share buybacks have made a meaningful contribution to returns this year. So our Maxim is time well invested and it perfectly encapsulates our approach. It's the guiding principle that explains every aspect of our operations. And I'll just focus on 3 key areas: our in-house team of expert investors and support staff are dedicated to making carefully considered investments and providing the best platform to do so.
Throughout the year, we welcome new colleagues to both teams, and we're delighted to have them with us. Our opportunity set, our investment teams are focused on attractive long-term markets that enable them to develop high-quality opportunities that we can select from. And the alignment, returning to that point, the teams are wholly aligned with shareholders they're only investing Caledonia's money, and there's no fundraising distraction for them. They're incentivized by reference to their contribution to Caledonia's NAV per share growth, and the incentive is paid in Caledonia shares. So they're very well aligned with shareholders. Our approach aims to capitalize on time being the good -- being the friend of good companies.
We invest to enable us to look through short-term market cycles and capitalize on opportunities. And this approach allows compounding to do its work. And all of this is underpinned by our evergreen balance sheet. Our portfolio is well balanced. We have 3 different areas, each run by specialist teams. And the teams take quite a concentrated approach to what they do but obviously shareholders have the protection of the diversification of having exposure to all 3 of them. And the chart on this slide, the boxes on this slide summarize each of the areas showing the returns targets, tenure performance and the NAV weight.
Just running briefly through them because we'll do a longer explanation a bit later in the presentation. And we have public companies, which has 2 portfolios, 1 focused on capital and 1 focused on income. And we hold around 30 companies across both portfolios, and they're all making long-term investments in what we call compounders. We have private capital, where we invest alongside management and production U.K.-based operating companies, and we typically hold between 5 and 10 companies in that area. And then we have funds where we invest mainly in the smaller end of a North American private equity market or the lower mid-market as we term it, and growth-orientated funds in Asia. Now this area is highly diversified, 80 funds run by 45 managers and over 600 companies within the portfolio.
When we invest, we look for companies to drive value for us over the long term. We are seeking to back and invest in companies with long-term fundamental value drivers and avoid areas the market is susceptible to cycles. And perhaps being a trader would be more suitable in those areas, and we're not traders.
I'll just talk briefly about Trump and the impact that we assess he's had on the portfolio. And our initial assessment is actually -- there is actually quite low primary impact from Trump. And what do I mean by primary impact, I mean that's a direct impact on the sort of fundamental aspects of the companies we're invested in, as opposed to sort of secondary impact, which might be the effective of economic slowdown or something like that, which is, of course, would affect all companies and at this stage, it is difficult to predict.
Where we have seen some primary exposure is within public companies, where we have exposure to the life sciences sector. We've got 2 investments in there. They're both global companies. And the reduction in federal grants that sector has had some impact on these companies, but it is very minor in the context of Caledonia's NAV.
So moving on to our long-term performance. This chart shows the combined results of all the polls and how the NAV has worked for shareholders. The vertical gold bar represents our overall long-term NAV per share return, which exceeds our target over the 5- and 10-year periods. However, our performance over 3 years is lower than our targets, albeit it's aligned with inflation. And this is due to recent market volatility, elevated inflation, increasing interest rates, and the cost of capital going up over the last few years, which has reduced short-term real returns.
Despite these challenges, we remain confident in our investment strategy. We focus on investing in high-quality, well-managed companies and funds with track records of success, which position us well to navigate uncertainty. Regarding share price performance, it's lower than the NAV due to an increase in our discount over the past few years. However, over the year that we're reporting on the discount reduced from 39% to 35%, and Rob will discuss more about this later.
So moving to the full year results, and I will take you through the highlights. Caledonia delivered another year of positive performance with NAV total return of 3.3%. And all 3 investment pools contributed towards this positive performance. And this is against an increasingly difficult macroeconomic and geopolitical backdrop. So that was a bit of a headwind towards the end of the year. The investment portfolio delivered a return of 3.5%. And then for information, foreign exchange reduced returns by around GBP 42 million or 1.4%. And remember, we don't hedge our foreign currency exposure.
The total shareholder return was higher at 10.2% with a discount reducing during the period. Public companies pool delivered a 4.7% return. Performance was strong for most of the year, but it was eroded by market volatility in March by around 7%. Private Capital delivered a return of 3.7% with strong returns from Stonehage Fleming and AIR-serv, but this was impacted by a further write-down in Cooke, which we talked about at the half year mark. We've taken a number of actions to deal with Cooke and we'll talk about these later. And we were very pleased to acquire DTM during the year.
The funds pool delivered 2.2% return. To give you a sense how the areas performed in their underlying markets, the American private equity funds delivered an 8.4% return in dollars, but the overall return was dampened by a slight negative return in the Asian portfolio, and then obviously, the pound strengthening against the dollar during the year.
Today, we are announcing our final dividend at 53.91p, bringing the total dividend for the year to 73.6%, and this represents a 4.5% increase in the dividend. And so continuing our 58-year record of increasing dividends. Throughout the year and benefiting from the permission we obtained from the nonfamily or non-concert party shareholders at the December special AGM, we were able to do share buybacks that amounted to around GBP 63 million. And these buybacks are, in many ways, the easiest investment we make in the business because they straightaway add value to NAV per share and GBP 63 million worth of share buybacks, added about 1% to the returns. So the permission that we got that special AGM is good for all shareholders. And so I suppose everyone is thankful for receiving that permission.
Additionally, to enhance liquidity and make Caledonia more accessible to a broader range of shareholders, we're going to seek shareholder approval at the forthcoming AGM to do a 10:1 share split. So this will effectively -- if you hold 1 share now, you hold 10 and the value of the shares will be reduced proportionately to that. This will bring down the cost per share. We're also changing the profile of our dividends, so it makes it more even, and I don't want to steal any more of Rob's thunder on this, so he will explain more about this later on.
So moving on to each of the areas, and I'll cover public companies first. So before I get into it, an advert for the public company spotlight, which is on June 24, details are on the website, and I highly recommend tuning in for it. And it will be available, obviously, afterwards to watch. And it'd be a good chance to hear more about the strategy and hear firsthand from the team as well. Now the quoted pool or public companies pool invest in high-quality companies where long-term ownership is likely to be rewarded. So what do we mean by high quality? Well, we look resilience, pricing power, attractive returns on capital and an absence of leverage, so not using too much debt in the business or vulnerability to economic cycles, and they must all be well managed.
So these are sort of the key features we're looking for. We're patient. We tend to initiate positions when there's a market sell-off or a sale, as we call them, and so we're looking to access these high-quality companies at opportunistic moments. Now during the year, both portfolios delivered good results delivering in the neighborhood of 7% at the half year, and performance continued to improve into market volatility in the last 2 months reduced returns. The more U.K.-orientated and slightly more defensive income portfolio proved more resilient and delivered 8% for the year with capital delivering 3.6%.
The table shows the largest holdings across both portfolios and also shows when we first invested. And you can see they've been held between 7 and 11 years, demonstrating our long-term approach. When I look at the list, it's interesting that I'm just as excited about their prospects as I was when we first invested, and those companies continue to innovate and develop their businesses from already strong position. So we're very pleased with them. And they've all delivered double-digit annualized returns for us.
During the year, within capital portfolio, we added Pool Corp, which is a North American distributor of swimming pool and all the equipment required to service them. Slightly unusually for us, we saw a bit of churn within the income portfolio with sort of 3 in and 3 out during the year. The levers were largely due to corporate activities. So DS Smith got sold and Pennon was really sort of left over a whole thing after they had sold Viridor, and it was a bit of a vested holding. So they mainly left because of corporate activity. And then we've added Sage, Croda and Howden's to the portfolio having followed them for some time and been presented with market weakness to be able to invest in the.
To talk about Trump a bit more, aside from share price weakness, I think Trump has had limited impact on the fundamental health of the portfolio. It has threatened Fastenal, which is a 1.4% of Caledonia NAV Holding because some of the products are only made at scale in China. And so the very high China tariffs presented an issue really for the market and Fastenal. This has now been reversed and so this risk has receded for now, but we'll obviously continue to monitor the situation closely. And then we had the 2 global life sciences companies, representing around 2% of Caledonia's NAV. We're anticipate seeing some areas of weakness in the U.S. market because of the reduction in NIH federal funding, and those companies have reduced their growth guidance as a result of that.
Now we continue to like the prospects of the portfolio and our waitlist. And so during the market sell-off, we added GBP 50 million to the portfolio, adding to existing positions and initiating a new holding. In this presentation, we're going to do a sort of deep dive on Moody's, which is the U.S. headquartered credit ratings and analytics business. There's no secret that Moody's is a fine business. It's been within Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway portfolio for a long time, and we've been following it for a long time.
But the obstacle to owning it was really it's quite a high rating. Probably merited, but we tend to avoid going in at very high ratings. However, given our time well invested approach, the team have been following the company for around 5 years, including visiting it and doing all the work on it because patients is rewarded in the stock market.
Now a bit about the business. The business is one of the very few providers of credit rating services used by debt issuers. I think Buffett has described it as a toll business in that before you issue, you have to pay Moody's and people like that money. So it's a bit like a toll on the toll road. And the business is underpinned by regulatory requirements for their products to be used in support of an ever-growing outstanding debt and debt issuance market. And benefits from adding value far in excess of their cost to issuers. Additionally, Moody's has dived a range of data analytics products, which not only provides organic growth, but also provides attractive investment opportunities for bolt-on M&A. Now here's where the opportunity came in.
When the U.S. Fed started raising interest rates, the market predicted that debt issuance would go down, and that was correct, and we also thought that would be the case. And the market also predicted the short-term impact on credit ratings earnings, and therefore, the share price of these companies went down. However, we remain reasonably confident that debt would remain cheaper than equity, and so trading would recover. And so we use the share price weakness, as you can see on the chart, to initiate our holding. And thus far, Moody's performance has recovered and the share price has recovered, and we benefited from a 17% IRR over the course of our holding. So we're very pleased with that.
This is really how we kind of always invest in this area. It's an example of the market being very efficient in one respect, the short term, but not very efficient over the longer term. And really, it's how long-term investing provides attractive returns without having to take too much risk.
Moving on to private capital, which is our opportunity to own companies and partner with management to grow them and improve their quality over the longer term. We invest in well-established profitable companies using low levels of debt, we use around 2.5x net debt to EBITDA because we want business performance to drive returns and dividends and not financial engineering. We avoid paying speculative multiples for companies and typically pay and value our holdings in the range of 9 to 14.5x, the EBITDA. The operating companies are all based in the U.K. We aim to hold between 5 and 10 of them at any particular time, and we'd aim to invest around GBP 100 million in them when we first invest, but we're quite flexible around that.
The realized track record for this strategy since 2012 is 17% annualized with GBP 1.1 billion in cash generated. And I would also just note that during the year, we sold Bloom at a 43% uplift to the March 2024 NAV. Over the last 5 and 10 years, the portfolio has delivered good returns of 19% and 12.4%. Recent performance has been impacted by the write-down of Cooke Optics. I'll get into that in a minute. We enjoyed strong performance from Stonehage Fleming and AIR-serv, which resulted in an increase of their valuations, mainly driven by cash generation and improvement in trading. And during the year, we welcomed DTM into the portfolio, acquiring us of GBP 55 million and disposing a Bloom for GBP 34 million.
Now talk about being long term. We've been investing in Bloom, which is a lower emission industrial boilers -- industrial burners business for 35 years, and we very much enjoyed our partnership with them. And especially the last decade with David Boys and his team, and we had a wonderful partnership with them and sort of sorry to see them go, but we wish them very well. We do not see any primary impact from Trump in this portfolio, from the tariffs in this portfolio. The companies don't seem to have any exposure to it. I'll go through the key holdings. And bear in mind that there is a spotlight available to watch about private capital on our website, which is a really useful way of learning more about the strategy and the people behind it.
So firstly, AIR-serv, which designs, manufactures and operates air, vacuum and jet wash machines, delivered a return of 20% during the year, reflecting a continuation of its growth and cash generation. It's trading well. It's increasing the number of machines and the revenue per machine. And we received a dividend of GBP 6.2 million during the year, demonstrating a strong cash generation of the business and the benefit of our prudent capital structure. Cobepa, which is not an operating company, it's an investment company, is Belgium headquartered and has a diversified portfolio of 19 private investments. We've been invested for over 20 years and Cobepa has delivered low double-digit annualized returns for us.
The current year's returns are slightly depressed by some cash drag and the relative strength of the pound versus the euro, but we continue to be very happy partners with them. On to the next page and looking at Butcombe, which was previously called Liberation. Liberation is the Channel Islands beer brand and Butcombe is the U.K. brand. And the center of gravity of that business and scale has moved to the U.K., and so we've reflected that in the name change to the business.
Pleasingly, all 3 revenue categories of food, drink and accommodation have grown year-on-year and cost deflation pressure with 1 exception has eased, resulting in revenue margin growth. Now the exception some of this good work has been negated by the increase in national insurance introduced in the October budget. And this explains the reversal of NAV performance between the half year and our final results. However, the business is now well positioned to grow value from here. DTM, the provider of tire management services to specialist fleet operators joined the portfolio during the year and has traded positively since we bought it.
We are inside its first full year of ownership, and so it's valued at cost with a small return showing generated by some bridge finance we provided during our first few months of ownership, which has now been refinanced. Team have made great progress betting the company in, and we've appointed David Brennan as Non-Executive Chairman. He's got great experience and expertise to offer. And we've also appointed a new Chief Revenue Officer, who's making great initial progress.
Now moving on to Cooke. As previously reported, the business was heavily impacted by the Hollywood Actors and Writers strikes in 2023. And this has reduced demand for its core cine lenses as content production in the U.S. and the worldwide has suffered, quite a severe slowdown actually.
Now content producers and those serving them are cautiously adapting their business models. And whilst production models are improving slowly, Cooke's revenue and profit remains badly impacted. So what have we done about it? Well, we've appointed a new CEO in David Hancock, who joined the business in January, bringing fresh energy and relevant experience with dealing with these kinds of situations. We're very pleased with how he's getting on. The cost base has been rightsized for the current revenues, and we have provided additional funding to the business.
So the business now has new leadership, a cost base to suit its new lower revenues and is on a more robust economic footing. The exciting new products being developed, including the Prosumer lens and a digital product that offers postproduction industry strong value proposition. However, we have written down the value of the business over the course of the year to GBP 44 million to reflect the impact of what looks like is going to be a longer downturn in trading.
We're profiling Stonehage Fleming as part of this presentation. And it's -- Stonehage Fleming is a wealth manager, supporting leading families and wealth creators across generations and geographies. We first invested in 2019. We were very pleased to be approached by Giuseppe and his partners to provide finance to aid succession and the development of the business. Over the course of the last 6 years, profit has more than doubled with organic growth and bolt-on acquisitions contributing to this. A number of key areas contributing towards the development of the business, which are being driven by the management team with our support. These include really simplifying the governance structure by providing finance and working through the succession management. We ended up with a far more efficient and through a quicker decision-making body enabling the business to go forward better.
We've invested in technology, which has improved profit margin and is enabling us to internalize profit from third-party providers. We've improved business development. This is required, which is really about winning new clients. And this has occurred through organization and -- organizational and cultural change, and that has yielded good results. And we've completed 3 bolt-on acquisitions, and these improve the reach and diversify the offering of the business. And we benefited from cash generation, and the chart shows you how returns have grown over the period of our ownership.
It's been a steady performer. It's a real compounder and has delivered an 18% IRR or 2.5x multiple of invested cost. So we're very pleased with how this investment has progressed for us. It's a very interesting business. It is positioned in the fastest-growing part of the wealth management market. So we're very pleased to be long-term shareholders of this business and delighted to carry on holding it.
And with that, I'd like to hand over to Rob, who will carry on through the presentation.
Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everybody. Our funds pool has been running for more than a decade, and the opportunity is significant. These funds tend not to market in Europe, meaning that we are often the only European investor, which is a real differentiator for Caledonia. The pool of NAV of just under GBP 900 million, is a diverse portfolio of some 80 funds managed by 45 managers, invested in more than 600 underlying businesses. 63% of the pool is focused on North America, lower mid-market buyout and 37% in Asian buyout, growth and venture funds. No portfolio was immune from the geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds. We believe the diversified pool of companies is capable of navigating this period of uncertainty.
The North American assets are focused in that lower mid-market, 2/3 of the companies provide services and the balance have very little exposure to international trade flows. Within the Asian pool, the fund of funds, the buyout assets are focused on domestic consumption and supply chains, fueled by the aging population, growing middle class and tech adoption. The venture and growth funds are invested in government-supported new technologies and health.
We, therefore, feel there's limited exposure to the direct risk of the trade tariffs, although economic uncertainty is likely to reduce investment and realization activity in the short term. The pool has delivered strong returns of 17% and 13% over 5 and 10 years. In the current year, the North American pool delivered local currency returns of 8.4%, driven by good trading performance of the underlying companies.
In Asia, despite the company is making good progress, the continued reduction in capital market flows impacts on fundraising and exits, and this presses our returns in the short term. Overall, the pool delivered 2.2%, 4.6% in local currency. Our capital commitments increased from GBP 377 million to GBP 416 million. GBP 132 million was invested in the year with GBP 155 million of new commitments being made. The majority into North America and in total, of which approximately half is committed to new funds and half to funds where we have existing relationships with managers. We've included on the top left-hand side, the pie chart, which details the weighted average life of the portfolio.
For North America, the weighted average life is 4 years. This compares to a typical fund hold period of 4 to 6 years. For Asia, the weighted average life is 4.9 years that we expect a longer hold period in that market given the weighting towards venture and growth businesses. The chart at the bottom covers some of the cash flow aspects and the realizations in the bar chart. And you can see significant improvement in the level of realizations in both North America and in Asia in the last 12 months. And this has resulted in the bullets at the bottom, which show that the pool has been cash positive GBP 44 million, and as it has for 3 of the 4 years as the program matures.
As I mentioned earlier, though, that economic uncertainty, we think it's likely that investment and realization activity will reduce in the short term. KLH Capital is based in Tampa, Florida. It's typical of one of our U.S. funds focused on the U.S. lower mid-market. The sector specialize in services for critical infrastructure and industrial businesses. The investments are in relatively small in U.S. terms, typically owner-managed businesses, profitable, cash-generative companies, where often this is the first institutional capital. The plan is to transform these companies through building out management teams, operational efficiency and where appropriate bolt-on acquisitions. These improved companies then provide the feedstock for the mid-market private equity market.
Prior to investing, the funds team have built a really close relationship with the fund principles, diligencing their performance track record and understanding their investment culture. Caledonia members of the Fund Advisory Board as we offer about 80% of the North American portfolio. And this provides a level of oversight and influence over the GP as well as giving access to chief executives, pricing and valuation information.
The first commitment that we made into KLH was in 2019, GBP 27.5 million of a total fund size of GBP 209 million, and then we followed with a commitment of GBP 30 million into fund 5 in 2023. As I mentioned, we are the only European investor, which is a differentiator for Caledonia. Both of these funds 4 and 5, we expect 2 to 2.5x gross money multiple and we feel that the team is on track to deliver this.
On the next slide, there's 4 companies from the underlying portfolio. These are focused on services to critical infrastructure, equipment and assets. The first of these businesses on the left-hand side, D&H United was sold at the back end of 2022 and a 5x gross money multiple.
Building out the management teams, enhancing corporate infrastructure and identifying bolt-on acquisitions are key drivers to the value creation. And this is a very similar playbook to the other lower mid-market funds within the portfolio.
We'll now move to the numbers. During the year, our NAV of just under GBP 2.9 billion, generated a total return of 3.3%. Volatility in the public markets in March, impacted returns of the capital pool by 7.3% and overall NAV by just under 2%. We have GBP 2.7 billion invested in a diversified portfolio of listed and privately held companies and funds that have global reach. During the period, we completed our new revolving credit facility with an increased size of GBP 325 million on improved terms.
The facility is provided by 3 banks, GBP 175 million house, 3-year tenor, 150 million as a 5-year tenor. Facility is currently undrawn. That combined with GBP 151 million of cash on balance sheet, gives us GBP 476 million of liquidity. This enables us to act quickly to invest in companies or funds that we find attractive. For those of you who have seen the April fact sheet, and as Matt mentioned, you will have seen that we deployed GBP 50 million into the public company's portfolio in April, taking advantages of opportunities provided by that recent market volatility. Our proposed final dividend of 53.91p, brings the total to the year to 73.6p. That's a year-on-year increase of 4.5%. The final dividend of GBP 28 million, therefore, will be paid to shareholders on the 7th of August '25.
To my beloved waterfall charts. The first of which is the portfolio of investments. We'll start on the left-hand side of just under GBP 2.7 billion. We rolled through to the right-hand side, just over GBP 2.7 billion, but clearly a lot of activity taking place during the year. GBP 320 million of investments were made, including GBP 55 million into DTM within the private capital portfolio, GBP 130 million to the funds pool and GBP 107 million into the public company's pool, including that new position of Pool Corp, Howden, Sage Croda.
Our realizations of GBP 336 million included the realization of Bloom, 42% increase on NAV from the prior year, GBP 174 million return from the funds pool and GBP 114 million from public companies, where we took advantage of market pricing, trading around our core position in addition to disposing of BAT and the capital portfolio and DS Smith, Reckitt and Pennon in the income portfolio.
On the right-hand side, just a sort of summary table of returns, and you'll see that the return period 3.5% and the cash yield of 2.6%. A little bit on valuation of the assets. Our quoted assets are marked to market daily.
Within private capital, we follow the IPEV guidelines and account at fair value. A full valuation is carried out at the half year and at the full year. This is reviewed and challenged by the valuation of Audit Committee and, of course, the auditors. For the funds pool, we rely on the manager NAV statements, 67% of the NAV at the 31st of March was valued based upon statements at the 31st of December. These statements are audited by reputable firms on an IFRS or U.S. GAAP basis, which is essentially fair value. The team reviewed the valuations to ensure that any trends or company-specific issues are appropriately reflected. And this year included a thorough review of the impact of the Trump trade tariffs.
Our NAV GBP 2.9 billion. You can see the portfolio return in the middle, the impact of FX, then management expenses of GBP 32 million. Our OCR is 87 basis points, slightly up on the prior year, reflecting some of the investment in the investment teams, which Matt mentioned earlier. That takes the NAV to just over GBP 3 billion in the center.
And then you can see the returns to shareholders, GBP 63 million in allocated to share buybacks, GBP 38 million being the payments of the prior year and final dividend and the current year interim dividend. The pie on the right-hand side shows the split of the assets domicile currency, 53% U.S. dollars, 38% sterling, movements in that sterling-dollar exchange rate will, therefore, impact on our in-period results. And as we mentioned in the last 12 months, there's an FX loss of GBP 42 million, reducing NAV total return by 1.4%.
We have a robust balance sheet with no structural leverage. Walking you through the cash movements from the left-hand side, we started the year with GBP 227 million of cash and net GBP 19 million was returned from the investment portfolio. Cash yield from the assets, GBP 39 million and GBP 31 million, the cash cost of management expenses. There's a little bit of working capital movement in a couple of the numbers, which is why the eagle-eyed of you will noticed is slightly different from the slide before.
Then now we have the payment of the dividend and the cash allocated to share buybacks leaves us GBP 151 million at the end of the year. That, combined with the RCF, gives us that GBP 476 million of liquidity. We fundamentally believe the long-term shareholders should benefit from the increase in NAV. NAV has grown by 9% over the last 10 years -- 9% per annum over the last 10 years, and TSR over that period is 7.5% per annum.
Over 3 and 5 years, the gap between NAV per share growth and TSR has increased driven by the dividend widening. The 1-year TSR of 10.2% reflects the dividend -- the discount coming back in from 39% at the start of the year to 35% at the end. We still consider that this current discount undervalues the quality of our investments and our long-term track record. This remains a live issue for the Board, and we are progressing the things that we can control.
Firstly, that is to continue to build on our track record of investing in quality companies and funds delivering long-term real returns. Second, is continuing to evolve our IR and communications to ensure that Caledonia investment proposition is understood and rated. And to that end, we held the first Capital Market Spotlight event in January, focused on private capital. If you haven't had the opportunity to watch it yet, I would encourage you to do so and visit the website, provides a great insight into how the pool operates, what differentiates us from other private equity funds, how we add value and our realized track record and performance. And that date for your diaries again, 24th of June will be the second spotlight event focusing on the public companies.
The area of focus that we can control is on shareholder initiatives. In December, we were grateful that shareholders supported an uncapped Rule 9 Waiver. This provided us with the flexibility to enable us to complete more share buybacks. We have a prudent capital allocation policy to investments, our dividend and when appropriate, share buybacks.
During the year, we allocated GBP 63 million to share buybacks, resulting in 59p accretion to NAV per share, just over 1%. We believe Caledonia is a great hub for long-term investors. At the AGM in July, we will be seeking shareholder approval for a 10:1 share split. In addition, we are changing the profile of the dividend, making the interim dividend 50% of the prior year total. These measures will provide improved visibility of income, make payments more balanced and is expected to improve accessibility to a wider range of shareholders.
In summary then, Caledonia has built a diverse portfolio that is well placed to deliver long-term returns. We invest in quality businesses focused on free cash flow, meaning the portfolio is capable of responding to challenges and opportunities posed by the macro and geopolitical environment. We have a robust balance sheet with liquidity of GBP 476 million, giving us the firepower to act should we want to act on attractive investments. The experience team are 100% aligned and focused on continuing to invest and manage a portfolio of high-quality companies and private equity funds.
And as a management team and board, we're committed to doing what we can to control and drive shareholder value. We will now take questions initially from the room and then to those who dialed in remotely. Thank you.
Just thinking about the balance sheet position. It's obviously a position of strength gives you a chance to act when markets are more volatile. How does that compare to previous years? And what areas are you particularly looking at to add to?
So we do have the odd year when we might be a bit overdrawn because we might just bought a business or something. But generally, we like to be in this sort of position with this amount of cash. And really, the 2 areas of opportunities that present themselves are stock market weakness, where we've added and then we might also find -- we always like to be able to buy a business if business opportunity comes along for private capital. So those would be the 2 areas of opportunity we'd be looking at.
There's one question from Iain Scouller, who says, I know 30% of the funds pulled last valued at the 30th September, why is there such a time lag in these valuations?
Predominantly, that portion of the portfolio is the fund of funds portfolio. So where we're investing in a fund of fund manager and then they are investing in underlying primary funds. And there is a lag as they collect the data from the underlying funds and then consolidate that and then bring them through. Since we finished the year end or close the year-end, more of those funds have reported, and we obviously sort of track that to make sure there's not a material difference to the numbers which we reported at the end of March, which there isn't.
But then also, as I mentioned in the presentation, the funds team do an awful lot of analytical review and challenge to make sure they are comfortable with the valuation. If there's any sort of stale pricing or market movements that they are reflecting those appropriately in the valuation. And indeed, we completed really thorough review to consider the impact of the Trump tariffs on valuation.
Okay. Well, that's it. No more questions. Thank you for everyone's attention today.
