Behind EUR 340m of profit, a capital machine

Ackermans & van Haaren has published a remarkable first half of 2026: EUR 339.6 million of net profit, up 24%, and a net cash position reaching EUR 524.4 million. But reading AvH through profit alone means looking at a holding company from the wrong end. The real question is where capital is produced, where it must stay, and where it can be redeployed. The half-year report provides just enough to rebuild that mechanism.

The half year is not merely good. It makes a capital allocation model visible: the private banks send a great deal of capital back to the centre; DEME retains more cash because it still has projects able to absorb it; AvH then arbitrates between dividends, strengthening its holdings and new platforms.

Before talking about cash, the portfolio has to be put back to scale

AvH presents itself as a diversified group, and it is. But the five segments are neither the same size, nor at the same stage of maturity, nor of the same accounting nature. The report does not publish a homogeneous net asset value per segment; inventing a portfolio allocation would therefore give artificial precision. Two things are comparable, however: the ownership percentages of the main holdings and their contribution to the half year's profit.

The published contributions total EUR 322.8m for the four core segments, to which Growth Capital, AvH and subholdings, and EUR 3.3m of net capital gains are added.

AvH owns many companies. But in the first half, two businesses alone produce close to 85 euros of every 100 of profit.

Two engines, two completely different economics

The temptation would be to call DEME and Delen AvH's two cash cows. That would be half true. Both generate a great deal of profit and both send cash back to the parent, but their capital needs are nothing alike.

Delen: why talking about free cash flow would be almost the wrong question

For a bank or a wealth manager, classic free cash flow says little: deposits and loans are part of how the balance sheet works. The better reading looks at profit, regulatory capital, excess equity and distributions.

Seen this way, the profile of AvH's private banks is unusually favourable. In parallel, Delen keeps opening offices, integrating acquisitions and widening its Dutch footprint.

In 2025, Delen Private Bank alone paid EUR 179.0m to AvH after deciding to distribute the whole of its consolidated 2024 profit to its shareholders. That does not mean the bank will distribute 100% of its earnings every year; it shows that it has already been able to do so while continuing to grow.

DEME: plenty of cash, but plenty of intelligent places to put it back to work

DEME is almost the mirror image. The company generates a great deal of cash, but its business remains capital intensive.

In 2025, DEME invested EUR 1.066bn, notably in the acquisition of Havfram and the vessels Norse Wind and Norse Energi. Its published free cash flow then fell to minus EUR 394m; excluding Havfram and the payments tied to the two new vessels, it would have been positive at EUR 342m. In the first half of 2026, free cash flow returns to EUR 231m despite EUR 227m of investment, while net debt falls from EUR 391m to EUR 291m.

The dividend policy confirms that discipline: DEME targets a payout of around 33% of net profit. The gross dividend approved by the general meeting of 20 May and paid on 29 May 2026 rose to EUR 4.50 per share. With 15,725,684 DEME shares held by AvH, that corresponds to about EUR 70.8m for the parent. This is an Opulion calculation, obtained by multiplying the gross dividend per share by the number of shares held, and it assumes the amount arrives intact: above 10% of the capital and between Belgian companies, the parent-subsidiary regime exempts it from withholding tax.

The most revealing figure of the half year may not be EUR 339.6m, but EUR 282.7m

In the first half, AvH received EUR 282.7m of dividends from its holdings. Of that, EUR 186.0m came from Delen Private Bank and Bank Van Breda. The DEME dividend accruing to AvH represents about EUR 70.8m. Together, these two engines therefore represent roughly EUR 256.8m, close to 91% of the dividends received by AvH. This is an Opulion calculation; the DEME dividend was paid on 29 May, well before the half-year close.

AvH, for its part, pays EUR 150.3m of dividends to its own shareholders and invests only EUR 27.2m in the direct expansion of its portfolio during the half year. The rest strengthens the central reserve. That is why net cash moves from EUR 428.9m at the end of 2025 to EUR 524.4m at the end of June.

AvH's cash pile is not a nest egg, it is room for manoeuvre

Seen over five years, the cash position confirms the cyclical character of capital allocation. It jumps after the large disposals of Anima and Manuchar in 2022, stays close to EUR 500m in 2023, falls back when the holding company reinvests more heavily in 2024, then rebuilds thanks to dividends from the holdings.

The series therefore shows no linear accumulation, but an alternation between harvesting and redeployment.

Growth Capital: the pocket where AvH accepts that cash stays at work for longer

Growth capital means backing companies that already have a business and customers but still have significant room to grow. At AvH, this pocket is deliberately more heterogeneous: established companies, life sciences, India and South-East Asia. It can therefore generate profit, absorb capital and produce valuation or currency effects.

In the first half of 2026, Growth Capital contributes EUR 21.4m, against minus EUR 1.2m a year earlier. But EUR 21.3m of positive currency effect on V.Group explains a significant part of the improvement. The lesson is useful: not every pocket at AvH should be judged on its immediate capacity to distribute cash.

Grieg Aqua: the central cash is already being redeployed

On 28 August, AvH announced an investment of about EUR 93m for 37.5% of Grieg Aqua, the family holding company that owns 50.17% of the Norwegian producer Grieg Seafood.

The right reading, however, is not that AvH is using EUR 93m of its cash to buy salmon. The report presents Grieg Aqua as a new building block in a Food & Agri ambition built around SIPEF.

And public documents do not yet allow Grieg Aqua's balance sheet at completion to be rebuilt precisely: the holding company is entitled to a large extraordinary distribution from Grieg Seafood in the spring of 2026, but the amount of cash that will actually remain in Grieg Aqua at the time of the transaction is not published. It would therefore be premature to conclude that there is a premium or a discount on the basis of Grieg Seafood's share price alone. The share price quotes the whole Grieg Seafood group, whereas the transaction concerns the holding company that owns it: these are two different perimeters, and a control block is not valued at the price of a minority line.

A final caution: EUR 180.58 is not a net asset value

AvH's product, in the end, is capital allocation

The half-year report opens with EUR 339.6m of profit. Economically, it ends somewhere else.

It shows first that the portfolio is far more concentrated than it looks: private banking and marine generate close to 85% of earnings. It then shows that these two engines are complementary rather than similar. Delen can return a great deal of capital to the holding company without sacrificing its growth; DEME can still employ large amounts of capital in its own business and therefore distributes more sparingly.

That combination is powerful for AvH. In the first half, the private banks and DEME alone account for about 91% of the dividends received by the parent. Part is passed on to AvH's shareholders; part rebuilds a reserve of more than half a billion euros; part again will be redeployed into new platforms such as Grieg Aqua.

This is where the analogy with the great capital allocators becomes useful, without needing to be forced. AvH's role is not to extract the maximum cash from every subsidiary. It is to decide where a euro is worth most: at Delen, in a new DEME vessel, in a Growth Capital company, or at the centre while waiting for the next opportunity.

In that sense, the first half of 2026 tells more than a record profit. It shows a holding company whose best assets do not merely produce results: they feed a capital architecture capable of funding the next chapter.