Aberdeen Group Plc (ABDN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the abrdn Q1 Trading Update Call. There will be some opening remarks from management, followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] But for now, I would like to turn the call over to Stephen Bird, CEO; and Jason Windsor, CFO.

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our Q1 trading update call. We're broadcasting to you from Edinburgh where the sun is in the sky; and it's a fairly short call, so it probably will remain for the entire call. I'm joined by Jason Windsor, our CFO, who will walk you through the numbers, and then we will be taking your questions. First, I would like to go through some key highlights. We saw AUMA grow by 3% to GBP 508 billion, reflecting positive markets across our 3 businesses and net Group inflows. We are pleased with the continued organic growth in interactive investor with customer numbers up to 414,000 and net inflows of GBP 1.2 billion. There was strong liquidity inflows within our investments business. Fixed income returned to net inflow, but this was offset by further outflows in equities. In Adviser, we saw net outflows driven by higher redemptions from the platform. Clearly, there is more work for us to do and we have the actions underway to improve the performance and drive growth across all 3 businesses. Implementation of our cost transformation program is on track. We are taking action to sustainably restore our business to a more acceptable level of profitability and focus on delivering investment performance for all our clients, which is, as ever, the most important thing for our business. Overall, our first quarter performance once again showed the benefits of a diversified business model as we build a modern investment company. Jason, over to you.

Thank you, Stephen, and good morning, everybody. Let me now take you through the numbers. Overall, assets at the end of the quarter were GBP 508 billion compared with GBP 495 billion at the year-end. That's a 3% increase, which was mainly the result of positive market performance and net inflows for the Group of GBP 0.8 billion, which includes GBP 2.6 billion of net flows into liquidity. This compares to GBP 6.2 billion of net outflow in Q1 2023, which included GBP 1.8 billion of net outflow from liquidity. So first, to look at investments. Assets increased by 2% to GBP 374 billion compared with the full year. This is mainly a result of positive market movements across most asset classes during the quarter. Overall, the active asset management industry continued with net outflows in Q1 across global mutual funds, particularly within equities and multi-asset. However, the pace of outflows showed signs of slowing, primarily driven by growing demand of fixed income, which we expect to continue. Institutional and Retail Wealth net inflows in Q1 were GBP 0.7 billion, including strong flows of GBP 2.6 billion into liquidity, primarily from corporate clients with high cash balances. There were also net inflows of GBP 0.9 billion into Quants and GBP 0.4 billion into fixed income. It was a challenging quarter for equities with net outflows reflecting the continued trend across the industry with asset allocation away from Asia and emerging markets in particular. Insurance Partners net outflow in Q1 was GBP 0.5 billion. This reflected outflows from heritage business in run-off, largely offset by inflows from the growing workplace pension business. Turning to Adviser. Assets increased by 2% to GBP 75 billion as a result of positive market movements. However, net outflows persisted at GBP 0.9 billion in the quarter, continuing to reflect economic uncertainty faced by our customers. Gross inflows were broadly in line with Q1 last year. However, as we saw in Q4, redemptions were elevated due to the impact of higher cost of living on disposable incomes, completion of our service upgrade and continued IFA consolidation. And finally, in interactive investor, we saw continued organic growth in customer numbers to 414,000, which was up 3% from the last year and 2% in the quarter. We saw particular strength in SIPP customer numbers, which grew to 68,500. This is up 25% from the last year to 10% in the quarter. ii assets were up 5% to GBP 70 billion, benefiting from positive market movements and net inflows of GBP 1.2 billion, which is up 71% on Q1 last year. Within that figure, there was GBP 0.2 billion of outflow from our closed pension trading accounts and GBP 0.1 billion of outflow from our financial planning business. Taken together, this was a very encouraging quarter for ii with significant further growth anticipated. So at the Group level overall, there's clearly some way to go to further improve flows as we progress through 2024. Everyone here is very clear that our top priorities are better investment performance, strong client service and driving growth across the Group. And I'm pleased that we're making good progress with the implementation of our transformation program. As we said previously, this is essential to lower costs, move the Group toward an acceptable level of profitability and focus all of our resources on serving our clients. With that, Stephen and I are happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And first up, we have Nicholas Herman from Citi.

Yes. It's actually helpful for investors and has been well received. A couple of questions from me, please. Just in terms of flow trends, particularly in the investments segment, sector, we've obviously seeing outflows continue across similar asset classes. I guess, just given the relatively weak performance in equities, has that had a knock-on effect in terms of demand for other asset classes and clients taking money, I guess, not only out of perhaps your APAC equities franchise, but also taking money out from other asset classes as well or is it generally pretty isolated? And then secondly, on pipeline, just good to see your closed-end funds come through in fixed income, in particular, can I trust have the pipeline has evolved over the course of this year? And then finally, [indiscernible] a third one, just in terms of margin. I guess, given outflows in equities, especially EM and APAC equities as well as EM and fixed income, real assets, this does seem to suggest further margin pressure. I guess, consensus seems to model 25 basis points Group margin yield into FY '24, which would be flat compared to 2023. Does that seem reasonable to you?

So let me take that first and then I'll turn to Jason. So first of all, if you actually look at the actual numbers, we obviously -- your question is negative outflows in our equities. As you know, we're a large emerging markets, Asia investor. And the overall market, if you look at the Morningstar data, equities has remained in outflow. So the whole industry was an outflow to the tune of GBP 100 billion in Q1. And that was the -- and we've had 14 consecutive months of outflows in active equities. So we are not alone there. And we've been focused on improving our performance. And in fact, our 5, 6 months' performance is pretty strongly green up to 62% now. So Peter Branner and team are having the right impact on equities. But your question is, would performance in equities have a bleed across into other asset classes. Well, the answer is no because we are an incredibly strong fixed income investor. Institutional investors review their goals, their objectives and their mandates by asset class, specifically based on achieving their outcomes. We achieved growth in fixed income, as we just recorded in the quarter. We grew also our Quants business where we'd be GBP 17 billion in assets and we grew liquidity strongly. Liquidity by the way is not a passive thing. We've taken very strong actions over the last year. Our team has done great work in providing the right liquidity solutions, being in front of clients and making sure that we are attracting that flow, which is profitable. So the challenge is, I would say, our equities is partly market overall performance, partly our own performance, and we are focused on controlling what we can control and fixing that. And then if you look at the other big asset classes for us, real estate of course has been impacted by interest rates and a bit of a derating of the sector. And within real assets we got almost to flat in the quarter as well. So we have said on GBP 38 billion of assets we got within GBP 300 million of flat. So the answer is not a bleed across. In terms of pipeline, RFPs, what I look at every day is I look at searches, the RFPs, I look at deals that we're involved in. In Q1, we currently have a pipeline of about 75 RFPs. So that's 300 in a year. That's back to the volumes that we were seeing in 2021. Jason?

So on the revenue margin, things do move around quite a bit. I mean, you're right, prima facie that we lost higher margin assets in terms of flows. However, we did add Tekla into equities, which is the highest margin, I think approximately 1% on that, which has made comparatively is helpful and also a little bit additive to the margin in the quarter. So what I said as a full year and without wanting to disappoint really, we're not going to give lots of net revenue updates on this call. But what I said at the full year is I expect revenue margin to be just below 22 bps certainly for the first half and I'm pretty comfortable with that. We didn't see -- with the positive equity movements and the reason I just said, we didn't see significant margin contraction quarter-on-quarter. And I think that we'll be stabilizing just under 22 bps guidance I gave before, I remain comfortable with.

And we'll move on to our next question, which comes from Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

I've got 3 of them as well. Can you talk a bit about the Adviser business? You mentioned good inflows year-on-year, redemptions continuing. So should we expect -- how long should we expect these higher redemptions to persist? Like how more quarters do you think before you see a turnaround as no part of that's driven by the technology change? Second question is on the ii and customer growth, which was solid in the quarter. Can you talk -- is there any seasonality in that in Q1? And how should we think about the trajectory for customer growth for the rest of the year? And lastly, just on cash margin, ii. Just wondering if any change to the guidance that Richard gave at the full year results about the 20 to 36 basis points for this year? Do you still expect that to be held?

So let's take -- thank you for those. Let me just address them. So the Adviser platform, there's really -- I think about it in 3 areas. I mean, first of all, there was what we did. So we had to -- we did a very big tech conversion, as you know. It was the right thing to do. And if you're going to do it, actually doing it in a relatively flatter market. It's not a bad time to do it, but we did it because it was necessary after 17 years to really create a better platform that buys time for the IFAs, make them more productive, less than group of businesses. So that's why we did it. And -- but there's some friction when we do that and we saw some of that friction. We saw it in some of our service queues. But we've got all of those service queues back to green, we track this meticulously. So that piece, that chapter, I'm hoping is behind us. And certainly, the indicators seem to be. But then there's 3 other things really going on. There's cost of living challenges. So when you've got redemptions where folks are funding, they're in the accumulation, so they are higher redemptions with the funding the lives. And so that's a piece of it. Then there is the move -- we've seen some move to cash. And that's where folks redeem and put the money into cash off platform. Now in that case, you can act on that, you can provide a better and more compelling cash option on platform, and that's what we've done. So we've actually brought up the -- we launched in the quarter the money market MPS solution that's now on platform. And then we've actually got another capability coming in Q2, which is new deposit accounts, which actually just makes it easier. You don't need to move to a deposit for bank, you can have it there. So I think the cost of living challenges lead to redemption, cash could lead to alternative places to put your money. And then you put the ongoing consolidation that's going on within the industry. Our goal, and we've said this before, is we want to be the #1 platform for the Adviser. We want to be the preferred platform for the Adviser. You can only do that by being better, by being simpler, faster, better, cheaper. So that's the action that the team is taking. New tech platform, simple and better services come through a bit of pain. So the question is, when does it -- how do we feel about the rest of the year? Well, if you talk to Noel and you ask him how he feels about the rest of the afternoon because we are on him every single day in terms of when these red queues turn green. So it's hard to call. It's hard to call. I mean, I think that the intensity and rigor of the team is there, they're doing the right things, but it's certainly hard to call what it would be in the rest of the year.

I think you covered that? So on ii growth, we see small expectations, some seasonality. I just worked out last year, we saw 27% of ii flows in Q1, to give you a guide. We'll see how it develops, but we do anticipate strong continued flows and growth in interactive investor during the course this year. And no change to the cash margin guidance that we gave. [indiscernible] bumped around a bit, speculation has changed a bit, but the -- we continue to add margin broadly in line with the guidance that we gave in the full year.

And I would just add one thing to the ii in terms of how we feel. If you look at the transfer request queue, so we received 25,000 transfer requests in Q1. These transfers can take 9, 10, 11 weeks to do. And we know it's not entirely -- that's sort of industry norm. So that feeds through into Q2. So we're very confident in the Q2 numbers and we're confident in the array of actions that we're taking to drive further growth in that business.

And up next, we have Bruce Hamilton from Morgan Stanley.

One on -- I mean, clearly, improving performance as you flagged, is critical. So good to see obviously you're all focus on that. In terms -- I probably missed the number, Stephen, you quoted earlier, but I think at year-end when you showed the performance of specialist equities, there's only 17% outperforming benchmark over 3 years. Can you give some indication on how that's moved or the shorter timeframe improvement? I think you said 6 months at 60% above benchmark. I just wanted to check that. And then secondly, if you could just remind me of any sort of deconsolidation impacts or disposal impacts through the remainder of the year and the timeframe for that? I think there's some private equity assets coming out, but I just want to make sure I have that all accurate in the model.

Yes. So improving performance, this can be a challenging -- slow thing to turn around. The number -- just to give you the numbers I was calling out there, I said, short-term overall performance of our book in total. So if you go from year-end to now, it's 62% ahead of benchmark. And that is -- that's where you've got -- we've actually got 92% of fixed income ahead of benchmark in Q1, 33% ahead in equities, 62% multi-asset, 68% alternatives, 26% in Quant and 100% obviously in liquidity to 62% is across the whole book. Equities performance is -- it takes longer to feed through, because of course, you've got [ PDs ] falling off and PDs coming on. So it takes longer. So equities, as I say, is short-term performance is 33%. Across the 1, 3 and 5, 5 is 36% in the Q1, but it's 13% at 3 years and 18% at 1 year, partly reflecting the composition of the book. So I think Peter is taking the right action. We actually reviewed it yesterday, but it takes some time to feed through.

On the PE assets, yes, about GBP 7 billion, I think we expect that transaction to close imminently. So that will be GBP 7 billion of the investments as I flagged at the year-end. And this is more acquisition, I think we'll close in Q2. First Trust is around GBP 0.6 billion as well.

And our next question comes from Arnaud Giblat from BNP Paribas Exane.

I've got 3 questions, please. Firstly, on the Adviser business, if I can come back. Your flows are worsened in Q1 when the -- your listed peers saw an improvement in Q1. I'm just wondering if there are any one-offs to be aware of? And specifically, are you still seeing some disruption from the upgrades intake? My second question is on the real estate business. I'm wondering if you could -- there were no outflows there given the challenging market, I suppose surprising. I'm wondering if some of your funds are gated? And if so, when do you expect those gates to lift it? And my final question is on interactive investors. Could you tell us about the level of cash? I think at year-end, you had 9% of assets under Adviser. Are you still at those levels?

Okay. On the platform, I think I've said everything on it. I mean, there's -- we've -- we're back to green in terms of our overall service proposition and there are no one-offs. So we're focused on making the numbers better. In real estate, no, we don't have any of the funds gated. And then...

You asked about the platform, no massive change across the year. I mean, it's probably ticking up something closer to GBP 6 billion for this year-end, just under GBP 5 billion. So it's gone up. You expect slightly more as we grow SIPPs and SIPPs have a slightly higher allocation to catch. Those sort of -- these sort of trended up during the quarter to that level.

And from JPMorgan, we have Enrico Bolzoni with our next question.

One on ii, please, actually 2. In terms of the increased penetration when it comes to SIPP, how should we think about the economics there? Is it already possible for us to model the additional revenues coming from more SIPP accounts coming through? If you could give some guidance there that would be helpful. Second, as more clarification, I just wanted to be sure that the addition in customers over the quarter in ii was not coming from some internal transfer of the full year results. You mentioned that you had some clients that move from -- I think from the personal vector outside of ii to ii. So I just wanted to make sure that the 7,000 customer that you added is from outside of the platform? And then maybe finally, again, also on ii. I was just wondering if the uptick you saw in customer acquisition can be explained maybe with [indiscernible] or any other specific variable you had the market become paying out for quite some time now? So I just wanted to get your thoughts on what could be the driver of the acceleration there.

Let me talk a little bit about SIPP. It's incredibly important to our business, our overall business model. SIPPs are higher average balance, higher retention, higher cash component. They're the highest lifetime value account that you can attract into ii. So you mentioned penetration, we grew penetration 3% in the year to 16.9%. So the good news is that, that relatively low penetration will be growing fast, I think has got a significantly long runway. You probably think that you could continue to grow at that rate 4 or 5 years or something like that. So the SIPP business is highly profitable.

I think the one feature for modern terms is we do see slightly higher trading and FX, therefore, within SIPP. So as that AUM tracks up, should change to slightly different market conditions in particularly where you've seen pretty attractive markets, certainly in the first part of the first quarter. That's beneficial to our revenue. Of course, we are a subscription model. So there's customer numbers to underpin. Your other question, no, we didn't talk about internal transfers. We've not proceeded with that any further. So it is a strong underlying growth within that business. And why? well, just a continued focus by the business on organic marketing, we talked about that. We've given them every opportunity to spend on marketing. And obviously, Richard and his team and a whole people working on the ii brand, you are seeing some of that activity. That will take time as we build the brand across '24 is a key priority for us to continue with strong growth. We've got a great price point. We've got a great service proposition. We've got further capability that we're planning to launch during Q2. So as I said in my script, we do expect significant growth to continue in ii through the year.

And if you want to do it right now, we're giving GBP 200 cash back as well. So these are as per your SIPP to us.

And up next, we have Andrew Crean from Autonomous.

A couple of other things. Firstly, could you talk a little bit about ii trading, the share trading volumes in the quarter and how that's playing through? Secondly, is there any update or any news on accessing capital from the DB scheme in the quarter? And then thirdly, you have talked about it, but do you have a sense as to the long-term or medium-term customer growth in ii that you're targeting? And what sort of level you'd be targeting year-on-year?

Terrific. So we had record standalone trading and FX trading in the quarter. I don't believe we've actually -- we don't -- we're not giving these numbers. So we're not giving the numbers. It was a strong quarter. In terms of the new customers, we think that we're targeting to be able to grow at a 5% rate, Andrew, there. I'm pretty confident we can get that to that level. Jason, a word on DB?

Yes. I mean, no specific count there. I think I set myself a relatively undemanding objective of doing this -- which I will stick to. We have been following with interest of DWP consultation, which closed on Friday. Obviously, from -- actually from a sponsor perspective, but also from our own customer perspective, it's a very interesting development for us as to what happens within the U.K. DB scheme. So we're really interested from a client perspective as well to see how that develops also from the bulk purchase annuity market. So there's a number of angles for us on that, but the real focus for us is getting the right solution for the scheme for the trustees and for ourselves. And yes, that is absolutely a total for us for this year.

And we're now moving on to Mike Werner from UBS with our next question.

Actually, all of my questions have been answered or asked. Maybe just a little bit...

Mike, we can't hear you.

Maybe can you give a little bit of color within the equity franchise. What portion of this is retail-related and what portion ultimately is institutional? And are you seeing any difference in kind of the demand from those different groups of clients? And generally, typically, is there a leader or a laggard? Do you tend to get demand rising at one of those 2 entities first before it flows through the other one?

Yes. I'm sorry, Mike, we couldn't hear that. Could you trouble you to repeat that?

Okay. Sorry about that. Yes, most of my questions have been asked. But maybe just on the equity space given that this is a core part from a management fee perspective. Can you just give us a little bit of color of what you're seeing in terms of -- or if there's any difference in underlying demand between your retail client base or your regulated funds versus your segregated mandates, your institutional clients? And also any indication of what the mix there is within the equity franchise between kind of retail and institutional?

Yes. Let me give you a little bit of sort of color. The large institutional clients typically are choosing to access equity betas through passives and ETFs and they're looking for lower cost ways of accessing particularly large developed market equities. So we've seen some of that in our book. And that's not a new trend that has been playing out. As you know, we've recorded -- we've highlighted that for some time. We've had wins in the quarter from some institutional clients in our small cap franchise. As you know, we put quite a strong small cap franchise in U.K., Europe, U.S. We've also had some wins in European sustainable equity. Some of those are won, but not yet funded. So I think what it shows is that what we've been trying to do is reposition away from some large developed market equities where we know that they are institutional clients. And if you think about -- we've got -- you're looking for the split between institutional and wholesale. So our [ CCAP ] range, so across GBP 350 billion of our total assets and investments business, GBP 50 billion is CCAP range. So that's mutual funds, which is wholesale, some institutional clients also access those and then the balance is institutional. So what we're trying to do is become more differentiated and more specialists. So think about the emerging markets franchise, Asia, which is sort of less available than developed market and less analyzed and researched than development market. We had some offer there, same with small cap, same for sustainable. And then the acquisitions that we've made, Jason mentioned Tekla. So what we've been trying to do, we're the third largest investment trust and closed-end investor globally. We're now at GBP 30 billion or so. We're 1/3 behind even BlackRock. And what we're trying to do with that business is by capabilities that are going to real edge. So like Tekla is a healthcare investor, Boston is pretty much the global capital healthcare investing. That's where we found that team. We acquired that business and you get higher margin there. So you drive margin by offering something that's real alpha insight. That's what we're trying to do. I don't know if I add to any color.

We're now moving on to our next question from Charles Bendit from Redburn Atlantic.

So the first one, just wondering if you could give us any more color around how flow dynamics within institutional wealth differ by channel and client region? Anything you'd point out as more granular than high-level institutional versus retail split? The second is around ii. You have plus 7,000 clients in the quarter, just wondering if you could split that out between organic new clients and other factors? And then third around Adviser. Just wondering if you could explain how continued IFA consolidation would negatively impact flows? Just curious, why abrdn wouldn't be a net beneficiary of consolidation?

Okay. So on the first one, yes, this is a trading update call, I'm not going to provide any further detail on the expense of descriptions as to what the text we're seeing within the business. I don't think I can add much to that. Second question was on ii.

I think there's nothing to point out around one-offs or changes. There were some redemptions to the closed pension trading, which is in there. That's a small reduction in customer numbers, but the 7%, the growth figure is a core number annualized bigger across the whole piece. So no, there's nothing I would point to that would be a one-off in the quarter.

Yes. And of course, what you're referring to is the business that we closed. We announced the closure last year and that had GBP 200 million run-off. So the GBP 1.2 billion was net of that. If you chose to exclude the run-off, i.e., the one-off business, our net growth in ii was actually GBP 1.4 billion.

And then the consolidation point is really around vertical integration of platforms with -- there are 2 players who don't need to -- I won't name them, but one of them reported today, one of them is privately held. But our strategy has been to roll-up firms and move those customers over time to their own platform. So that's what we're going to do. That's what we don't have. That is a feature of the market. And that has, therefore, the addressable market for ourselves are strong in that somewhat and they've been able to grow within that. Clearly, we don't just take that lying down. We've got a series of strong relationships of independent IFAs. We've got we do believe the best platform in the market to serve them. Our absolute focus is getting the service level back up to where it will to be to continue and it's a win in that marketplace.

That's really helpful. If I could just quickly follow-up on the interactive investor point. So I think you added 7,000 clients in the quarter. And often, you disclose an organic new clients figure. And then there's a negative number, which reflects I think underlying churn from some of the platforms you've acquired historically. So annually, a number sometimes in the region of 40,000 plus new clients and then minus 30,000 churn. Just wondering how that would look for the quarter?

Yes. I think we've got 15,000 new customers and 8,000 lapsed. I haven't got that broken down between things that we acquired, but that's the -- the additional new was 15,000.

[Operator Instructions] And we'll now move on to David McCann from Numis.

Most of my questions have already been answered, but just a couple actually on the financial planning -- small financial planning business you have there, the GBP 4 billion one. I mean, broadly, what is the future for this? I know it's sort of integrated with ii now, but obviously, it's small and what we've lost -- losing a fair bit of money. So what is the strategy for that? Because clearly at scale it seems unlikely it's going to be making meaningful positive contribution to the Group. So what is the broader strategy there? And then more specifically, shorter term on that, are you having to review the ongoing advice charges there like some of your peers have talked about?

So Richard obviously has taken ownership and we have that within the ii segment. It is a standalone proposition. It does need and it has gone through a number of steps to rationalize its offering and that is ongoing. And we do want to retain the business and there is a connectivity within the personal vector for providing those customers who do require advice and seek advice that we can deliver that, if they choose, in-house. So that's a capability that we have. I think it's pretty clear we're not making the most of it. We've got further work to do better within the integration of that within the new strategy and the growth. So I expect a little bit more as we make further steps on that. We're not part of the FCA's top 20 firms, but obviously, all consumer duty and/or controls apply to everybody. So we haven't been brought into the formal review. But as you'd imagine, we make sure that what we do for our clients is our best possible outcome in line with their expectations and to make sure that we do look around the market and see what others are doing.

And as there are no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Stephen for any additional or closing remarks.

Terrific. Well, thank you all for joining us this morning. I hope that this is our first quarterly update call. I hope the additional color was of value to you. We're building a modern investment company. That's a mission of everybody here. That's what abrdn is. I think the benefits of a diversified business model are very apparent and the profitability that we've been able to generate. And in the overall growth, the fact that we were able to grow our assets to GBP 508 billion, growth of 3% in the quarter is something we feel pretty good about. We've got a lot of work to do for the balance of the year because we've made commitments to restore profitability within our investments business. That entire team, which we're very proud of, is working hard to improve investment performance, drive flows and operate more efficiently, because our goal is to get all 3 businesses to make an appropriate level of profit contribution to abrdn. So thanks very much for joining us folks. Have a good week.