Aberdeen Group Plc ($ABDN)

Good morning, and welcome to the Aberdeen Q1 2026 Trading Update Analyst Call. This call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Siobhan and me for our Q1 call. It doesn't seem very long since we saw you all in person at the start of March. But the past 7 weeks have proven to be a long and turbulent period in world news and in the markets. Of course, there's continued uncertainty as to the outlook for markets and rates, but our business configuration and our resolute focus on our clients are designed to withstand these events. Our group AUMA was GBP 548 billion at the end of the quarter. But in fact, that had increased to more than GBP 570 billion by the end of last week, that's GBP 25 billion higher than March, evidence on its own of the recent volatility. So through this period, in Q1, we've continued to deliver against our strategy. This has been supported in particular by a record quarter for interactive investor. Close within Adviser, while stable compared to last year were negative, but we did see an increase in gross inflows. In investments, we saw some net outflows as we highlighted to you at the time of our full year results. And within that, we saw net inflows into fixed income and real assets. Just a quick comment on each of the 3 businesses for me. Interactive Investor continues to perform very strongly, with total customers up 14% year-on-year and another record quarter for both flows and trading on the platform. The pricing changes which took effect in February have been very well received and have reinforced ii's leading position in the structurally attractive and growing U.K. wealth market. In Adviser, we're taking further significant action to reposition the business for a return to growth. This includes bringing key service teams back in-house from FNZ to improve client outcomes. In fact, we've already made great progress this year with the best tax year-end for many years. In May, Noel will hand over the baton to Rich Denning, who I look forward to welcoming to Aberdeen. Rich brings extensive knowledge of the adviser markets and the technology solutions necessary to Win. In Investments, our strategy to achieve a step change in profitability by creating a resilient focused and better performing business has made good progress. Asset levels may continue to be volatile, but we're positioned to serve our clients through the ups and downs of markets and events. And we have seen better results from our recent commercial activity, giving us growing confidence in our pipeline. Looking ahead, we remain focused on delivering our 2026 targets while always supporting our customers. And now I'll hand over to Siobhan for a little more detail.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Starting with Interactive Investor, the business continues to grow strongly and perform excellently. We have seen increased customer trading during the current period of heightened market volatility and benefited from our improved competitive positioning following the implementation of our simplified pricing approach earlier in the year. Total customers reached 513,000, up 14% year-on-year, with SIPP customers increasing 32% and year-on-year and 10% in the quarter to 116,000. Net inflows reached a record level at GBP 3 billion, up 88% year-on-year. Customer cash balances at the end of March were GBP 8.7 billion, also circa 9% higher than at year-end, partly reflecting customer behavior in these markets. Daily average retail trades we're at the highest level ever at GBP 35,000, around 21% higher than Q4 last year, the previous highest quarter. The divestment of the financial planning business at the end of January reduced AUMA by GBP 3.6 billion. Adjusting for this, AUMA at the end of March of GBP 95 billion was roughly 2% higher than at year-end, with the benefit of record net inflows, only partly offset by lower markets. In Adviser, net outflows in the quarter of GBP 0.6 billion were an improvement on Q4 and in line with Q1 last year. This included higher gross inflows, offset by higher redemptions, although redemptions reverted to levels below the heightened position at the end of last year. AUMA of approximately GBP 79 billion also reflected negative market movements in March, ending the period 2% lower than at year-end. Pleasingly, we have seen good momentum in Aberdeen SIPP, having now attracted 3,000 new customers since launch in December 2025. And turning now to Investments. Within our institutional and retail wealth business, net outflows, excluding liquidity of GBP 5.1 billion, largely reflected the previously announced GBP 4 billion of low-margin equity redemptions. In addition, there were small net outflows from our commodities-based ETFs, partly driven by some profit taking and portfolio rebalancing following a strong rally in commodity prices. Gross inflows, however, remained strong and in line with recent trends. We saw net inflows of GBP 0.4 billion across developed markets credit and emerging markets fixed income funds, as well as a GBP 0.1 billion into real assets. Looking ahead, we expect Q2 net inflows in I&RW to include a circa GBP 1.2 billion advisory mandate within real assets and a GBP 1 billion sterling credit Win by a newly established insurance client team. Insurance partners flows were net 0 in the quarter, a significant improvement on recent trends. AUM of GBP 169 billion was up slightly on the year-end position. This benefited from a positive GBP 1.2 billion of market and other movements, primarily reflecting the benefit of a GBP 2.3 billion transfer in from an I&RW MyFolio fund range. Turning to the group as a whole. Ongoing geopolitical tensions are expected to lead to continued heightened levels of market volatility, at least in the short term. The diverse revenue streams across our business helped to mitigate the impact, and we remain fully focused on the actions we can control to drive long-term profitable growth. As set out at the full year results, we are firmly committed to the delivery of our full year 2026 group targets of adjusted operating profit of at least GBP 300 million and net capital generation of circa GBP 300 million. I will now hand over to the operator, and Jason and I will be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Enrico Bolzoni from JP Morgan.

Just on ii, clearly, very strong performance there. So the first question, in light of the repricing, have you seen a change in the composition of new clients coming to the platform. Historically, you appealed a lot wealthier customers because clearly, all the flat fee structure. Now you're becoming even more attractive from a fee point of view. So I was wondering if you're seeing clients maybe with smaller amount of money joining the platform? And related to that, in terms of the composition of flows you're seeing, do you see a greater amount of back book transfers? Perhaps clients that move entirely their investments on other platforms, on Aberdeen or the split between, let's say, clients who just put fresh money to it and back book transfer remain roughly the same? And then a question, again, with ii, within ii on trading, clearly, very, very strong activity over the quarter. Have you've seen many clients joining the platform over the quarter, specifically for the trading offering? So you see that they are just active on the trading part of the business, but perhaps they have not moved yet assets that they may have in other sorts of investments such as mutual funds, that might come at a later stage.

Okay. Thanks, Enrico. We've got -- I mean a number of questions, all pretty similar coming in from what is the source of the growth within ii. The primary source is SIPP transfers. I mean you can see the growth in customer numbers and the growth in SIPPs is strong. We haven't seen a large pickup in pure trading. It is many people -- so of course, that is an opportunity to trade through the platform with the direct market access that our products offer. If anything, we've seen average AUA per client going up, not going down. And I think we've seen continued activity. This level of money is clearly coming from transfers from somewhere, from platforms and from mainly insurance providers, the 2 big sources that we've seen coming in. And the new -- the pricing activity of ourselves is obviously simplified and sharpened up our proposition across subscriptions and commissions and FX. Others have made other choices. And I think that's -- we've been the net beneficiary of that. And you can see how that's come through in our numbers.

We'll now take our next question from Gregory Simpson from BNP Paribas.

Two questions. First, you mentioned on Adviser, you were taking some staff in-house from FNZ. Can you just talk through the rationale for that and also the kind of cost implications, if any, just the strategy there? And then the second question was with Standard Life acquiring Aegon's U.K. business, can you maybe share some thoughts on the implications for Aberdeen given they will own a rival adviser platform business, that they're a larger business, and you have the asset management business. Just wanted to see if you could share some initial thoughts on the impact for you and your stake?

Okay. Well, yes. Obviously, Standard Life Aegon last week was relatively new news. We anticipate it closing by the end of the year. Look, we stay very close to Standard Life. I've got to call them that now, not Phoenix. And if I get it wrong, it's somewhat hard for us given our heritage. But the relationship on a trading basis is close. We support them as our largest customer every day. We do multiple things across the piece. And I think broadly, Standard Life having a bigger asset base and expanding is a good thing for us. Andy said numerous times, he wants to rationalize and focus the provision of Asset Management to Standard Life to fewer. We're clearly the largest. We're clearly the most important to them, we expect to continue to do that. So I'm not in a position to communicate and nor do I have or if we agreed anything specific. But on that expanded canvas, we do anticipate more opportunities. I think on the FNZ adviser thing, there's no immediate cost impact. What we pay them frankly, is roughly the cost that we'll be bringing over. The purpose of this is to actually gain end-to-end control of our process such that we can really get a grip for the benefit of our clients. Streamline that and make sure there are no handoffs and technology solutions and process maps, and all that fun stuff is actually implemented without missing a heartbeat across that such that we can get the service levels even better.

And just to add, longer term, I would expect to see some benefits from a cost perspective into the future.

Our next question is from Ben Bathurst from RBC Capital Markets.

Just one question from me, please, if I may. On the Adviser business. I saw that the net outflows reduced but within that, there's higher inflows but an increase in outflows. I just wondered if you could comment on whether or not that increase in the outflows was driven more by funds transferring to other platforms? Or if it's more of a case of clients putting more money into cash in the quarter? Just hoping for a bit more color there.

Hi Ben, it's a bit of both. We're pleased to see that there's been an increase in the gross redemptions -- sorry, in the gross inflows. And on the redemption side, what we've seen is it revert back to the levels kind of at the end of Q3 last year, but where the outflows are going is primarily to do 3 things is to people taking pensions as we expect, taking the money as we expect, there's a bit of transfers in the main. So those are the 2 things going on.

We'll now take our next question from Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

Sorry, I joined the call late. So hopefully, these haven't been answered yet. First question is on Insurance Partners. You had flat flows in the quarter when normally, this line has had outflows per quarter because of the runoff. Just wondering if any one-offs here and we should expect it to go back to outflow in subsequent quarters? Second question is, you mentioned a few mandates, Wins in Q2, including advisory mandates and in real assets as well as a credit win. Can you talk about the fee margins there? Are they kind of in line with the asset class or the category they're in or lower because of larger mandates? And last question is you also mentioned that you expect good inflows by year-end into your GEM equity income strategy. Just wondering what gives you confidence or is it the new fund you're seeing contraction with and any size in terms of import there?

I'll start -- I'll do them in reverse order. Siobhan, you want to do the insurance one. The -- in GEM, we've got some one not funded mandates, simply enough. It's not always immediate when you win these mandates and clients will be moving from certain portfolios into our strategies, but that's what gives us confidence there. We've also seen actually that particular strategy. Great performance, good ratings has been selling pretty well through wholesale channels for about a year now. So we can see that being attractive and that's continuing month by month. In terms of the mandates that we're flagging in the GEM income one is an attractive margin. The Adviser one is a low margin and the real assets is pretty much on par with what the rest of the book. So there's ups and downs within that. But the -- as we said in the in the release, we're not trying to sort of hype this, but we've seen -- the pipeline is good. We have confidence and the go-to-market products that we're very focused on are selling well.

Yes. And finally, just to -- on the insurance partners, we've seen some benefits come through from Wins that Standard Life have had in their workplace DC business. So that's what's driving that in the main. So that line will move up and down. But as they have said in the past, that's where we'd expect to win, and we've seen some of that come through this time around.

Our next question is from Jacques-Henri Gaulard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just a very quick question on the corporate action. The minus GBP 3.6 billion is from the financial planning. There is an elimination positive of 2.5%. Just wondering what that was?

Yes. So it's the advisory business that we sold at the end of January. Some of it was on the Wrap platform. So hence, that's what's the -- why you've got elimination there.

Lower elimination, yes.

There are currently no further questions. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Jason Windsor for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, look, thank you all for joining. I know it's a busy day and there's a number of other events reporting and otherwise going on. Look, we're pleased to give you the update. Any questions, feel free to call IR. Siobhan and I are happy to take them if that's sort of help you or your clients. But thank you for your interest. Speak soon.