AGF Management Limited (A3J.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2025 AGF Management Limited Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Tsang. You may begin.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I'm Ken Tsang, Chief Financial Officer of AGF Management Limited. Today, we will be discussing the financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025. Slides supporting today's call and webcast can be found in the Investor Relations section of agf.com. Also speaking on the call today will be Judy Goldring, Chief Executive Officer. For the Q&A period following the presentation, Ash Lawrence, Head of AGF Capital Partners; and David Stonehouse, Interim Chief Investment Officer, will also be available to address questions. Slide 4 provides the agenda for today's call. After the prepared remarks, we will be happy to take questions. With that, I will now turn the call over to Judy.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. AGF had another outstanding year in 2025, where we made very strong progress against our strategic objectives. Our AUM and fee earning assets crossed over $60 billion at the end of Q4, up 13% from a year ago. In Q4, we reported retail mutual fund net sales of $282 million or 0.8% of mutual fund AUM in the quarter, outpacing the Canadian mutual fund industry of 0.5%. For the full year, our retail mutual fund net sales were close to $1 billion. Our ETFs and SMA AUM remained strong, increasing by 63% year-over-year to $4 billion. AGF was named as one of Greater Toronto's Top Employers for 2026, our second time winning this award, and our funds also received various recognitions for outstanding investment performance throughout the year. Turning to our financial results. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was $186 million, which is 12% higher than prior year. Our adjusted diluted EPS was $0.62 for the quarter and $1.93 for the year. In addition, we have $449 million in short- and long-term investments on our balance sheet, net cash of $6 million with $208 million remaining on our credit facility. We have capital available and flexibility in our capital allocation strategy. Finally, we also paid a $0.125 per share dividend for Q4 2025. Starting on Slide 6, we will provide updates on our business performance. On this slide, we break down our total AUM and fee earning assets in the categories disclosed in our MD&A and show comparisons for the prior year. AGF Investments Mutual Fund AUM was $35 billion, up 14% year-over-year, outpacing the industry increase of 12%. The growth of our ETF and SMA AUM remains strong. I'll provide more color on our mutual fund sales and ETFs and SMA AUM in a moment. Segregated accounts and sub-advisory AUM increased by 3% compared to the prior year. Subsequent to year-end, we received a redemption notice from an institutional client for $700 million. The redemption was driven by government mandated change in their investment oversight process. The redemption was completed in December 2025. We continue to see strong interest in our strategies in the institutional space with prospects and growth and momentum with a number of existing clients. Our private wealth AUM increased by 11% compared to prior year to $9.5 billion. And our AGF Capital Partners AUM and fee-earning assets were $4.6 billion at the end of the year. As a reminder, New Holland Capital's AUM of approximately $10 billion is not consolidated into AGF's total AUM and fee-earning assets at this time. Now turning to Slide 7, I'll provide some details on the mutual fund sales. The Canadian mutual fund industry saw net positive sales in the quarter of $12 billion or 0.5% of AUM in the quarter. AGF Investments retail mutual fund sales continue to outpace the industry and achieved $282 million of net sales in the quarter. We outpaced the industry in each of the quarters in 2025. On a full year basis, our retail mutual fund net sales for the year was $950 million or 2.9% of AUM, which is double the industry's average of 1.4% and a significant improvement against net redemptions of $204 million in the prior year. The strength of our retail mutual fund sales reflects the successful execution of our distribution and marketing strategy, supported by strong investment performance. Notably, all distribution channels delivered net positive sales this quarter, underscoring the broad-based momentum across our platform. Now let me provide a brief update on our investment performance, which continues to be strong. AGF Investments measures mutual fund performance by comparing gross returns before fees relative to peers within the same category with the first percentile being the best possible performance. Our 1-year performance was in the 43rd percentile, our 3-year performance was in the 52nd percentile and our 5-year performance was in the 41st percentile and more than half of our funds are outperforming our peers on a 3- and 5-year basis. We continue our global search for a permanent CIO. In the interim, I am confident in the strength of our investment team, the office of the CIO structure and the leadership of David Stonehouse as our interim CIO. Turning now to Slide 8. Slide 8 shows our ETF and SMA AUM. The AUM in this category is $4.1 billion and has grown 68% on a compounded basis over the last 2 years. Included in this number are Canadian and U.S. listed ETFs and SMA platforms globally. We have seen consistent growth and momentum in our SMA vehicles across U.S., Canada and Asia, where many of our strategies are available on leading wealth management platforms. I will now pass it over to Ken to discuss our financial results.

Thanks, Judy. Slide 9 reflects a summary of our financial results with sequential quarter and annual year-over-year comparisons. The financial results in these periods are adjusted to exclude severance, corporate development, noncash acquisition-related expenses as well as other adjustments as noted in our MD&A. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $52 million, which is $6 million higher than Q3, mainly driven by higher income from our long-term investments. SG&A was $68 million, up $7 million from the previous quarter. The increase from Q3 was mainly due to the timing of our non-compensation expenses and higher performance-based compensation, which is not fully determinable until the end of Q4 when payouts are finalized. On a full year basis, our adjusted SG&A was $252 million, exceeding our guidance of $240 million, driven primarily by higher performance-based compensation. We believe that the level of performance-based compensation is appropriate considering the significant improvement in business performance and the successful execution of our strategic priorities during the year. Today, we are guiding adjusted SG&A expense of $256 million in 2026. As a reminder, our SG&A guidance includes a reset of performance-based compensation to baseline levels and does not include costs related to acquisitions. Adjusted net income attributable to equity owners for the current quarter was $41 million and adjusted EPS was $0.62. The increase versus prior quarter was partly attributable to a lower effective tax rate in Q4 due to the lower rate on some of our Q4 P&L items and more effective utilization of our tax allowances. Our effective tax rate for the year was 22%. Free cash flows for the quarter was $32 million and $118 million for the year, which is $22 million higher than 2024. Slide 10 provides a further breakdown of our net revenues. Within our traditional asset and wealth management businesses, net management fees were $95 million for the quarter, which is $6 million higher than the prior quarter. This growth was primarily driven by higher AUM levels. Revenues from AGF Capital Partners was $22 million this quarter, which increased by $7 million against the prior quarter, driven by revenues from long-term investments. While fair value adjustments on investments can be lumpy, we remain conservative in our guidance and target annual returns of roughly 8% to 10%. On Slide 11, we outline adjustments to our EBITDA. As you may recall, M&A transactions in the AGF Capital Partners business gives rise to various LLTIP contingent consideration and put obligation liabilities. These liabilities are fair valued each quarter with a difference flowing through to the P&L. These accruals and fair value adjustments have no immediate cash impact and create noise quarterly, which is why we've adjusted for these items to facilitate easier comparison of quarterly results. Adjusting for these items, along with severance and other adjustments, our adjusted EBITDA for this quarter is $52 million. Turning to Slide 12, I will walk through the yield on our business in terms of basis points. This slide shows our average AUM, net management fees, adjusted SG&A and EBITDA as basis points on our average AUM in the current quarter, previous quarter and trailing 12 months. This view excludes AUM and related results from AGF Capital Partners as well as DSC revenues, other income and any other onetime adjustments. The EBITDA yield this quarter was 24 basis points, which is broadly consistent with prior quarter and the trailing 12 months. Turning to Slide 13, I will discuss our free cash flows and capital uses. This slide represents the last 5 quarters of consolidated free cash flows on a trailing 12-month basis, as shown by the orange bars on the chart. The black line represents the percentage of free cash flows that was paid out as dividends. Our trailing 12-month free cash flows was $118 million, and our dividend paid as a percentage of free cash flows was 27%. In the same period, we returned $56 million to shareholders, consisting of $31 million in dividends and $25 million in share buybacks. During the quarter, we repurchased over 500,000 shares under our NCIB and for the full year, we repurchased a total of 2 million shares. We ended the quarter with net cash of $6 million. We also have $449 million in short-term and long-term investments and have $208 million remaining in our credit facility, which provides credit to a maximum of $250 million. Our future capital allocation will be balanced and includes returning capital to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks as well as investing in areas of growth. Before I pass it back to Judy, let me take a minute on Slide 14 to look at our valuation. AGF's market price has increased by approximately 25% in fiscal 2025. AGF's current price is approximately $17, which translates to an enterprise value of approximately $1.1 billion. Taking into account our $449 million of short-term and long-term investments with a conservative 10% discount, our remaining enterprise value is about $682 million. This implies a 5x EV to EBITDA multiple on our fiscal year '25 adjusted EBITDA, excluding income from our long-term and short-term investments. Comparing this multiple to those of other traditional and alternative asset managers and recent M&A transactions would suggest further potential upside to our valuation. I will now pass it back to Judy to close out the presentation.

Thanks, Ken. 2025 was a strong year for us where we have achieved or exceeded many of our fiscal targets. Our AUM and fee earning assets continued to climb, reaching over $60 billion, 13% higher from prior year. Our investment performance remains solid. Our sales momentum remains strong and continues to outpace the industry. We remain disciplined in our expense management, while investing for growth. The strength of our balance sheet and capital position will provide us with flexibility in our capital allocation strategy and the resilience to weather different market environments. Our strong business momentum translated into strong financial results with adjusted EBITDA reaching $186 million, which is 12% higher compared to the prior year and adjusted diluted EPS of $1.93, which is 16% higher than the prior year. As we move into fiscal 2026, we are committed to building on this momentum and remain focused on our 4 strategic priorities, which are to deliver consistent and repeatable investment performance, maintain sales momentum and penetrate high-growth distribution channels, continue to build a diversified private capital and alternatives business and meet our core expense guidance while continuing to invest in key growth areas. I would also like to take a moment to thank our AGF team for all that they've done in the year. We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question come from the line of John Aiken from Jefferies.

Ash, I was hoping that you could give us a bit of an update in terms of where things sit at Kensington in terms of the suspension of redemptions. And if you could give us a little bit of color in terms of what impact this is having on the business.

Sure. Happy to do that. So maybe just as a reminder, at Kensington, the Kensington Private Equity Fund suspended their redemptions in late September. Since that time, they've been working hard on a number of fronts, including generating liquidity in the portfolio, but in an orderly fashion. The suspension was implemented to avoid for sales, to avoid discounted prices and sort of remove the redemption pressure in order to preserve value in the fund. This, of course, takes some time to actually generate the liquidity down below at the investment level. We are optimistic as we started to see a thaw in the M&A market really over the last quarter of last year, and we're hopeful that we can benefit from that within the fund over the course of 2026 with an increase in activity across the industry. And we'll continue to work with unitholders and be transparent on the progress we're making there. As it relates to the impact on financials, the suspension really has minimal impact on our financials. It does preserve the NAV of the fund. There was a 10 basis point concession given on the fee base while the fund is in suspension. So that does have an impact. What we are seeing is some impacts around redemptions that went out in the first half of last year before the suspension, both on AUM and obviously on revenue coming from Kensington. And then as we move through some of these processes to generate liquidity, we are likely to see some valuation impacts, which again would flow through to AUM and thus revenue.

And just as a follow-on, can you give us an update in terms of where you sit in your thinking on the convertible note that you hold with New Holland?

Yes, absolutely. So we completed our initial transaction with New Holland almost 2 years ago. So that option for our first exercise opens in February. So it is coming up. Maybe just a quick -- very quick recap of the last 2 years. We've been quite pleased with the partnership with New Holland, both from the perspective of our broader collaboration with them on a number of things, the cultural fit as well as the performance of a number of their strategies that they run. Since our transaction, we've seen their AUM grow around 40% from about USD 5 billion to about USD 7 billion. As a reminder, we don't consolidate that quite yet because of our ownership level and the debt position. So we are actively evaluating that conversion of our debt and the exercise of the additional ownership right now. There'll be more to come on this in the first half of the year, but we have been looking at that for a number of months now and working with NHC to try and evaluate the process and make a decision.

Our next question will come from the line of Bart Dziarski from RBC Capital Markets.

Just wanted to get some color on the CIO process, how that's coming along and any updates on that front?

Yes. Thanks, Bart. It is a dynamic and active process. I think we started talking about this in August, September. It does take some time to make sure we're going to find the right candidate, but I'm very confident in the team today as it stands. And certainly, as soon as we have information to share, we will share it.

Okay. Great. And then on the SMA and ETF strength, just wanted to dive into that a little bit more. So you called out success in the SMAs in Asia, U.S., Canada and then ETFs in North America. Could you maybe give us some more color as to what's driving that? Like where are you seeing the wins on the ground and how sustainable that is going forward?

Sure. I think the SMA and ETF AUM growth, as we talked about, has seen a CAGR of 68% over the last couple of years. That is on the back of great performance, but also a strategy within our sales distribution team in the United States and internationally to focus on getting on different platforms. And so in the United States, we're on a number of platforms, which are just available to the RIA channels and allow for distribution opportunities throughout the U.S. And then as I mentioned specifically in Asia, we're on a platform there. And we just continue to work that distribution opportunity, and we're just seeing the success flow from that. Again, in Canada, too, we are on pretty much every significant dealer platform, which again provides us the opportunity to make our offerings available to the adviser channel. And with the strong performance on most of our mandates that are on those platforms, we've seen that the flows come through.

Bart, I'll just add that we also made a decision last year as we were looking at the capital plan to expand sales and marketing, both in Canada and the States. And so I think that's had a good effect in terms of driving net sales across our various products and channels.

Our next question will come from the line of Michael Mccue from TD Securities.

So you flagged the $700 million institutional redemption in December. And just wanted to confirm that, that was -- if that is separate from the $500 million redemption that was flagged on the Q4 call -- sorry, the Q3 call, if those are incremental and if that $500 million redemption has come through subsequent to reporting the December AUM and just where we stand on institutional AUM? And if anything, is any inflows in the pipeline?

Sure. Yes. Just to clarify, we previously did disclose in Q3 that a client of the $500 million client that you referenced that they were planning to redeem, they actually will be redeeming the end of -- by the end of this month. So it has not yet come through in our Q4 numbers. And to clarify as well, the redemption notice that you saw, we were notified of that redemption in Q4 for $700 million. That redemption has come through before the end of December 2025. There are no further institutional redemptions that we are anticipating beyond what we have disclosed. We do continue to see strong flows, as I mentioned, as we shift most of our institutional targets towards the SMA and platform-oriented distribution strategy, and we continue to see strong flows in that.

Great. And that actually leads nicely into the next question. Just wondering if you'd be able to quantify anything on the SMA front. Obviously, great AUM growth over the last 2 years, bidding on more distribution channels. Would you provide any quantifiable flows, metrics for the SMA business?

Yes. I mean just maybe to add to that, I mean, obviously, the SMA revenues will -- sorry, the SMA flows will add to revenues. I think one thing to note, though, is that the SMA product itself actually has virtually 0 marginal cost of delivery. And as a consequence, any incremental revenues we do see there, which are more in line with sort of institutional levels of revenue rates would drop directly to the bottom line from an EBITDA perspective.

Okay. Great. And I'll just squeeze one more flows-related one in quickly. Just how are retail flows sitting quarter-to-date? We're almost 2/3 of the way through the quarter now. Do you have an update on that?

Yes. So quarter-to-date, we're sitting at $90 million in net positive sales, and we're seeing flows across a variety of our product offerings. And we are certainly optimistic and -- cautiously optimistic about the RSP season as well.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from the line of Tom MacKinnon from BMO Capital Markets.

A question with respect to Slide 12. Just looking at the net management fee rate, 70 basis points. It's the same this quarter as it was in the trailing 12 months. I haven't seen that in at least the last 8 quarters where it's -- you've been able to maintain that flat. Is -- and I would be -- I'm surprised that it was still relatively flat just given the growth in the ETF and SMA. Was there anything unusual like any outsized success fees? And then maybe you can just remind us as to what you see in terms of an outlook for that 70 bps. I think you used to talk about some compression. If you could just highlight that for us?

Sure. Yes. Tom, it's Ken here. Great question. No, we are -- just maybe to answer the last part of your question first. We do continue to see, I'll call it, a 2 basis point decrease in net management fee bps on a year-over-year basis. And in fact, if you looked at Q4 of this year relative to Q4 of last year, that did actually trend out to about 2 basis points. I would say Q4, probably a little bit higher in terms of management fee bps just because we did have some timing of fund expenses that were a bit lower this quarter. But yes, the long-term trajectory continues to remain at roughly about 2 basis points, just given the product mix that we're seeing. And of course, obviously, these are revenue bps, but we do, as a whole, drive incremental aggregate revenues as flows continue to follow from the various products that we're selling.

I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Judy for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much for your questions. As we noted, this was another strong quarter and another strong year for AGF. Our investment performance and sales momentum remains strong. Our strong balance sheet and strong cash flow positions us well to return capital to our shareholders while also continuing to invest in the long-term growth of AGF. Thank you again for attending today, and we look forward to our Q1 earnings call on April 14, 2026.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.