AJ Bell plc (AJB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi. I'm Danni Hewson, Financial Analyst at AJ Bell. We've just released our Full-Year 2021 Results. And joining me to discuss the highlights, Chief Executive, Andy Bell; and Deputy Chief Executive, Michael Summersgill. Now, if you want any more information on these results, including a full copy of the accompanying results, you can get them on the Investor Relations section of the AJ Bell website.

So, Andy, another strong set of results. The Company has continued to grow. What are your key takeaways from the year?

Well, I'm pleased to say, it's been another year of record organic growth. I quite often say the engine room of our business, the driver of growth is customer numbers and AUA, or assets under administration. Our customer numbers increased by 30% this year from 295,000 at the end of the previous year to over 382,000 at our year-end, which is the end of September. The strong customer growth has been driven by our 2 flagship platform propositions. First is AJ Bell Investcentre, our advised platform, where we saw customer numbers increased by 17%. And secondly, AJ Bell Youinvest, our D2C platform, where customer numbers increased by 40%. We've also seen record net inflows of GBP6.4 billion compared to GBP4.2 billion last year, with AUA closing at the year-end at GBP72.8 billion, up around 29% from the GBP56.5 billion at the end of last year. We've also invested in 2 new streamlined digital platform propositions, both of which are under development with launches due next year. The first one is Dodl by AJ Bell, which is a low-cost platform for retail investors, which we announced earlier this week. And secondly, we've got Touch by AGL, which is a mobile-led adviser platform, following on from our Adalpha acquisition earlier in the year. And both of these will sit alongside our flagship propositions, really intending to broaden our market reach. On the financials, I'll leave Michael to talk more about these. But very pleased we've delivered double-digit percentage growth in both revenue and profit. We've maintained a really strong balance sheet, that's allowed us to recommend an increase to our ordinary dividend for the 17th consecutive year, whilst also recommending a special dividend.

Now, like you say, we'll talk more to Michael about the financials. But I think people would be really interested in Dodl and Touch. Why have we launched them?

Okay. Well, Dodl first, it's aimed at anyone looking for a low-cost, easy-to-use investment app. It's almost certainly going to be attractive to younger, less experienced investors. It comes with a full range of tax wrappers. So ISA, lifetime ISA, pension and GIA. It's got an all-in custody charge of 0.15% per annum with no commission for buying or selling investments. And the investment universe consists of U.K. shares with the U.S. shares to follow, along with a range of [ best breed ] funds, including our own low-cost, multi-asset funds. On Touch, it's a mobile-led proposition, which will serve the adviser market. Again, comes with a full range of tax wrappers, a streamlined investment range. And the aim here is to help advisers target different segments of the adviser market in a cost-effective way.

So Andy, sticking with the advised market, what do you think have been the key developments? And how has AJ Bell performed?

Well, the advised platform market continues to grow very strongly. We've seen lots of M&A activity, which will cause disruption, which itself provides us with opportunity. Advisers continue to choose their preferred platform based on customer service and price, both of which we are very well positioned on. During the year, we saw customer numbers grow by just over 18,000 to just shy of 127,000. It's an increase of 17%. And we saw net inflows of GBP3.8 billion, along with favorable market movements, this resulted in the AUA closing up 26% at GBP45.8 billion. And against the quality of the clients, the average AUA per customer remains high at just over 360,000. The RIA, or our Retirement Investment Account, which we launched a couple of years ago is our simplified proposition on the Investcentre platform, that's proved to be very popular. It's really given us conviction that there really is significant demand out there for simplified products. But in the meantime, and we'll continue to do so, we'll rollout enhanced functionality of AJ Bell Investcentre whilst maintaining a real focus on ease-of-use across all our propositions. And finally, it was really pleasing to be recognized as the Best Platform, the Best Retirement Provider and Provider of the Year at the recent Money Marketing Awards.

I want to flip it to the consumer market now. Amazing growth last year. Has it held up?

Yes. I think it's fair to say that COVID has had a greater impact on the D2C platform market than it has on the advised platform market. We've seen working from home, increased savings, volatile markets, the meme stock frenzy, low interest rates have all been factors in attracting new customers and seeing enhanced engagement with those customers. Dealing activity has increased during periods of lockdown, which, as we've seen in the wider market, has now settled to more normalized levels. But I think the highest level, COVID has been a wake-up call for people to take control of the financial future. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. We've seen customers up by 40% to 241,000. AUAs increased by 46% to GBP19.5 billion. Again, the quality of the customer, the average customer value is around 81,000 and the typical customer is 44 years old. That's been a trend towards slightly younger and less experienced customers. The average age of new customers in the year was 39, some 5 years younger. But over 3/4 of the new account set up in the year were in a tax wrapper, [ EG ], an ISA, or a pension, which really, to me, tells me these customers are going to stick around for a good long while. And there's also been lots of interest in our in-house funds with 4% of our D2C, AUA now being represented in these funds.

Just in terms of the business as a whole, is there anything else which has happened, which you've implemented, do you think is worth talking about?

Yes. We welcomed Helena Morrissey to the Board in July as Chair-Designate. She will replace Les at the AGM in January. Les has done his 9 years, and more on the Board and done a fantastic job, but it's time for him to hand over the baton. We've also seen some additional changes to strengthen the Board in [ AMB ], which can be found in our report and accounts. And the only other point to mention is that, we've now adopted a form of hybrid working, really learning from COVID, which we believe will be good for the future of the business and also for the well-being of the staff.

So, COVID, obviously, huge changes, and we're expecting even more big economic changes over the next year. I'm thinking particularly about interest rates and the squeeze on household finances. What is your outlook?

Well, I think the outlook is, as ever, very, very positive. What drives this business, what drives me is growth. And there's plenty there to drive that growth. The long-term growth drivers of the market remains strong in both the advised and the D2C sector. We will see reduced dealing activity down to normalized levels, again, should come as no surprise to anyone. We are expecting interest rates to increase during the year and beyond, which will provide a potential tailwind over the medium-term. But our focus continues to be on ease-of-use, and focus on the customer journey, but also having an eye on those less experienced investors who need an intuitive, simple journey to begin investing for the long-term. We are committed to investing in our brand, our technology and the propositions to help deliver our long-term growth strategy. And the new propositions we've talked about being the Dodl and Touch will support our long-term growth aspirations across both the advised and D2C market segments.

An exciting couple of years ahead.

I'm looking forward to it.

Andy Bell, thank you very much.

Thanks a lot.

Joining me now is Michael Summersgill, Deputy Chief Executive. Michael, Andy said you were going to talk more about financial performance. Growth in revenue and profits, but the growth has slowed, why?

I think to understand that slight disconnect in the growth rates between the financial metrics and the underlying growth of the business, it's probably best to focus on revenue. So, we've seen 15% growth in revenue, strong growth, but it's clearly behind the growth in customers and assets that we've seen. That disconnect is really a result of revenue margins being squeezed by the drop in interest rates that we saw back in March 2020. So it's old news. It wasn't a surprise to us, and we've provided guidance on it previously. For me, what FY '21 evidence was, how well diversified our revenue model is? So despite that significant headwind, we're still seeing strong growth in revenue, and that's because we've had highly engaged customers with high activity levels, and that's driven transactional revenues, particularly on the D2C side, where we've seen an increase in transactional revenue of over 50%. So you're seeing there one of the great strengths of the business model, I think. We're not reliant on one source of income or a specific set of market conditions to deliver strong financial results.

So not down to the quality of customers [ won ]?

That's right. Customer activity and behavior of the new customers has been monitored closely through the pandemic as you would expect. And we're continuing to attract really high-value customers. We've seen that the vast majority of accounts that new customers are opening and tax wrappers, so ISAs and pensions, and then the retention rate continues to be around 95%. So, the proposition is definitely continuing to appeal to customers who are looking to invest in a cost-effective manner over the long-term.

Let's talk about costs because costs have been increasing faster than revenues, what's behind that?

The thing I always focus on with the cost base of the business is the underlying operational costs. So that's what you have to look at to understand how effectively the business is scaling. And in FY '21, those costs only increased at 10%, and that supported an increase in the customer base of 29% and the AUA of 30%. So for me, that evidence is really strong operational gearing, which is a big strength of our business model. The cost increases that you talk about, that was actually down to areas where we were choosing to invest more aggressively, the costs that drive the growth of the business. So in the year, technology cost was probably the best example. So we saw a 29% increase there. And we're doing 2 things in this area. So we're investing in our new simplified propositions. And it's also a general investment in the change delivery teams in our IT department to try and accelerate the rate of growth.

Now, in terms of dividends, you announced an increased ordinary dividend for the year, a recommendation of a special dividend to shareholders. What was the basis for the enhanced dividend payout?

With both, we're really just following our publicly stated dividend policy, to be honest, but maybe if I just briefly explain the basis for that. So, with the ordinary dividend, it was a 65% payout ratio of profit after tax and that's our policy each year. We have a very strong track record of growing our ordinary dividend. So, although we've only been listed for 3 years with that formal dividend policy, it's actually the 17th consecutive year that we've grown the ordinary dividend, and that's very important to attract certain types of investors. The special dividend is a little bit different. So this is the first special dividend we paid since listing the business. It's something that we always said we would consider periodically. So to be clear, it's not an annual process. And the reason here is that, over a number of years now, we've generated capital that's not required to meet our regulatory requirements or the investment needs of the business. And in that situation, I think it's right that we distribute that capital to the shareholders. The key takeaway here for me is that, we have a really strong financial position. Even after paying these dividends, we're very well-capitalized and that provide security for our customers and support our long-term growth ambitions.

Now, let's look ahead to next year. What are the key things that investors need to look out for from your guidance?

Okay. So looking to FY '22 first, as you say, there, I think there's probably 2 points on revenue. So firstly, the trading activity of our D2C customers has dropped back to pre-pandemic levels as we expected. And the second point is around interest rate. So, there's a clear expectation now that base rate increases are around the corner. Well, for me, there's still significant uncertainty here. So, base rate increases won't necessarily benefit depositors. The banks are awash with cash. And so, that transmission mechanism won't necessarily be all that immediate or effective. Even when the rates that we have available to us do increase, it takes a while for the benefit to be seen in the P&L as a result of the way that we treasury manage. So, unless there's multiple rate rises very quickly, I don't expect that to have a material impact in FY '22. So for sure, there's a revenue upside there, but I'd just be urging caution about how quickly that will show through. Now, the net effect of those 2 points on revenue is that, the guidance is broadly unchanged from our previous guidance on FY '22. A little bit different on the cost side, there, we're investing in growth by developing all of our key propositions and by increasing our spend on brand, and that will have a slight impact on profit margins in the short-term. But part of our strategy to deliver long-term growth is to do exactly that. So I think it's important that people understand it's not a lack of scalability. In fact, operational and support costs continue to be a source of PBT margin improvement for us. It's just us pushing harder at growth.

And let's just take that one step further and look towards 2023.

So as we look to FY '23 and beyond, the outlook is extremely positive. The market is continuing to grow. We don't see that same revenue margin pressure as we've seen recently. And I'd expect the business to scale very effectively as we grow through that period. So, our growth prospects are very good. And I expect the slight disconnect that we've seen between the growth in the business and the growth in our financial metrics will be temporary.

Exciting times for the business for you as well, how's the new job?

It's exciting. So in some regards, it's a continuation of what I've spent the last 5 years in particular doing. And in other ways, it's me getting involved in new parts of the business. So, I've been enjoying focusing more on what our customers need from the platform, what advisers need from the platform and trying to make sure that we're doing the best job that we can to make the most of the growth opportunity that's in front of us. So, yes, exciting times ahead.

Thank you, Michael, and thanks also to Andy. And, of course, if you would like any more information on these results or a full copy of the results, you can find them on the Investor Relations section of the AJ Bell website. We hope you found this useful.