AJ Bell plc (AJB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to AJ Bell's 2023 Annual Results Video. We're shortly going to hear from Michael Summersgill and Peter Birch, CEO and CFO of AJ Bell. But first, let's go through some of the key numbers from the year. Starting with customers, and AJ Bell's total customer numbers increased by over 50,000 in the year to close at 491,000. This was an increase of 12%, with the growth being driven by the company's platform business. Assets under administration closed at GBP 76.1 billion, up 10% in the year. Total net inflows for the Platform business were GBP 4.2 billion, with GBP 1.9 billion attributable to the advised platform, and GBP 2.3 billion being D2C. Moving on to the key numbers from today's full year results. Revenue was up 33% to GBP 218.2 million, with strong ad valorem revenue being the principal driver of this increase. This was due to higher net interest income following several interest rate rises in the year together with elevated customer cash balances in the first half. Custody fees were also up following an increase in average AUA compared to the prior year. The increased ad valorem in revenue helped to offset a 17% fall in transactional revenue which reflected subdued customer dealing activity throughout the year. Administrative expenses of GBP 132 million were in line with expectation, whilst net finance income totaled GBP 1.4 million. Taken together, this resulted in a 50% increase in profit before tax to GBP 87.7 million and an improved PBT margin of 40.2%. And finally, on dividends, the Board has recommended a final dividend of 7.25p per share. This takes the total ordinary dividend for the year to 10.75p in line with the Board's stated policy, the 19th consecutive year of ordinary dividend growth. You can find full details about these results on our website. Now let's hear from Michael and Peter and get some insight into what's behind these numbers and also their expectations for full year '24 and beyond.

I'd characterize 2023 as another normal year at AJ Bell, friendly enough. That might seem strange to say given that it's been quite a different macroeconomic environment that we've been in. But the 2 consistent themes in the business for so long have been growth and change, and we've delivered and managed lots of change in the year. And we've seen plenty of organic growth in the business. So it's probably just another normal year at AJ Bell to be honest. Business performance in the year has been very strong. We've carried on with that organic growth of the business. We've added over 50,000 customers in the year. So that's net 50,000 customers added to the platform in the year. And we've seen over GBP 4 billion of net inflows to come into the business this year. And in a year when everyone would acknowledge that the conditions haven't an ideal for an investment platform, it's terrific growth and all organic growth. The way that we try to organize everything that we do is to focus on making the platform easy to use, low cost and being trusted by our customers. And probably the best one of those to dig down into a little bit is the trust piece. We've done far more on branding to gain the trust of customers. We talked at the start of the year about the extra sponsorship activity that we were going to do. We've done that with a great run series, and that's been executed really well by the team and have the impacts that we hoped. And then you've seen the TV advertising campaign as well as part of the additional marketing activity. And again, that's had the impact that we hoped that it would on brand awareness. But having said all of that, we know that that's not a one and done this year. We know that, that has to carry on. We've got to build that brand over a period of time at a really good start this year. So that's the first part of trust. But once you've gained that trust and you've caught people's attention, you've then got to earn it on an ongoing basis. You've got to maintain it, and that's where our service comes in. If you think about our investment platform, it's principally a digital service, but there are oftentimes that people want to talk to a human being about that. They want that human support around the digital service. And that's when the speed with which we answer the phone, we answer e-mails, the quality of the support of the human support that people can get very easily. That's why you see our trust pilot scores at 4.8%. Now that's why you see us winning the awards that we do for service. So it is important to me that we keep that part of the business performing as well as it has for a number of years now.

So the financial performance in the year has been very strong. Revenue and profit before tax both fell significantly. And we've really seen the business benefit from the diversified revenue model that we have. Assets under administration have gone up, and that's driven higher levels of custody revenue. Interest rates have gone up and we've seen higher levels of net interest margin. Offsetting that, we've seen lower levels of transactional activity, and therefore, dealing revenue has remained subdued. But overall, our revenue is up 33% to GBP 218.2 million, and that's a great result for the business. Costs are in line with the guidance that we set out at the beginning of the year. And we've made investments where we've planned to. We've kept control the management of cost in place where we needed to as well. As we set out at the beginning of the year, the 26% increase in costs was driven by 3 elements. So there's an excess inflation element in the that was reflective of the macroeconomic environment. And in particular, we wanted to be a responsible employer and recognize that our people needed a proportion of pay rise in that environment. cur pay and benefits costs increased by around 10%, and that reflects or includes the free share scheme that we give to all of our people. We also made investments in technology and brand in the year. And Mike also talked about the investment and how that's played out. From a technology perspective, we've delivered things like the pension finding service. And then with any business like ours, that's growing, you would expect to see an increase in BAU costs as the business scales, we need to make certain investments in head count, things like IT licensing costs, do cost more each year. Overall, that results in a profit before tax of GBP 87.7 million, which is 50% increase from previous years. And a profit before tax margin of 4.2%. All of which is really pleasing for us and for our shareholders. So the ordinary dividend has increased for the 19th consecutive year, which is a fantastic story for the business and reflects the excellent growth that's been achieved over that period. and the structural growth story that sits in the background supporting that growth. .

So increasing interest rates still have an impact on investment platforms. We're seeing that in lots of different ways. So first of all, household finances do get squeezed by mortgage rates increasing. We've seen that process that people have been going through with fixed-term mortgages rolling off and those getting repriced and that clearly has an impact. Our target customer, particularly on the D2C side. We over-index on people that have mortgages, as you might expect. And so that has been a bit of a factor across the market. . You also see that people are a little bit more hesitant to put money on to an investment platform where they do have money. So cash ICEs, fixed-term deposits with banks. We've seen those becoming more popular. We've seen the money there increasing. That money is still within the system. It doesn't change the long-term structural growth opportunity that we've seen for years and years. That money is still in the system. When rates start to decrease, that's money that we'll be able to target and be more likely to transfer across the platform. So see it as a short-term headwind rather than anything that has a long-term negative impact on the business. When rates start to fall whenever that might be, and we're not generally ones for making those predictions. Whenever that might be, it will increase the attractiveness of investment platforms. We've seen recently with the belief that rates will fall, but equity prices globally have increased over the last month or so, and that's what you would expect to see. And it takes time for that to penetrate the retail consumer psyche, but that will then increase the popularity of investment platforms you would expect. But we're not waiting for that to happen to carry on growing the business. We see lots of opportunity, whatever the macroeconomic conditions and so we'll carry on driving the growth of the business. Consumer Duty has been a big focus across the industry, no different at AJ Bell. Although we felt that we're very well positioned for it, the principles of the consumer duty aligned with how we've run our business for many years. It's always a big job when these big regulatory projects land. So plenty of work done to get ready and to implement the consumer duty. One of the big focus areas has been value, and there, I think we're in an incredibly strong position. We're combining an award-winning platform with market-leading service, and we're doing that at an incredibly low cost for customers. So I think when it comes to overall value, we're in a particularly strong position. The FCA flagged interest income on platforms as an emerging risk of harm in the recent Dear CEO letter with a particular focus on disclosure and on fair value to customers. I think when it comes to fair value, the main thing is to not salami-slice business models. This is a byproduct of the core service, we look at charges and we look at value to customers in the round, and I think that's the way that the value should be assessed. But even if you do then say, okay, let's start looking at interest rates in isolation. We try and pay a fair interest rate on all the different kinds of cash that we have on the platform that we benchmark against multiple different parties to do that. This for me really is a D2C issue on the adviser side of the business, the professionalized buyers are managing the cash to an incredibly low level. It's not a big part of the business there. Even though that we've made changes in the year, we've provided a money market MPS to give advisers more tools to manage that cash and they do that very successfully in my view. Where you do see more cash being held on platforms is in the D2C side and in particular, within pensions. And that makes sense, particularly as you get into de-accumulation people approaching retirement and in drawdown will hold more cash within that pension. So we pay higher rates there. That's something that we've always done. And one of the things that we're looking to do next year is to pay even higher rates on people who are actively drawing down from their pension. So we again align the rate that we're paying to the activity that the customer is undertaking within the product that we're providing. So whichever way you look at it, I think we've structured the business very well. We're in a very good place there. And for me, as I said, we provide fantastic value to customers overall. So I think we're approaching things in a very strong manner.

So the revenue outlook for FY '24 is that we expect current macroeconomic conditions to persist. So heightened levels of interest rates but subdued levels of transactional activity. Specifically from a net interest income perspective, we will see higher levels of interest earned on cash balances as those fixed rate deposits are refixed during that period. However, we are seeing reducing levels of cash balances and that has the opposite effect in terms of the overall impact on our income statement. In addition, we are passing more of that interest on to customers in the form of higher interest rate for pension customers in drawdown. The other aspect to revenue is obviously the core charges for customers. And we are looking to reduce overall costs for customers and direct costs to customers. We're currently honing in on exactly which points in our charging structure that relates to. But when you take all of that together over time, we'd expect FY '24 to see revenue margins similar to those in FY '23. But over the more medium term, you'd expect to see a softening of those revenue margins over time. So the cost outlook for FY '24 is that we're expecting cost to grow by about 15%. And the story is very much that we are making investments where we need to in terms of investing for future growth, whilst at the same time, keeping all the costs well managed and under control. So that 15% is driven principally by still higher levels of inflation in terms of the paying benefits for our people, the overall increase in that regard this year will be about 7%, so lower than last year, but still reflective of the current macroeconomic environment. In addition, we're going to be making investments in technology, and we'll see a ready-made pension product for our B2C customers, and a new onboarding journey for advisers. In terms of the more medium term, we're expecting cost growth to moderate further down to high single-digit percentages. And again, that reflects keeping our costs well managed and under control.

I'm really looking forward to 2024. As I said earlier, there's things that we've done this year that I think put us in a great place for next year. The way that the teams are developing the platforms and bringing new ideas, new features to market. The pace of that seems to be accelerating, which is something we've been working hard on. And I'm most excited about the market opportunity as I've ever been, to be honest. It's in these times when people think that it's a bit more difficult that you work a little bit harder, you look a little bit further out, and you get excited about the opportunities that are there. So there's nothing that I've seen that detract at all from the structural growth story we've seen for many a year. The new business that we're attracting, as much of that still comes from outside the platform market has come some within it. So there's still a huge opportunity for this market to grow, and I'm excited about being a big part of that.