Allfunds Group plc (ALLFG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Allfunds 1Q 2025 Trading Update Conference Call. Joining us in today's conference call are Allfunds' CEO, Juan Alcaraz; CFO, Alvaro Perera; and Global Head of Investor Relations, Carlos Berastain. Mr. Alcaraz will make a brief introduction, and there will be a question-and-answer session that will follow. [Operator Instructions] This conference call is being recorded, and an audio replay will be available at allfunds.com during the day. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Juan Alcaraz. Sir, you may begin.

Good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us today as we present Allfunds Group's trading update for the first quarter of 2025. As we generally do, I will start by giving some general brief remarks on the highlights for this quarter, and we will then open the floor for Q&A. Starting with activity levels and volumes performance. The quarter has been dominated, especially towards the end by challenging market conditions, high volatility and geopolitical instability. This said, and despite all this, Allfunds has shown a remarkable resilience with total assets under administration increasing by almost 1% or EUR 13.3 billion since December 2024, reaching EUR 1.517 trillion. This beforementioned growth represents a 13.2% increase on a year-on-year basis, translating into further market share gains of 1 percentage point in the European cross-border mutual fund industry, leading to an overall market share of around 28%. Our platform service AuA has increased by 17% to close to EUR 1.1 billion on a year-on-year basis and 1% since December 2024, mainly driven by net flows. Looking deeper into this quarter, we have reached a significant milestone with net flows reaching EUR 34.6 billion in one single quarter, representing 12.8% over beginning of period on an annualized basis. This strong net flow figure has been achieved despite a poor market performance, which has been a drag in Q1, and thanks to the very healthy existing client activity and strong migrations. Flows from existing clients contributed with EUR 23.8 billion. We have seen a well-balanced contribution from different geographies with flows coming from Southern Europe, but also the U.K., France and Asia. On migrations, we have onboarded EUR 10.8 billion in Q1, representing 4% over beginning of period platform service AuA, a good start of the year that keeps us on track to deliver on our full year targets. This very strong start of the year in net flows provides a solid foundation for the upcoming periods. Regarding our dealing and execution portfolio, we have seen an increase of EUR 2.8 billion since December 2024, a 0.7% increase. Before moving to the P&L and revenues, I wanted to briefly mention Allfunds Alternatives Solutions. After a great 2024, the start of the year is proving to be equally strong and is giving us good reasons to be excited about the future and the growth potential that it has. We already have 178 alternative asset managers in our platform as of 31st of March 2025. This business is growing exponentially at 21% quarter-on-quarter with EUR 23.6 billion of assets under administration in Alternatives, of which more than EUR 12 billion are assets under distribution. With the addition of JPMorgan and Ares, which we did already announce at the time of our full year results, our APP program is even stronger, highlighting the relevance of this initiative, sustained traction and industry appeal. On the revenue side, our total revenue amounted to EUR 162.6 million, representing a 10.3% increase year-on-year. And excluding NTI, total revenues shows an even more solid structural growth of 16% year-on-year, once again, showcasing our solid foundation to face volatility and volatile conditions. Our platform revenues ended Q1 2025 with a total of EUR 145.6 million, representing a 10.3 percentage of growth over Q1 2024. Platform margin stood at 3.8 basis points in Q1, largely stable quarter-on-quarter. Excluding NTI, the platform margin reached 3.3 basis points in Q1, an increase versus the 3.2 basis points of Q1 of 2024. Commission revenue shows a strong performance. It reaches EUR 90.7 million in the quarter, implying a 15.6% year-on-year growth, supported by a solid AUA growth. Similarly, our transaction revenue and reflecting the improved customer activity and engagement seen in the Italian market has increased by 20.4% year-on-year to EUR 33 million in this first quarter of the year. Net treasury income, or NTI, as we have been anticipating, shows a year-on-year decline, primarily due to the prevailing interest rates environment and that has only been partially compensated by the higher average cash balance. Subscription revenues increases by almost 10% on a year-on-year basis to EUR 17 million. We have added 28 new clients in Q1, 22 of these new additions were existing clients of Allfunds showcasing the cross-selling capabilities of our sales network. Geographically, this expansion has been supported mainly by the U.K., with around 1/4 of total new additions and followed by Benelux and Iberian region. I wanted to share that today we announced that we have agreed and signed a binding term sheet for the acquisition of Andbank securities broker arm in Brazil. This agreement positions Allfunds as a first mover into the Brazilian onshore fund distribution platform business for institutional clients, opening tremendous growth opportunities. You will find all the details on the press note we have made public this morning, but the transaction includes a fully operational fund distribution platform for the Brazilian onshore market, a local experienced team of around 20 professionals and a long-term strategic agreement under which Andbank will use Allfunds as its main and preferred partner for distributing investment funds to its clients. Before we open the floor for Q&A, let me conclude by saying that while we anticipate the recent market volatility may continue to present new challenges in the coming months, we also believe that our trading update reflects Allfunds' strong relative position in the current context. Not only we are delivering sustained growth with a stronger performance than in previous quarters, but most of all, these results provide a solid foundation for the quarters to come and proves the resilience of our business model. Overall, we are navigating the current environment with measured optimism and remain well positioned to continue working on delivering on our 2025 full year targets. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Juan. We will now open the floor for the Q&A. [Operator Instructions] Operator, can you please proceed with the first question, including name and company name of the caller.

yes, of course. Our first question will be from the line of Haley Tam with UBS.

Congratulations on a strong set of results this morning. My 2 questions, please. Could I ask, first of all, about the more difficult environment since the quarter end. Could you give us any comments at all on your flow experience since the quarter end? And also just remind us that with the transaction revenues that we should expect that to be a fee you can earn both on sell orders as well as buy orders, if that makes sense? And the second question, just on the Andbank deal. Is it possible to get any more color today on how that might work in terms of both the growth potential, but also the fee rates, the EBITDA margin, the kind of AuA we should be expected to bring on board?

Okay. Thank you very much. Very good questions. Okay. I'm going to take the flows question and the Andbank. I will ask Alvaro to cover the transaction revenues. Okay. So regarding flows, well, January, very strong, February, very strong. March, very strong until the last week of the month, in any case, also positive March, April until -- well, first 2 weeks of April, we saw redemptions, okay, for the first time since February of 2024; a third week of April normalization. So we started to see again investments, so people investing again. So we will have to wait to see what happens this week. We don't know yet really if April is going to be -- let's say, we are going to have the first month since February 2024 with outflows or not. But I'm not really concerned because if we finally see outflows in April, it's not going to be any significant amount, okay? So what it looks like investors have reacted pretty positively to volatility as of today, right? We can just talk about what has happened until now. Okay. And regarding Andbank, I think what we can tell you now from Allfunds is that -- well, as you know, Brazil is the sixth largest market in the fund industry, #6, with around EUR 2.2 trillion, EUR 2.3 trillion in assets and with a very, very strong local onshore business, okay? There's not so much appetite for international funds and international, let's call it, open architecture, there is huge appetite for local open architecture, very, very strong fund of funds business and a complete lack of automatization and efficiency when we talk about this kind of local open architecture, let's call it, market. And that's exactly what we want to address with the creation of Allfunds Brazil. Apart from that, we cannot really disclose anything else about the deal. And as you know, as we need to receive the approval from the regulators, this is going to be -- and it will have no impact on our P&L, not in 2025, but in 2026. So we will have a lot of time to tell you more about this opportunity, which I'm really excited, by the way. And Alvaro, probably we can move to transaction.

Sure. So transaction revenue has grown by around 20% year-on-year, 5% versus the last quarter of 2024, reflecting the increased customer activity and engagement in the Italian market, in particular. As you know, the transaction revenue is mainly linked to our role as paying agent in Italy, the [ banca corrispondente ] and secondly, to the FX services that we provide. As you heard from Juan, we have seen some outflows, but also a normalization of the situation in the past weeks. So no reason at this point in time to change our views with regards to transaction revenues for the year. We are, of course, monitoring events and markets very closely. And if we see a need to provide an update, we will, of course, do it. But as I said, as of today, we stick to the guidance that we provided.

The next question will be from the line of Andrew Lowe with Citi.

Just a couple. The first is if you could give any commentary on how the asset mix with strong inflows into fixed income and money market funds have affected the margin? And a follow-up to that, would you be able to clarify what the average total and platform assets under administration was in Q1 and the prior quarter? And then the second question was on your Alternatives platform. You helpfully disclosed just under 180 managers on the platform now. How do you think this compares to your peers? And what share of those alternative managers are exclusively on your platform versus multiple third-party platforms? And similarly, for the distributors, how many -- sort of what share of those distributors solely on your platform versus multiple third-party platforms?

Thank you very much, Andrew.

Andrew, let me take the first one. So flow-wise, you're correct. So for the first quarter of 2025, the vast majority of the inflows came from the fixed income space. And as you can imagine, following the market correction or market movements towards the end of Feb, March, we've seen some deterioration of equity markets, resulting hence, in a slightly -- a slight increase in the relative weight of fixed income vis-a-vis equities. Nothing, I would say, meaningful enough to impact our margin on an aggregated basis. But yes, as you correctly spotted, there has been some shift there.

Okay. Thank you, Andrew, for your questions. Regarding Alternatives, well, I think we need to clarify several things. The first one is that we do not work with -- we don't have any kind of exclusivity with any fund house as you know. What we have with APP is just a strategic alliance. They help us, we help them, but it's not under any exclusivity, okay? That's the first thing. Regarding how does it compare our 177, 180 agreements with Alternatives managers with what we know that our competitors have is a massive difference, okay? So we are talking about almost 200 compared to dozens or even less. Well, I mean, you know that our business model of having the different asset classes, [indiscernible] now alternatives and tomorrow, ETPs under a global distribution agreement is something pretty unique from Allfunds. So not necessarily our competitors need to do the same or have to do the same, okay? Regarding the percentage of our distributors, more than 900 banks that work with Allfunds, how many of them work exclusively for their alternatives, let's say, appetite or initiative with Allfunds, we believe that the big majority, I don't really have a percentage. But I don't see any distributor of Allfunds really using a different platform than Allfunds because I mean, the beauty of our alternative platform is exactly that. It's the one-stop solution. So it's the fact that now any distributor of Allfunds has the chance to automatically, okay, to operate, long-only and private market products. So I don't think that there is any distributor of Allfunds using a different platform. Our goal here is not so much to capture 100% of the flows in Alternatives for existing distributors of Allfunds. But our goal, as you can imagine, is to capture banks, financial institutions all around the world that are not currently working with Allfunds, okay, to convince them to work with Allfunds for their alternative, a business, let's say. And that is something that we are currently doing and is accelerating, also thanks to the fact to the help of the salespeople, the sales force of some of these APP partners recommending Allfunds when they sit down with distributors, with banks that are not using Allfunds today. So I think that's a trend that we are seeing and that we are internally very, very excited with this phenomenon.

That's really helpful. Can I just ask a quick follow-up to Alvaro, sorry, because -- and sorry to ask a modeling question. But would you be able to give us the average AuA for the quarter just to help us calculate the margin?

Yes. The average platform AuA was EUR 1.1 billion for Q1 -- it's EUR 1.1 trillion, sorry EUR 1.1 trillion. But we can -- a couple of -- we can follow up with some of these stats.

We'll come back to you Andrew.

The next question today will be from the line of Christiane Holstein with Bank of America.

My first one is just on the commission revenue margin. So I know in the press release, you said that this is stable, but it looks a little bit softer than expectations. And I was just a bit surprised by this given the Credit Suisse exit, which I thought would give it a bit of a boost. And I know you just mentioned before that the asset mix didn't have much of a margin impact. So I was just wondering if you could provide some more detail here. And then my second question was just on net flows. So obviously, they're extremely strong and seem to be tracking ahead of guidance on an annualized basis. Do you expect net flows to accelerate throughout the year given the lag from rate cuts and assuming we don't see heightened volatility persist? And then do you also see potential to upgrade guidance?

Christiane, so on the commission margin, what you see is stability vis-a-vis last year and the previous quarter and in line with our expectation and guidance. Perhaps putting myself in your shoes, you might have been more positive with regards to the sources of the net flows. So if equities would have performed better than what they finally did, we could have seen, perhaps, some slight margin improvement. But as I mentioned earlier, it has not been the case, quite the opposite, which does not mean that we're seeing a deterioration. Again, I want to underline the stability of the margin. And Juan, perhaps you want to touch on the flows.

Yes. Well, on the flows, I think, as I mentioned before, January, really strong, almost record month in the history of Allfunds. So when there is not so much volatility and there is appetite for riskier assets, well, that's the beauty of our flywheel effect, and we see distributors from all around the world investing again. And therefore, we saw fantastic numbers in January and in February, also the same as -- very similar to January numbers in inflows. But it's true that when markets fall, and we all know what happened end of March and first weeks of April, there are 2 things that can happen. I mean it's kind of impossible that clients keep on buying because remember that even though we are a B2B platform, okay, the clients -- from our clients, from the banks our retail clients, okay? So it's not the typical, I don't know, well sovereign fund that when markets go down, they press the bottom to buy cheap, let's say it like that. No, that is not what we see at Allfunds. So 2 things can happen. One is that they start redeeming and the other one is that they redeem a lot, okay, and that they panic. What I can tell you is that the good news is that they made some insignificant redemptions, okay? And that just a week after the largest redemptions, we saw the clients buying back. So what we have seen is kind of a big recovery. But look, I'm just talking about April. So this is really, really short-term view. But it is impossible from the Allfunds team to tell you what are we expecting for the coming months. It's absolutely impossible not to tell you. What I can tell you is that the beauty of our model is that we have the other, let's say, tool, okay, to hedge volatility of our flows, which is called migrations. And this is the way we operate at Allfunds. So it's -- migrations depends on us, as you can imagine, because it's convincing distributors to move out from other platforms to Allfunds. And that's the goal. So to keep on bringing assets, thanks to migrations that compensate -- fully compensate, potential volatility in monthly flows, okay? And that's basically what is going to happen in April, okay? So very strong migrations in April that will compensate any potential outflows that we might see this month. But again, we still -- the month has not yet finished, okay? But again, unfortunately, we cannot give you any -- or we are not going at this moment to change what we already said, the 2025 guidance regarding flows for this year.

The next question will be from the line of Tom Mills with Jefferies.

Just a sort of longer-term question. I guess one of your peers that reported last night was calling out how the fund services business is particularly well geared into the savings and investment union and the potential for the financial system to channel more savings into investment. And I'm just kind of intrigued to hear what you guys think around that, what the opportunity can be? Because it feels to me like you guys are the funnel and you should be one of the biggest beneficiaries in the asset gathering space from this. So yes, can you give me some optimism there?

Tom, look, I think you know us, we're very prudent when it comes to regulation in Europe. But I have to admit it should definitely be positive for Allfunds. I mean we are, by definition, the best tool that also regulators have to promote a [ playing-level ] field investments and open architecture. So yes, I'm very positive with that if this finally comes to terms that we will benefit from it.

The next question will be from the line of Gregory Simpson with BNP Paribas.

Firstly, just wondering if you can share any high-level thoughts on how this recent trend of some appetite for non-U.S. investing might impact Allfunds. What are you seeing among client behavior, for instance? And if sustained, do you think it supports the demand for open architecture or not? And then second question was on subscriptions. You've got this mid- to high-teens growth target for full year, but it was about 10% in Q1, both on a 1 quarter year-on-year or last quarter year-on-year basis. So maybe can you share how ARR is developing? I think it was 17% in Q4. Just to get -- how can we get kind of confidence in that acceleration you're targeting?

Greg, do you mind repeating the first question? We lined up -- interrupted a little bit and we didn't touch properly.

Yes. Just any high-level thoughts on this trend of non-U.S. appetite that's been kind of coming through this year, how that impacts things like the demand for open architecture and your clients' behavior?

Okay. Yes. Okay. Let me take this one. Well, the truth is that when we see the asset classes and there is appetite from the distributors that we have all around the world, well, there is appetite for, I don't know, in Latin America, for instance, of course, for U.S. products or U.S. equity, but also for European. So that is good. In Europe, we might think that there could be now in this moment, less appetite for U.S. products, okay, which is correct. But at the same time, there is a lot of appetite for European equity, European fixed income, European high-yield, European corporates. So -- which, again, is our products that we have at Allfunds, okay? So this is temporary -- by the way, temporary lack of interest in U.S. Let's say, equities or fixed income, I don't really believe that it is going to affect, let's say, the appetite for open architecture in some way because the majority of our distributors are not necessarily strong in global equities or in more sophisticated fixed income products. So we will monitor it. It is true. We will monitor it. But at this point, I'm not really concerned. We are much more concerned, as you can imagine, when 2022 or 2023, when there is a lack of appetite for risky assets and the trend is to invest in money market funds or even to redeem and put the money in cash accounts. I mean that definitely goes against best-of-breed and open architecture, but not necessarily this temporarily lack of interest for U.S. products really. But we will monitor it. And we will come back to you if we see anything that I don't know, that surprises us.

And with regards to the subscription business, as you know, this is instrumental for our enhanced value proposition and you heard from Juan, we implemented a new business strategy focused on our all-in-one service, embodying a, let's say, holistic sales approach where every member contributes to cross-selling and upselling our entire suite of tools. This initiative is shaping our platform into the ultimate one-stop shop for fund distribution. And we've seen a 9.7% year-on-year growth to EUR 17 million this quarter. Of course, there is a certain seasonality component to it as you might spot looking at previous semesters. In fact, H2 is typically stronger than H1. So in line with the commentary we made around full year guidance, we do remain confident to -- with the guidance that we provided for the full year, and we expect this revenue line to accelerate in the coming quarters.

The next question will be from the line of Carlos Peixoto with CaixaBank.

Just a clarification from my side, and sorry for asking this, but I arrived a bit late into the meeting. So if I understood correctly, you're reiterating the EUR 40 billion to EUR 60 billion migrations pipeline for 2025. But with the plus that April was quite strong, and you see the April performance in terms of migrations more than offsetting both potential client outflows due to market volatility as well as market performance. Was that it? Just to make sure that I understood that correctly.

Yes, it's a very good point. Yes, we definitely reiterate our guidance of EUR 40 billion to EUR 60 billion, okay? And we are very confident that we will -- again, we will achieve the target that we have in migrations. And no, you have heard well in the sense that April was very strong in migrations, and it will offset a potential negative number in outflows or inflows if it happens because, again, we still don't have the numbers of the last week of April. So again, we cannot tell you if April is going to be negative or not. But what -- I'm 100% sure is that in the case it is negative, it will be 100% offset by these strong migrations in the month of April. What I cannot guarantee you, and in fact, I don't think it's going to be the case is that migrations are going to be enough to offset the negative overall market performance of the month of April, okay? Again, we need to see the numbers of the last week of April. But I mean, the first 2 weeks of April were very, very negative and with a very negative market effect. So that's basically what I have said, okay? So outflows or, let's say, flows completely under control, a market performance, we still need to see, but it's, again, very difficult that we can offset it because it has been very negative, especially first 2 weeks of April.

And the next question today will be from the line of Ian White with Autonomous.

Sorry, I also joined the call slightly late. So hope this hasn't already been covered. But I just hope to hear a little bit more about the agreement with Andbank. I guess I'd be particularly interested to understand sort of why some element of M&A is included in this transaction as opposed to the deal just being structured as a partnership where Andbank gets access to more product, Allfunds gets access to the Brazilian market. Can you help me understand sort of why M&A is a necessary part of this transaction, please?

Yes. Well, -- as you know, we do not really structure this type of partnerships. I mean it's not the way we really work, I mean with some kind of strategic partnerships per country. So basically, what we have done with this deal is to acquire a local fund platform that is going to give us access to the Brazilian onshore fund business, okay? So we are acquiring a platform that today works in order to create on top of this platform, existing platform, our new Allfunds Brazil B2B platform, okay? So that's why we have structured it as an M&A deal because it is an M&A deal, okay? Apart from this, as we have extraordinary good relationships with Andbank, not just in Brazil, but also in Spain and in Andorra, well, they are becoming our first institutional client in Brazil for this B2B onshore business, okay? I mean as probably you know that we have been in Brazil now for a decade and that we are the largest by far, okay, B2B platform for international open architecture. So the majority of the big players, the Brazilian market work already with Allfunds when they have appetite for international open architecture. But this is a different project. This project goal is to enter into the local, onshore Brazilian fund industry. And where we're talking, as I said at the beginning of the call, it's the sixth largest fund market in the world. And there is -- we believe that there is a need for a new local B2B platform in order to automatize and to make efficient marketing where the number of local fund houses is above 1,000 just to put it in context. So bear in mind that we have agreements with 1,500, let's call, global fund houses. So just in Brazil, there are 1,000 local fund houses. So imagine the challenge, but also the opportunity, okay? I hope that this explains and give you a little bit more color of why this M&A deal.

Yes, that is helpful. Can you maybe just offer a bit of a sense as to the revenue margins that might be available in the onshore distribution market in Brazil? I'm thinking they're probably at the upper end of what you're earning in the business at the moment. Would that be correct?

Yes. Unfortunately, we need to start working with all the counterparts that, as I have said a minute ago, are many hundreds and close the agreements before being able to give you an exact number. I think we should be able to disclose this probably end of this year, okay, once we have sat down with many of these counterparts. But in any case, I mean, what I can tell you is that it's going to be accretive to the current margin of Allfunds without any doubt.

[Operator Instructions] No further questions. I'd like to hand back to Mr. Alcaraz for some closing remarks.

Okay. No, no. Well, thank you very much. Again, thank you very much for following our stock and for your support, very good questions as always. And yes, we will hope to see you soon. And whatever further questions that you have, you have our IR department managed by Carlos. So please feel free to contact me directly. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes the Allfunds 1Q 2025 Trading Update Conference Call. You may now disconnect your lines.