Australian Ethical Investment Limited (AEF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. My name is Melanie Hill, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Australian Ethical. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the country on which we work, the Gadigal people, one of the 29 tribes of the Eora Nation, and recognize their continuing connection to the land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present. Please note that today's presentation is being recorded, and a recording will be made available on the Australian Ethical website. The slides used in this presentation are also available on our website. [Operator Instructions] We may also have media in attendance this morning. I'm joined this morning by John McMurdo, our Group CEO and Managing Director; and Mark Simons, our CFO. Members of our executive leadership team are also here today to assist with answering any questions as helpful. John will take us through the highlights. Mark will cover off the financials, and then John will provide a short business update. Over to you, John.

Thanks, Mel, and good morning, everyone. It's been another very pleasing 6 months of momentum for our business with delivery on all strategic milestones we set out to achieve, laying the foundations for further future growth, and as many of you will have seen from our ASX announcement this morning, delivering strong financial results. Before I get into the highlights, though, I wanted to remind you of some of the important context for understanding our results today, particularly for our newer shareholders, which is that Australian Ethical is by design, a pure-play ethical investment management business. So we're not your standard listed financial services company. We're a business that is for purpose and for profit. And so in addition to the burning drive we have to be a successful listed company and create significant value for shareholders, we're equally intentional about doing that in a way consistent with our purpose of genuinely investing for a better world, how and where we invest, where we use our voice, how we conduct our business. It's all intentional and focused on positively influencing outcomes for all of our stakeholders, our customers, shareholders, the community, staff, animals and of course, the planet. This dual purpose has been in our constitution and our ethical charter since our founding 40 years ago this year and is in the fabric of our organization. We strive to be, and I consider today, we are a true example of those dual objectives being symbiotic, not in competition with each other. When we talk about the proof being in the pudding, the outcomes we've delivered for many, many years are exactly what our target market is attracted to. Our ethical charter means we invest differently. In the recent short-term, sector rotation out of technology and into materials and resource stocks has impacted our relative investment performance. We're focused though on long-term performance and have a consistent and enduring view that is backed up by a history of outperformance through various market, economic and political cycles. We deliver high-quality, repeatable investment returns while putting our shoulder to the wheel in a meaningful way on investing for a better world while also advocating for higher standards across corporate Australia. It's why people choose to invest with us and why people want to work for us because of our true authenticity. Throughout the past 5 years, we've remained focused on continuing the execution of our growth strategy while building a high-quality business capable of even more over the coming years. We've done this while developing a track record of strong financial discipline and strong shareholder returns, growing earnings per share, for example, at 24% compound over the last 5 years. And I'm really pleased to share the first half of FY '26 demonstrates the continued momentum we're driving. We've delivered further growth and improvement in all key financial metrics, building on what was clearly a strong year in FY '25. Mark will provide the detail of our financials, but I want to focus on just a few of the highlights. Firstly, our half year underlying profit was up a significant 25% on the first half of FY '25, further delivering on the scale benefits we have realized in recent years. NPAT attributable to shareholders was up 42%. Importantly, we've seen a 13% underlying revenue uplift, while at the same time, limiting operating cost growth to 9%. Our scale growth, as I've consistently said, has always been with a structural improvement and operating leverage in mind. And so it's pleasing to see further improvement in our underlying cost-to-income ratio at 68.8% for the half compared with 71.8% in the first half of FY '25. Our disciplined approach and the cost efficiencies achieved through our recent super administration and custody transitions are clearly a driver of our continued cost-to-income ratio improvement. Our CTI ratio does carry some seasonality as our expenses tend to be higher in the second half. But as Mark will share, we do expect to report sustained improvement year-on-year. We had a new FUM milestone during the period with total funds under management at the end of December being just over $14 billion. Our financial momentum and the structural enhancements in our profit realization has enabled the Board to confirm a first half dividend of $0.08 per share, 60% higher than the first half of FY '25. Even more pleasing for me than the results is the quality business our team continues to build. We have made further significant steps this half with the successful completion of our transition to a single super administration platform, growth and harmonization of our insurance offering. We've strengthened our digital marketing capability and are seeing pleasing early indicators from that change. We have embedded the Charles River system into our equities and fixed income business lines, enhancing our investment platform in these key asset classes. And we continue to attract high-quality talent at Board level, executive level and importantly, into our market-facing investment and ethics team. And we continued our well-progressed governance enhancements, including Board renewal and business resilience programs designed to satisfy the license conditions we conveyed last year and to materially uplift our organization to support and underpin our future growth. Our growth strategy is clear. Primarily, in recent years, we've leveraged our differentiated value proposition to play into the attractive retail superannuation opportunity. Something we remain laser-focused on and will accelerate with a range of initiatives over the coming years. We're also confident about the emergence of a second growth engine, leveraging the strong brand and investment capabilities built for super to win beyond super. And as we've scaled, we have been and will continue to be intentional about the operating platform required to support the business, ensuring it is scalable, resilient and delivers important operating leverage for both our super and investment product growth engines. Finally, it's about having the right people and maintaining a high purpose-driven and high-performance culture. And I'm so proud that we've built a highly capable team, the envy of many. After Mark's unpacked the financials, I'll outline how we plan to continue to execute on the strategy over the short and the medium-term. But first of all, Mark, can you share the highlights with us? Thank you.

Thank you, John. As John mentioned earlier, we have delivered on our growth strategy over the past 5 years while investing wisely and maintaining a disciplined approach to financial management. And in doing so, we've created a highly enviable track record, including FUM growth of $9 billion at a 23% compound annual growth rate, underlying profit and net profit growth of 24% and 21% CAGRs, respectively, and a dividend growth of 22% compound, having just announced a record first half dividend of $0.08 per share. Our track record speaks for itself. As we look ahead to the next 18 months, we are confident that our continued prudent investment in the business will deliver a strong return. We will be implementing plans to significantly lift our net flows in both super and investments businesses and create a platform able to sustain a business 2x to 3x the size we are today. We have delivered a very pleasing set of financial results for the first half. Building on the strong 29% underlying profit growth in FY '25, we're reporting another profit uplift in the first half of FY '26. Half year FY '26 underlying profit was up a significant 25% at $14.4 million. Net profit attributable to shareholders was up 42% to $13.3 million. As John reported, we have achieved a further improvement in our underlying cost-to-income ratio at 68.8% for the half compared with the 71.8% in the prior half year. This improvement was influenced to some extent by seasonality of expenses, so we expect some unwinding of this improvement in the second half. We are, however, targeting a sustained improvement for overall FY '26 CTI compared to FY '25. The integration and transformation costs relating to the final phase of the administration transition have been adjusted from underlying profit. The underlying profit adjustments have halved in this period with overall expenses up only 3%. The FUM growth during the year to $14.08 billion was delivered through positive organic flows and investment performance. As we have already announced in our second quarter FUM update, following the sale of Australian Unity's banking business to the Bank of Australia, Australian Unity redeemed its $0.25 billion mandate with Australian Ethical. This low-margin institutional mandate has reduced annual revenue by only circa $0.3 million and is being offset with cost savings and efficiency improvements. Organic net inflows for the period of $260 million were reported, primarily driven by the super net flows. As anticipated, superannuation net flows this half were further disrupted as we successfully completed our administration transition, but we are 19% ahead of the same half in FY '25, where we incurred a larger disruption. Rollovers in were up 24%, and it was pleasing to see super guarantee contributions up 8%. The second half and in particular, the fourth quarter are our traditionally stronger periods for flows, which we look forward to. We also benefited from a lower portion of members in the pension phase at 7.4% of FUM versus the industry, which is at 24%. We therefore, experienced lower outflows through pension payments. Our overall annualized outflow rate for our superannuation customers remain at a low 7% of FUM. Following the completion of the admin transition, the strengthening of our digital media capability and the restoration of the Employment Hero platform functionality, we saw an uplift in new Super members joined during the second quarter of FY '26. We expect these improvements to support our flows targets going forward. We are seeing good progress in the build-out of our values aligned middle market channel, where we are seeing a solid pipeline. These are NGOs, charities, foundations and businesses looking to invest their capital with an aligned fund manager. The pool of capital in this channel is substantial, and our ethical investment expertise positions us well. We continue to experience some anticipated churn in the institutional channel. One of our clients uses the fixed income funds to manage their capital requirements with seasonal fluctuations. This amounted to $41 million of outflows in the period. This lower margin FUM is separated into a client capital management category. Underlying revenue growth of 13% has been driven by average FUM growth of 18%, which was partially offset by the full period effect of the lower-margin Altius fixed income products in the mix and 1 basis point administration fee reduction on 1st of August 2025. Also on the 1st of August, an insurance administration fee was introduced, which is only charged to members who hold insurance. Our fee strategy is a key component of our approach to ensure our products are competitive for current and future customers. Price elasticity considerations are taken into account with a focus on driving profitable growth for our shareholders. We proudly provide premium ethical products and our pricing reflects this. Our key focus is on delivery against our leading ethical standards and in meeting our investment objectives after fees. Each year, we conduct a thorough benchmarking of our fees against competitors. This process ensures that our pricing remains competitive, supporting our commitment to delivering value for our members and investors. As our business continues to scale, we are committed to regularly reviewing and incrementally adjusting our fee structures. This ongoing assessment allows us to strike a balance between achieving profitable growth and maintaining a competitive offering, thereby benefiting all our stakeholders. Our revenue margin at 31st of December 2025 was 0.91% with the second half FY '26 revenue margin expected to remain at this level. In order to best position ourselves for the growth opportunities that lie ahead, it has been critical that we continue to invest in a scalable, resilient business platform. The recent administration and custody transitions are strong evidence of this investment for scale and resulting cost efficiencies. Our operating expenses increased 9%, which was compared to the underlying revenue growth of 13%. Key drivers of this increase included further investment in our talent with new ethical research, investments, technology and senior risk and governance employees. Our target capability build has increased employee expenses by 8%. This also includes the full period of the Altius team along alongside the inflationary salary and SG rate increases. Fund-related expenses increased less than 1%, whilst average FUM growth was 18%. The key attribution of this variable expense line includes a 15% reduction in custody and administration costs following the full period crystallization of previously indicated rate card improvements, noting savings post the final transition in December are modest. A full period of expenses following the Altius acquisition partway through the prior period as well as we did partially reinvest into an enhanced investment platform with the Charles River system implementation cost of $1.5 million incurred in the period. This project is now 2/3 complete. Marketing expenses increased 26% versus the prior period as activities returned to normal levels following the scale back of campaigns during last year's limited-service period. We do continue to retain a strong balance sheet with excellent cash conversion, no debt and surplus rate capital of $21.3 million pre-dividend. Confidence in our business and momentum has resulted in the Board declaring a first half dividend of $0.08, up 60% on the prior interim period. The Board continues to support an overall annual dividend payout ratio of 80%. We are proud to deliver such strong financial results, which has been underpinned by a high-performing team and culture, resilient and robust business model, trusted brand and the successful execution of our strategy. With this momentum, we look ahead to 2026 and beyond with great enthusiasm. I'll now hand you back to John to provide a business update.

Thanks, Mark. While we've had and continue to have a really compelling proposition for customers, we've previously lacked the modern agile systems, supplier rate cards and the digital experience to fully optimize our position into the future. But now with a single super administration platform and nearing the completion of the investment management platform rollout, we're ready to take the steps required over the next 12 to 18 months to become a business capable of delivering even higher net flows and FUM over the medium-term. So let me outline what those steps are and why each part of that is critical in driving the growth that we envisage for this great organization. Our new super administration platform provides us the ability to deliver an app that we know will enhance our member experience, allowing us to convey our proposition more clearly, enhancing retention and meeting future members' expectations. We plan to have launched our initial version by the end of this calendar year. As our membership grows, it's important we're able to meet their retirement needs. So we're harmonizing our superannuation and pension investment options to support members make an easier transition to retirement, while at the same time, building out our health content and our tools at every stage. We'll continue to hone our direct marketing capability, leveraging data to ensure our compelling proposition is reaching our target market effectively and efficiently in a highly competitive market, and that's critical to drive even more direct-to-consumer growth. By the end of the calendar year, we'll complete the investment management platform upgrade for all asset classes. This means we'll have a significantly enhanced investment platform, supporting us to win future institutional mandates and middle market clients. On the investment product side, we also expect to launch a new product offering with an impact focus, leveraging the capability we have built out over the last 2 years. And we are seeing a pipeline of new client opportunities emerge in those middle markets, which will be underpinned by our new thematic impact product offering and enable us to run portfolios for philanthropic clients. And we expect to have substantially completed our governance uplifts, including the implementation of any recommendations that may emerge from the independent review that's required by APRA as part of their licensing conditions on our subsidiary, Australian Ethical superannuation. The cost of that program are not expected to be material and will be substantially absorbed within our existing budget envelope. And those changes as well as setting us up from a strong governance perspective will, as I've said, set us up for our future growth and underpin what we expect to be a continued improvement in the size and scale of our business. And so I'm very confident the business will demonstrate that capability expertly to the market and to the regulators. While we remain mindful of short-term investment impact market dynamics, with these planned activities, we consider the outlook for this company to be very favorable for our business in both the short and the medium-term. Over the second half of this financial year, we expect to see continued positive net flows in super, underpinned by the growing superannuation guarantee inherent in our customer base. As Mark has already mentioned, our operating expenses do have some seasonality, particularly in marketing, where campaigns are most effective towards the end of the financial year as Australians consider topping up their super. But I expect our full year FY '26 underlying cost-to-income ratio to show an improvement of at least 1% compared to the full year of FY '25, where our cost-to-income ratio was 71.4%. While we've previously signaled the likelihood of further modest downward pricing adjustments over the course of the medium-term, we anticipate the second half revenue margins to be in line with the first half. And then our medium-term prospects are very exciting to us. Our objective is to further lift our flows and our growth rate as we head into 2027 and beyond with the planned improvements in our digital experience and our stronger direct marketing capability, enhancing our superannuation growth over the next few years. Our planned new product innovation and further build-out of our middle market channel will also help win profitable FUM beyond superannuation. And while we don't need to do further M&A, given our potential for organic growth, we, of course, are willing, able and in fact, interested to execute on complementary opportunities we consider accretive for shareholders and for our business more broadly. As you've already seen with the successful integration of both Christian Super and Altius Asset Management in recent times. Throughout this period, even with the intentional investment in the business, I'm confident that we can deliver further operating leverage enhancements over the medium-term through our continued disciplined approach to core cost management. Of course, financial market volatility may buffer those expectations in any particular period, but consistent operating leverage improvement is our expectation through the cycle. I've said this previously, I expect this business to deliver a cost-to-income ratio in the mid-60s in the medium-term, and I remain confident of that potential. In closing, this business is demonstrating an ability to simultaneously build the platforms and capability to drive significant organic growth, both the superannuation and investment product growth engines, while at the same time, still growing our earnings and delivering operating leverage improvement. Underpinned by the most fabulous team I've had the privilege to lead in my 35 years in financial markets, I do consider the future for Australian Ethical to be very bright. I look forward to answering any team -- any questions that you have for me or the team, and we'd be delighted to do so. Thanks very much.

[Operator Instructions] I have had a question through, and I'll throw it to you, John. Congratulations on the very strong result. It doesn't appear that the license conditions have had an impact on your business. Can you comment further on how this work is progressing?

Well, first of all, thank you. Yes, the team is very proud of the results that we've delivered today. And yes, that's right. There hasn't been a significant impact on the business from the license conditions, and I don't anticipate one. Most on the call will be aware the regulator over the last 2 or 3 years in the superannuation sector has taken quite a widespread review and sought to uplift governance and risk management practices generally across the sector. And I actually think that's a good thing for Australians and for members across the country. We, for 3 or 4 years, have been very proactive about building that strength and capability and feel that we do that very well as an organization. The extra assurances the regulator has asked of us, our trustee is of the opinion that the scope of that is, in fact, quite limited. And it's more -- in my language, more procedural in nature. And so the trustee is very confident of being able to demonstrate to the regulator and others over the next few months, our ability to meet the highest expectations that the regulator has. I should add, we're confident of delivering that within the broad budget envelope that we've provided for the business this year.

A financial question. I'll throw this to you, Mark. Noting the significant profit growth you've had over the period, the Board consider paying a higher dividend.

Thank you for the question. Look, the Board was particularly pleased with the strength of the result that they saw and being up 42% statutory profit was obviously a particularly robust result that we've delivered. What has happened, you'll actually note, is the interim dividend for the period is up 60%. We, in the past, have been quite conservative in how we declare our dividends at the interim period. And we do this within the interim being sort of prudent and then the final being within the 80% payout ratio. This delivery of 60% improvement to the record interim dividend is actually an increase of 10% in our dividend payout ratio over the 6 months compared to prior interim periods. So the Board has shown confidence in the business by actually providing a record interim dividend, and we look forward to paying out a final dividend in line with the payout ratio of 80%.

John, you spoke a little bit about the inorganic strategy and the outlook. What are the main things you look for in M&A opportunities?

Yes. Thanks for the question. We remain alive and interested in the opportunities that may present themselves over time, as you've already seen demonstrated through our successful integration of Christian Super and Altius more recently. What's important to us, first of all, is cultural fit and mission and purpose fit is deeply important. We look for the opportunity now that we think we've built a fabulous organization to add scale to that existing capability, particularly in the area of superannuation continues to be attractive to us. Beyond that, we have been interested, as you've seen in recent years to, where appropriate, use M&A as a vehicle to add the right capability in our asset management business. We think we're a long way down that path now, but if the right particular opportunities present, of course, where that makes sense for shareholders, we would look to execute on that. But I think the point to make is as well as cultural fit, we'll be really disciplined. We protect shareholders' capital jealously in this organization, and we need to be confident of an appropriate uplift in earnings per share and accretion to enterprise value.

Mark, can you give an update and a bit more flavor on the outlook for fees?

Yes. Thanks for that question. The -- as I mentioned, the fee strategy is a very important part of our overall strategy. We're quite cognizant of the fact that we deliver a premium product, which is a premium ethical product where we consider that the pricing to -- in context of both our investors, our members and our shareholders, and we look at our price elasticity accordingly. As we've -- as I've mentioned, in -- we are in a competitive market, and we believe every year that we do a benchmarking exercise to determine that we have a competitive and compelling offering for both current and future members and investors. We have done -- and I want to note this, we have done a lot of heavy lifting on fees. We brought our fees down over the last 10 years to nearly by half. At 91 basis points, we -- that is where we are today. We can see ourselves continuing to fine-tune to make sure that we get the balance right for both shareholders and members and investors going forward. So there will be some further fine-tuning as we believe would be in the best interest of all stakeholders.

A question around the outlook for the second half. When you guide to the second half '26 employment expenses increasing moderately, can you explain is this against the prior comparative period or the first half of '26, please, Mark?

Yes. As we've been building out a platform, an operating platform with really talented employees, we have actually been building talent in various areas. As mentioned, investments with our ethical research team, our technology and our risk and governance teams. When we talk about the modest or the moderate increase, that is compared to FY -- the first half of this FY '26. But we do our investment in our talent and our operating platform with a very disciplined and focused way, and we ensure that those target employees are in the right places to provide the right return for shareholders in the future.

John, you spoke about the middle market opportunity. Can you explain us and tell us a little bit more about this opportunity that you foresee?

Happy to. I think Mark in his comments described how we think about the makeup of that middle market area as we refer to it, that's NGOs, charities, educational institutions, organizations with a corpus of funds to be managed. It's a more than $50 billion market opportunity in the Australian context. And of course, because of the style of those organizations, typically, there's an often a natural values alignment between those organizations and Australian Ethical. As we've built out the investment capability in the last few years, we're able now to demonstrate to those -- that style of clients, our ability to deliver in multiple asset classes to deliver impact investments. And so we feel with what we've built out in terms of investment capability and our discussions with players in this part of the market that they really like our investment style and approach and deeply value our ethics and impact ability. And so we've been encouraged. In fact, even in FY '25, it was in the order of $118 million of new money from that part of the market, even ahead of completing our investment platform build and product build. So we look to that with a fair bit of confidence in the medium-term when we complete our proposition, having already seen some of the green shoots of that.

Excellent. Thank you, John. That's it for all the questions that we've had through today. Thank you all for attending the webcast and have a great day. Thank you.