Impax Asset Management Group Plc ($IPX)

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Impax Asset Management Group plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, which I kindly ask you to submit responses to. I'd now like to hand over to Founder and CEO, Ian Simm. Ian, good afternoon.

Hello, everybody. Great to have you with us again. Thank you for joining. So, I'm just going to run through the half year results for Impax Asset Management Group plc. That's the 6 months to the end of March 2026. So just diving straight in, there's a highlights page -- sorry, there's 'Why Impax?' page first, which is as follows. I think it's very clear that the world of asset management is changing really quite specifically in the direction of two areas of the split market: So the so-called $1 trillion-plus assets under management crowd, the big names like Fidelity and BlackRock. And then at the smaller end, the boutiques, each of which really needs to have a distinctive offering. And Impax fits very nicely into that second category. Our distinctive offering is that we are specialists in what we call the transition to a more sustainable economy, which at its heart is a capitalist idea, the move towards energy security, resource efficiency, lower pollution, rollout of infrastructure on a global basis. And that these areas are not only growing rapidly, but they're also offering mispricing or presenting mispricing because they're quite technical, there's lots of regulatory change. And this is where Impax comes in. We have probably the world's largest team of specialists in this area uncovering that those mispricing comparisons, if you like, and then making investments accordingly. So, we've been around since the late '90s, when I set up the company. We're probably the world's leading brand in this area, and we very deliberately set up a scalable business model, as I'll go on to describe. The next slide is the business highlights. Here they are. So, for the 6 months at the end of March, I'm sure if you are in the markets, you'll remember that these were particularly extraordinary times. We had a very narrow market in the back end of calendar 2025. The so-called Mag 7 -- Magnificent 7 AI-oriented stocks were really in the ascendancy still. And then in January, the market really changed and became much broader. There's much more interest in heavy assets, low obsolescence type businesses, so-called halo stocks, which is where our portfolios generally have a bias. And therefore, as I said in the first bullet point of this slide, the fundamentals of our area have been strengthening really for the last -- since January, 4.5 months or so. As a result, year-to-date -- calendar year-to-date, we've had much stronger investment performance, and that really has moved the investor base in the direction of being less negative, should we say, about our investment ideas, and more detail on that to come. At the same time, as I said earlier, then we are building a scalable business model for future potential and future success over the medium to long term. So we've continued to diversify our product range and build out our client partnerships. At the same time, we have been through a period of revenue contraction as our sector has been underperforming the market, if you like. And so we've been reducing our costs accordingly. But at the same time, we have a very strong balance sheet and crucially, management team is the largest owner collectively of shares in the firm with about 18% of the stock. Next slide. There's some financials here. I won't take you through them. I think the most important numbers here are the assets under management, bottom left, GBP 22.3 billion, the operating margin above that one, 19.2% and the cash reserves, GBP 46.0 million on the far right. Rest of that detail to come. Next slide. So let me just check that's not -- Can I just check is that the right slide? Okay. Not quite the result or the sequence I've got. Probably it doesn't matter. So, market conditions, then, as I mentioned earlier, the market has just been much broader in 2026. That's because the AI phenomenon has really probably lost a bit of steam in terms of multiples in the sector. Obviously, still a lot of positive news, but the stocks have really been racing away in the second half of 2025. But meanwhile, the Iran war in particular, has highlighted the opportunities for energy stocks in general and in particular, the clean energy and energy efficiency areas have been very positively affected. Renewable energy can be deployed much more rapidly than renewables. And of course, if you can save energy through energy security, then that's an immediate benefit. At the same time, there's been a lot of additional interest in wildfires and general environmental and weather-related setbacks. So lots of opportunities there for the companies we're investing in, for example, around the sensing and monitoring of these sorts of events and also resilience for infrastructure. The data center revolution is also not only producing demand for energy, but also demand for large amounts of water for cooling as well. So just lots of anecdotal evidence that the type of investment idea that Impax has been focused on is now back in the spotlight for the press. Next slide. So our portfolios are really well positioned to benefit from these trends, as I mentioned. The chart on the left is our largest thematic equity strategy, which thematic equities in this sense means those equity funds that we run that are skewed towards the sort of trends that I've been mentioning. So the percentage numbers here is the percentage of our portfolio invested in these different areas. So you can see energy management and efficiency, 26%; digital infrastructure, 25%. These are the largest weightings that our teams have. And you can see on the right that there's a nice resonance in these areas of energy security and efficiency on the one hand, AI infrastructure build-out on the other with the types of exposure we've got. So a little bit more color on how our portfolios are really well placed in the context of these 2 very big trends that are playing out at the moment. Next slide. So a couple of slides now, which are showing our investment performance. If you've seen our presentations before, you'll remember this type of presentation. It looks a bit complicated, but bear with me. So the first of the 2 slides, as you can see in the top row is listed equities. The red boxes show what's been happening in CYTD, which means calendar year-to-date in the Water, Leaders, Specialists and Global Opportunities strategies. So, Water, Leaders and Specialists are our thematic areas and global opportunities is what we call our core or non thematic area. And the other pairs of bars are what's been happening in the calendar years from 2022. So the blue bar is the year that's in question and the orange bar is the benchmark. So, where the blue bar is bigger than the orange bar, that means we're outperforming and vice versa. So what you can see in water leaders and specialists is that our strategies have been underperforming the market for 4 years, but in 2026 have been outperforming the market. And this is actually been pretty typical over the history of these strategies is that they're very different to the market and there are certain market conditions in which they outperform, which were prevalent between 2018 and 2022 and have been -- or 2021 and have not been so prevalent since 2022. But all being well, we're now back in the positive part of the cycle. Just to be clear, then global opportunities in the bottom right, our non- thematic area has been lagging the market again in calendar year-to-date, and that's because once again, it's had a relatively low exposure to those high-growth areas around, say, semiconductors or technology more broadly. The next slide is the equivalent for our fixed income division, which, as you'll know, if you've followed us for a while, is the area that we've been trying to build up over the last 4 or 5 years to try to diversify the business and not have such dependency on thematic equities. So these are the 4 largest fixed income strategies, global high yield, core bond, high yield and emerging markets corporate bonds in the 4 quadrants, exactly the same format. So the black -- sorry, the red boxes are calendar year-to-date and then the previous 4 pairs are performance against the indices in each of the previous 4 calendar years. So a much more positive story here in recent years, generally outperforming the indices and calendar year-to-date pretty respectable as well. So this is really doing what it's supposed to be doing in the sense of providing a much more consistent level of performance relative to the market while not generating so much upside in the good times. But I think we're wanting to signal that this area of the market is -- or this area of the business rather is doing well and on a good trajectory. Next slide. So a breakdown of the assets under management movement. Again, if you've heard us or seen us before, you'll know that we generally put out similar slides so you can compare us from one period to the next. This is showing how the assets under management for the firm have changed over 2 periods. So, if you start from the right, this is the assets under management at the end of March 2026, 22.3 -- and then if you work back left to the green bar, that was the assets under management at the start of our calendar year -- sorry, start of our financial year, which was the 30th of September '25 or the 1st of October 2025. So what happened between green and blue essentially was we had GBP 5.1 billion of outflows, offset by GBP 1.4 billion of inflows and a pretty much flat market. And then the same analysis in the previous 6 months from March '25 to September '25 shows the same parameters, but also the acquired assets of GBP 1.1 billion, which we gained when we completed the acquisition of SKY Harbor Capital Management, which is a fixed income manager. So, I think the point there is that the outflows have been quite high, inflows less than they were in the previous 6 months. But the investment performance, as you've seen in the previous couple of slides, improving. So what that generally means in the context of where is this business heading is that the flows typically lag the performance as the prospective clients get used to the performance having come back. So, all being well, as the performance improves and the flows start to improve, and we're back to neutral to positive net flows once again. So, no guarantee of that, but that's certainly the direction of travel seemingly at the moment. Next slide. So again, a standard impact slide. This is the snapshot of our assets under management by different dimensions at the end of March, so 6, 7 weeks ago. So we start on the left-hand column. This is the types of product that we run. So 62%, again, looking at blue compared to orange in the previous period. 62% at the end of March was in thematic actively managed equities. So that's like Leaders, Specialists, Water. 14% in core actively managed equities, which would be like global opportunities. Systematic equities, I'll come back to, but that's broadly our quasi-passive index products, fixed income, I've explained, and then we have a little bit in private markets. In the middle column, the same blue versus orange, North America, 35%; the EMEA region, 58%; U.K., only 7%, and this is a distinctive feature about the firm. We are very much an international supplier, although we do believe we can win a lot more business in the U.K. And then on the same basis, the revenue by product on the right-hand side. So our own label funds like Impax Environmental Markets, Ireland, our big UCITS strategy, 56% collectively in all those. BNP Paribas is a very big distribution partner for us. So 26% of our revenue from BNP and then the rest is hopefully self-explanatory. So, I think the point of that slide is that we're a nicely diversified business, but we do have some work to do to further diversify the thematic equities, which is what I was saying earlier about the move over multiple years to build, in particular into fixed income, but maybe into systematic equities and private markets as well. Next slide. So, a couple of slides now showing the breakdown in the net flows for the period. Again, the blue numbers compared to the previous period 12 months ago in 2025. So, there's a reasonably hard to see vertical line. And the left of the vertical line is the -- would be net flows -- net outflows and to the right of the vertical line will be net inflows. So you can see in all cases, we've had net outflows in these 2 periods. So, the reading from the left, this is the U.K. and Ireland column, the own label and UCITS range negative GBP 624 million. I'm not going to read all this out. Hopefully it's self-explanatory. We've got BNP Paribas in the middle and North America on the right. So, I think the one that's worth drawing attention to is the one in the middle. So, BNP Paribas Asset Management is our largest external shareholder, about 14% of our shares, and they have a big distribution network, which we have access to. They distribute our funds and there was a reduction from GBP 1,200 to GBP 953 net negative comparing one period to the next. So definitely not out of the woods yet with them. They have pretty much completed their merger with AXA Investment Management. So we're optimistic that, that will lead to more business for us over the medium term. Next slide. Just rounding off this story, it all couldn't sensibly fit it on one page. So it's the same format, first of all, for the other distributors and funds in the EMEA region, apart from BNP Paribas and then secondly, the Asia Pacific region on the right. So, not really much to draw attention to here except on the bottom right, we lost a segregated account in Japan actually 12 months ago, and that's no longer come through the net flows numbers. Next slide. Okay. So, the objective now is to go through 3 slides just setting out where we are in terms of business development and potential for the future. So, in the investment area, again, comments, first of all, on listed equities and fixed income and then private markets according to the 3 columns. So listed equities, I think we're in a pretty good place in the sense of having a well-established investment process, team organization, and team staffing, and the process is leading to quite nice outperformance in the thematic areas. A little bit of work still to do in actively managed core equities. But meanwhile, we do have quite an exciting development in the U.S., which is our first ETF and ETFs in the U.S. are particularly tax advantageous. And so we're prioritizing those there rather than in Europe, where there's less compunction from our perspective to do this. So that's the first of probably many that's successfully underway. And then in systematic equities, as I was mentioning earlier, we do think that there's very strong market demand for services in this area, particularly with a sustainability tilt and with a reasonably established but not very large base in this space, a well-established and highly competent team, then we are planning to extend this initially through the launch of a UCITS fund, which we should be able to get off the ground before the end of the calendar year. In fixed income, then we've bought these 2 businesses in the last 3 years. I mentioned one, which is SKY Harbor, which was a U.S.-based short duration, high-yield credit manager. And the year before, we bought a Danish group called Absalon Capital, which is a specialist in global high yield and emerging market corporate bond. So, fixed income, we've integrated those 3 teams now and also ensured that our sustainability angles and credentials are effectively integrated and credible to outside sophisticated investors. So that is pretty much done. We've got a good pipeline, and we are seen as institutional quality. The headwind at the moment, as I'm sure you appreciate, if you're in a fixed income investment area is the tight spreads. You're not really getting a premium for risk at the moment. So it's not a particularly easy time to raise money for fixed income. But we do think that when fixed income market circumstances improve with regard to investment attractiveness that we'll be very well placed to grow that quite strongly. And then in private markets, we have a highly capable team in the area of renewable energy development and construction with a European focus. We are 58% exited from our third fund and just over 3/4 of our fourth fund is now invested. So, we're not allowed to be explicit in the direction of what's happening next, but you can probably join the dots between Funds 1, 2, 3 and 4 and what might happen afterwards. And although fundraising climates for private markets investments are not easy at the moment in this particular area, there's strong interest from asset owners. And I think with our European focus and the wider energy security and energy efficiency pressure and political support in general that we are highly confident we'll be able to grow this area. In addition, we remain open to acquisitions in both private markets and fixed income, although we don't put ourselves under any pressure to do that because we've had 3 successful acquisitions so far, but many of our peers have restumbled, and we don't want to fall into any traps. And then in the second slide here -- next slide, sorry. So -- with respect to clients, then we are continuing to build our market opportunity or respond to our market opportunity for the differentiated offering that we provide. There is really a baseload of demand globally amongst asset owners, both institutions and private wealth for this idea of a manager dedicated to the sustainability space being described as a capitalist idea rather than as an ethically or politically motivated idea, and that's a crucial distinction. Because of our large team, we've now got a team of approximately 250 staff, then we're well placed to provide the thought leadership and policy work that just enhances our offering to sophisticated clients who can make the difference between them hiring us and then hiring a competitor. We have really quite a well-established base of relationships around the world. There's plenty more we can do to establish ourselves as a partner of the major asset owners such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds and private banks who are looking for multiple products. They're looking for a systematic and consistent client service, and they are, in many cases, very interested in joining us for research projects. So, that's a nice plank or foundation for growth. And then because of the withdrawal of many of our erstwhile competitors due to relatively weak offerings and the fact that this area can be and has been seen by some management teams of large organizations as a bit of a political or out-of-favor thematic area, then we've been able to enhance our competitive edge over the last couple of years. Next slide, please. And then finally, in this area, we've very much focused on making sure that our team and talents are motivated and highly empowered to continue to deliver value. So we've got very high staff retention as is indicated there. We have a succession planning process, which inevitably when you've been around for nearly 30 years, there's always some people who are retiring. So that's been a focus over the last 4 or 5 years to make sure that's successfully identified and handled. And then we are definitely working on career development and mentoring and we get high levels of staff satisfaction. Having said that, as the business has reduced in scale in the last couple of years, then we have reduced a number of roles. So we are expecting to remove 30 roles during the second half of the financial year. Those individuals are already informed. Most of them have already left the building, some have not, but they know that that's sadly happening. We've got a number of those roles actually that are just vacancy. So it's not like new people leaving or additional people leaving. The crucial thing about this downsizing is that we're not reducing our capabilities or growth potential, and we've been very careful not to cut off high potential arms for growth in the future. And inevitably, then there's plenty of scope for technology to enhance efficiency. So we were or have been looking at this area now for a long time and have got a good track record of adopting and integrating software packages across the firm. AI, I think, is a bit of a catchall term for lots of different things. We've been moving from a bottom-up experimentation approach to AI to for the last 3 or 4 months, a top-down strategically structured and guided approach, which, frankly, is just bedding down. It's a bit too early to declare exactly what the target is going to look like or what the savings could be. But I think like with most financials or financial services businesses, then we're pushing hard, but being very mindful of the potential for additional risk and confusion amongst the team. So being very thoughtful about that. Next slide. So a few financials now. I'm not going to go into the detail and maybe if you want to go into the numbers in more detail, please go back to the slides afterwards. So this is really -- this slide a restatement of the data that was there in that very first slide that I showed you. So the dark blue bar is the first half of 2026, so the end of 31st of March number compared to the previous 2 6-month periods. So, you can see that the dark blue bar is smaller than the other 2 that we have been contracting relative to the previous two 6-month periods, and that's because the market has been against us relatively speaking. And as a result, we've had net outflows. So, yes, I've already mentioned that the revenue and cost numbers, the dividend number of 2p for the interim compares to larger interim numbers in the previous period. So, I think that, yes, the 8p on the bottom right, that's the full year dividend. The interim dividend is always smaller. So that was 4p the equivalent time the year before -- 12 months before. So 2p compares to 4p rather than 8p, if that makes sense, with half the interim dividend. Next slide. So revenue and fee margin -- once again, there's a stack here with the dark blue being the current period. So, if you look at the left-hand half of the page with that GBP 24.7 million which is the average assets under management for the period, producing a revenue of GBP 58.8 million for the half year, and that compares to higher numbers in H1 2026. But with the sort of bridge between them, I won't go into the details there. Fee margins roughly stable. So 47.9 basis points or 0.479 percentage points. That's on the right-hand side, very similar to where it was a year ago. And that compares to a range of something like 30 basis points up to 75 basis points for our equity funds. Next slide. Cost management, again, lots of data here to dive into if you're interested. I think the costs have come down quite considerably. If you're looking at the dark blue bars in the top left-hand corner and compare them to the light blue bars 12 months earlier, then you can see that we've been reducing our costs quite aggressively in response to a reducing client base and reducing revenues realization. Staff at the end of March, and this is the top right, 269, and that's before the 30 additional roles that I've referred to. So, we're expecting to end the financial year with something like 239, 240 staff. And then in the operating margin at the bottom right, you can see, again, dark blue, 19.2%, which is down from the 26.8%, 12 months before. But I think overall, despite the contraction we've experienced as a result of our area of investing being out of favor until January this year, then we're still a very profitable business, generating free cash flow. Next slide. Share management. So, there are at the end of March, I'm looking at the left-hand side here, 127.0 million, 127 million shares outstanding. That's the bottom right of the table. And the start of the buyback program -- sorry, the start of September 2025, that's halfway up 130.7 -- so we have been buying our own shares back in the market. We do have what's called an employee benefit trust. It's the bottom -- sorry, the top right of this slide, and that's the vehicle in which the shares for the new staff members are housed. The cost of those shares comes out of the bonus pool. So, this is not a drag on shareholder returns that's not transparent. It's part of the bonus. And the ownership split, you can see the bottom right there. So, I mentioned BNP Paribas, 14%, that's the light blue. And then the management team is founder of employee ownership, that's myself and two others. And then there's a wide staff group that owns another 6%. Next slide, please. Looking at cash and cash movements in the balance sheet. So, on the -- this is the left-hand side, finishing the period end of March at GBP 46 million. That's down from GBP 64.7 million at the start of the period. And from that comes our dividends, and we bought back some shares and there's been cash decrease from operations as well. So, still a very healthy cash balance at the end of the period. And then this is a breakdown of the dividend that I mentioned earlier. Next slide, please. So, shareholder equity on the left and the time periods, I think, speak for themselves, but concentrate on the third bar from the left. We have a required capital in orange of -- or light orange, GBP 22.6 million. That's the regulatory capital, if you like. And, the dark orange, GBP 53.7 million is our capital surplus, some of which is invested in seed capital. So, we like that's the money, the war chest we've got to go out and either seed new funds and/or make acquisitions within a level of prudent management. So, we do have a very thoughtful and proactive approach to managing this equity pot. We decided in December or late last calendar year to do a GBP 10 million buyback, which was successfully completed. We do have GBP 16.8 million of seed capital, which this is in new funds that we're looking to build a track record for. And once the investors come in from outside, then we intend, as we've done in the past, to redeem that capital, hence it's planned to fall in the second half from that GBP 16.8 million. So, capital allocation priorities, bottom right, financial resilience obviously needs to come first, dividends and compensation to staff, share buybacks and investment for growth, probably sort of equally considered. But what we want to make sure in this business is that we retain our growth potential because we have a fantastic growth opportunity ahead of us. And although we have been suffering headwinds because of the very narrow AI-dominated market recently, and we've been diversifying the business, but not as rapidly as we would have liked to have done, then we feel that we are hopefully now coming out of the worst of that storm and we've got an excellent growth potential ahead of us. Next slide, and then one after that. So, this is the final slide before we go to Q&A. So, just summarizing now I think the crucial point is that in this bifurcated or split asset management market, there's a room, very attractive room for a sustainability-focused specialist manager like Impax. We are the global leader in this space with the longest track record going back to 1998. We do believe that the thematic area that we are focused on, is outperforming very strongly now, and that's giving us a much stronger foundation to build our outreach to current and prospective clients. Markets have been somewhat volatile recently. Net outflows inevitably are a feature of this industry until there's a longish track record or longer track record of outperformance. So, in the second half of calendar '26, then if the outperformance remains in place, I think we should start to see those outflows improve considerably. I did want to note for those of you that are not aware that there has been an exit tender from one of our larger clients, which is Impax Environmental Markets or IEM plc. This is the Impax Investment Trust, which we set up in 2002. And because of the activities of Saba Capital who've been attacking many of these investment trusts, then we have not been immune and the board decided to put in place an exit opportunity, which was taken up by, I think, about over 80% of the shareholders, including the board and those of us in the management team. What's particularly differentiated about Impax, though, is we do have an equivalent UCITS vehicle, which is doing exactly the same thing as the investment trust, and we are in the process of courting and attracting the IEM shareholders into this UCITS vehicle with a financially advantageous opportunity to switch. So, we're hoping to bring across a material percentage of that GBP 740 million into the UCITS vehicle over the next couple of months. So, over the medium term, and I'm thinking about 2027 and beyond, then the market is really well placed for more in the way of client partnerships, deeper multi-dimensional relationships with larger, more sophisticated asset owners, which ought to lead to more business for us. And in the context of that multiyear, a decade-plus growth opportunity, then right now, we're focused on talent retention, cost management while not in any way reducing our capabilities. And then crucially, underpinning all this is our strong financial health. So with that, I'm going to pause and take questions.

Perfect. Thank you, Ian, for your presentation this afternoon. [Operator Instructions] For your reference, a recording of today's presentation will be available on the Investor Meet Company platform shortly after the meeting has ended. But now, Ian, as you can see, there are a number of questions which have been submitted. Could I please ask you to read out the questions and give your responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Yes, sure. So a couple of questions from Matthew to start with. I think I might have answers in the slide deck, Matthew, but what percentage of revenues comes from higher fee active equity strategy versus lower fee fixed income or passive products? So I'm not sure what the page numbers are, but the answer there is on the slide. So 62% from thematic equities generally with high fees, fixed income, 10% and passive -- or systematic 10%. Unusually, both fixed income and the passive products are relatively high fees for their markets because they're in a retail format in the U.S. So, you shouldn't think of those as being particularly low fee. And also from Matthew, how dependent is future growth on third-party distributor relationships? Well, on the same slide, I'm sorry, I've got a slightly different format for the slide, so I'll comment on what number it's on. There's a breakdown of the assets under management by revenue. And so BNP Paribas about 26% sub-advisory and advisory funds, which are really third-party distribution, 10%. So, that's 36% together. And then our own label funds are 56%. Some of those we distribute ourselves, but in some cases, they are on other people's platforms. So, what we typically say somewhat loosely is that 50% of our business is institutional and 50% is wholesale with other parties in charge and half of that is with BNP simplistically. Sam T asks, I think you've got a couple of questions as well. So are there sectors historically avoided by Impax that now look attractive because of energy security themes? Well, of course, we have a large percentage of our assets under management in thematically oriented sectors, which includes energy efficiency as one of its areas of investment. So within those thematic funds, then we have generally seen energy efficiency as quite capital intensive and being cautious about it because of high interest rates. But I think with energy prices now being so high, then as you imply, energy efficiency is very attractive. There's a similar story to be told around renewable energy. So, for example, the development of solar power projects where the power price now and the relatively cheap Chinese panels being available makes the projects quite attractive. At the same time, though, interest rates are at recent historical highs. So, I would say that we are now particularly focused on energy security, not because we've historically avoided them, but because relatively speaking, they're a bit more attractive than they were, say, a year ago. And then Sam is also asking another question, which is, could you use your cash position more aggressively? Yes, good question. So, what I was really indicating earlier was that we've been really quite proactive and thoughtful about using our cash position. On the one hand, of course, it needs to be used efficiently. Otherwise, why should you not want it back? And therefore, we've been looking for acquisitions. We've been doing share buybacks, and we've been seeding new products. On the other hand, we need to make sure this is a resilient business or there is in the, I think, remote possibility, but it's not out of the question that these sort of businesses can be undermined if their cash position means that the capital drops below the regulatory minimum. So, it's certainly our intention to use this as proactively and as efficiently as possible, trying to use the word aggressively, but I hope you understand what I mean. And then I got a question from Tom, and that's the last question. So if you've got any questions, please jot them in now because there's a little bit more time to go if you'd like to keep going. So, from Tom, what specific indicators give you confidence that Impax is approaching a genuine inflection point in flows and earnings rather than simply experiencing a temporary performance rebound? Yes, good question. I think the crucial thing here is the sequence of investment performance first because that really brings the confidence that underpins flows. And from the flows and the market levels comes the revenue and the earnings for the management company. So, therefore, we try and guide everybody to the investment performance. Now, are we at a period or in a period where AI has really stopped leading the market and will flatline or plateau relative to everything else, which is going to benefit, amongst other things, from the AI input? Or are we going to see what we did in the last half of calendar '25, which is where AI finds another -- yet another tailwind and confidence about its earnings and return on invested capital increases and hence, that area outperforms. So, that's an absolutely critical question for everybody. I think the general view that we would subscribe to is that the AI area, particularly around the Mag 7 type primary stocks has reached a point where it's hard to see its multiples going up a lot more. But meanwhile, there's a lot of benefit for and opportunity for those ancillary companies in the heavy asset, low obsolescence areas, which is where we particularly focus. So, we have been reporting in the slide deck 4 months of outperformance relative to markets and some very good absolute returns as well. Is that going to carry on? Well, I think our thesis will be that if you take a 6- to 18-month view that very much so, will it be a smooth ride? Well, probably not because markets are a bit choppy at the moment. We did see in calendar '24 that there were 3 months of outperformance to start with, and then we had Liberation Day as it's called, which was a real market shock with Mr. Trump's tariffs being imposed. I think it was the 2nd of April last year, and then we had a very choppy market for the rest of the year. So, definitely not declaring victory, but I do think that with the fundamentals of our thesis, really nicely placed for fundamental earnings growth in the underlying companies that we're looking to invest in, coupled with a broader market sentiment around multiples. And I think from a listed equity perspective, we're nicely placed and from that outperformance advance use then should come better flows and from the better flows comes better P&L. I think the critical additional point though is the need for diversification, which I've been mentioning 3 or 4 times in the last 45 minutes and which has been a theme of the leadership here for 5 years or so and underpinned the 2 acquisitions we've made, fixed income, our investment in not only the fixed income growth, but also systematic equities and our openness to additional appropriately sized and culturally aligned acquisitions. So, yes, you're asking the right question, Tom. I can't give you the definitive answer. I suppose that's sort of what markets are about. But I think from a -- I'm the third largest shareholder in this business. And the thing that reassures me is that this is a compelling idea with a medium- to long-term perspective, and we are the globally leading brand with more experience than anybody else. So, in that context, it may not be a smooth ride in the next 6 to 12 months, but I think if you're taking a medium-term patient view, then it should be a great investment. I think I've reached the end of the questions. And so unless you'd like to add any more, then I think we're probably done.

Perfect. Thank you, Ian, for answering all of those questions. Before we ask investors to share their feedback, which I know is important to you, if I could just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that would be great.

Sure. Well, look, thank you for joining whether you're listening live or after the broadcast. We appreciate all your interest and support. And for those of you that have invested, thank you for that. And anybody who would like to invest definitely encourage you. This is a really compelling business idea. The equity markets and the broader financial markets are really very attractive for a specialist manager. The rise of passive investing in the last few years has really been dominated by this Magnificent 7 effect, which is almost certainly only temporary. So, the scope for actively managed equities and fixed income is really coming back into focus right now, and we're really well placed to take account of that or take benefit from that. Meanwhile, we do have in our investment thesis some compelling medium- to long-term themes that should lead to company outperformance in terms of earnings and return on invested capital. And with the globally leading brand in the space and a really nicely diversified client base, I think we're very well placed to continue to deliver great value for clients in the investment funds and through the associated earnings to retain a really highly qualified and capable group of staff and then also to provide great returns for our shareholders. So, I really appreciate your attention on behalf of the Board and management team. Look forward to staying in touch, and we're always available for direct Q&A if you want to contact us yourself directly. Thanks.

Brilliant. Thank you, Ian, once again. Ladies and gentlemen, could I ask that you don't close the session just yet as you'll now be automatically redirected to a page to give your feedback, which helps the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and wish you all a good afternoon.