Record plc (REC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, all. Thanks very much for joining us this morning to discuss Record's Full Year Results. Just before I hand over to Jan to kick things off, I just kindly ask everyone to stay on mute for the duration of the presentation and then we'll get to Q&A at the end. Without further ado, Jan, over to you.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our full year earnings presentation. My name is Jan Witte, Chief Executive at Record and with me here today is Steve Cullen, Record's CFO; and also Richard Heading, who will be taking over from Steve on the 1st of July. I'd like to thank Steve for his tremendous contributions to Record over the last 20 years, and also for his support to me as I've moved into the role of CEO recently. Today, in addition to the financial results for the year to March 31, which Steve will present shortly, I'd also like to give an update on the strategic progress and some of the actions we've taken during my first 3 months as CEO. So we'll start with an overview. So FY '24 was another successful year for Record. Assets under management reached a new all-time high of $102 billion, as at March 31, revenue grew by 2%, assisted by another strong year of performance fees. And there was performance fees in both enhanced passive hedging as well as across our FX Alpha products. In assets under management, we launched 2 new funds under our Custom Solutions product category, which are Protected Equities and GP Stakes, and by the end of the year, they'd already reached an aggregate NAV of $320 million assets under management, which brings our total AUM on the asset management side to $4.7 billion. We also continue to make progress towards the launch of our infrastructure equity fund, which is expected to take place this year and which we're very excited about. Following my initial assessment of the business, since taking over as CEO, we've also taken a number of important steps to focus our product portfolio and to align in particular our IT strategy to our priority projects. As we've explained in our pre-close trading updates following a detailed review of IT investments, we recognized a GBP 1.9 million write-off on technology costs, and we've also discontinued our digital asset efforts. We'll cover that in more detail shortly. Our underlying profit margin was maintained at a very healthy 32% and the board has proposed an ordinary dividend of 4.6p in line with our dividend policy, which aims to pay a progressive ordinary dividend in the range of 70% to 90% of EPS and a special dividend of 0.6p, bringing our total dividend to 5.2p, a small increase on the dividend paid last year. Again, Steve will provide more detail on the financial results shortly. So here I'd like to start with some context, particularly for anyone who's new to Record. So Record has a track record built over 40 years of supplying high-quality, bespoke solutions to large institutional investors. Our clients are public and corporate pension funds as well as foundations, trusts and other funds and all of them have both complex currency needs as well as alternative investment needs. Since 2020, we've grown our assets under management by over 70%, and the majority of that growth has come from clients in Europe. But we've also built now a significant presence in the U.S. Clients value about Record the combination of our ability to handle large, complex mandates while also being small and flexible enough to address their unique needs. We do that through relentless focus on client service backed up by sound processes and a deep expertise, which creates a proposition that works and that shows, particularly here, if we look at client longevity, our bespoke approach and focus on client delivery is what builds enduring client relationships. So more than half our clients have been with us for over 6 years, and just under half of our assets under management are from clients who've been with us for over 10 years. These enduring client relationships are testament to our dedication to client service, which is a key strength of record and which we're proud of. So that's where the business is today. But the question is, what changes are we planning to make? So if you look at these slides, one of the first things I've done as CEO is to take a look at our strategy in terms of our product range. We have narrowed our focus to 6 distinct product categories encompassing both the currency and the asset management products. And it's all categories where we can offer a unique value proposition and where we can be best-in-class. One of the first things also you'll notice here is that digital is not on this chart. As I alluded to earlier, following the review of our product range, we have taken the decision to discontinue our digital asset investments. And that's -- as we no longer believe this offers a commercially viable proposition with a significant upside to Record. But we did not incur any material costs in pursuing or exiting these businesses. The products we see here cover spectrum of needs from risk management to return seeking. First, on the very left hand side, there's passive hedging, which aims to reduce portfolio volatility by removing currency risk, where we use derivatives to create symmetrically -- symmetric position to the currency risk in client portfolios and thereby remove currency risk from client portfolios in its entirety. Enhanced passive hedging is an evolution where we add value by exploiting market inefficiencies in addition, but we do that without affecting the consistent protection that clients get in the passive hedging range of products. Hedging for asset managers, shown here as number 2, was developed as an extension of our passive hedging expertise, which has now become a standalone product where we have a dedicated team that focuses on the needs of alternative asset managers, where we offer bespoke passive hedging solution and there we have a particular focus on liquidity management which is of particular importance to these types of clients. Active FX hedging, which we sometimes refer to as dynamic hedging, has been at the core of records products for over 4 decades. Dynamic hedging aims to do 3 things: firstly, reduce currency risk embedded in a portfolio through active management of the hedge ratios; secondly, minimize cash flows; and thirdly, add value against benchmark and that's one of the big differentiators here compared to the passive range of products. And then finally there's Record's FX Alpha range of products where in particular in our multi-strategy product we have all of the FX for return drivers combined in a single balanced portfolio, which targets consistent returns in all market conditions. On the asset management side, our flagship product is the EM Sustainable Finance Fund with over [ 1 billion ] in assets and this fund is a trailblazing FX centric, sustainability led approach to EM local debt investing. In addition, we have a number of custom solutions which includes our GP Stakes Fund and our Protected Equities Fund. But as mentioned before, we're also working towards a large launch in infrastructure, equity and private credit, and we'll communicate these when they're ready to launch. When looking at this product range, it's also interesting to look at the trends in addressable markets which we observe, which supports our efforts in these products. And then firstly, on the left hand side here, we do observe a continued growth in pension fund assets under management, which is a result of aging populations, longer life expectancies and also consolidation across the pension fund industry. But it means that large pension funds with international assets will continue to need what we do and they'll continue to need protection against valuation fluctuations to meet their pension requirements. And then secondly, on the right hand side, we see that over the past decade, there's been a significant growth in asset allocations into private markets and again, that trend is expected to continue. Our hedging for asset managers product addresses the specialist needs of these private asset managers and they're often more complex currency hedging needs. And then also again as described on the previous slide, our asset management product range [ our positions ] products where we benefit from this trend, not only as a service provider to the needs of alternative asset managers, but also where we become a product provider of our own. And that includes the Emerging Markets Sustainable Finance Fund, which supports private investment into EM and frontier countries through de-risking specific investments on the currency side. But it also includes the earlier mentioned anticipated launches in infrastructure, equity and private credit that against it on this spectrum. If we now look forward, then our next step will focus on delivering on 3 critical strategic objectives. First, we aim to deliver organic growth and the steps we've taken. For example, this year we've expanded the U.S. team and Europe, Andreas Koester has joined as CEO of EM & Frontier Investments, which is a role that also includes leading the Emerging Markets Sustainable Finance Fund, which by the way also now reaches its third year anniversary. And again, that means that it now becomes eligible as an investment to a lot of people and becomes accessible through databases and searches where previously the track record wasn't yet long enough. And Andreas was also instrumental in developing the funded partnership with us originally. And so in that sense, he's exactly the right person for this job and we're delighted to have him on the team. Secondly, we're focused on improving our quality of earnings. As I've mentioned, we've reorganized our business around 3 -- around 6 product categories and we've seen some alternatives altogether. And I'm confident that with this clearly defined responsibilities and accountability backed by targeted investments in people, systems and brand, we will see an improved quality of earnings from this portfolio of products. And we also expect to see improved operational efficiency and client retention as a result of that. And I also want us to see -- I want us to attract new clients in these product categories. Lastly, there's operational excellence. So Record has a proven proprietary operational framework. However, we do need to take steps to optimize that platform for our core products and in particular also to align our IT investments with our strategic objectives. And then, yes, following the review of IT, we've appointed new IT leadership and expanded our in-house development capability. This will help us build an even more stable and scalable platform to support our core products. So, as you see, we focused on 6 distinct product categories supported by 2 market trends and we've set ourselves 3 strategic objectives. It is early days in my time as CEO and my review of our product range and operational platform is ongoing. It will take a little time to finish this work, but I anticipate giving a more detailed update later this year and our progress and our future outlook on the business will be covered again then. So before I hand over to Steve to take you through the financial results, let me first hand over to Richard to give a few words of introduction.

Thanks, Jan, and good morning, everyone. Delighted to be here. I've been here for just under a month, so I've had a few weeks to get to know the company, meet a lot of the people there. I think as I've been meeting people here, the 1 thing that absolutely stands out is this level of focus on client delivery. Everyone here is all about high-quality solutions for clients. So once you spend a bit of time there, it's no wonder that Record has the reputation that it has on these long-standing, valuable client relationships. It's also a really exciting time to be joining, as Jan has just been outlining, as we're building a plan to build on those core strengths to compete and win both in our existing and new product lines. There's a lot of, I think, exciting things to come. So really, really pleased to be here. A couple of words. Thank you to Steve for helping me get up to speed. The other thing that becomes clear as you speak to people here is the contribution that Steve's made to the company over 20 years. I guess, I think it's around about that. And so very best wishes for your retirement. I think I've spoken to a few of you on the call. Those of you I haven't, I look forward to speaking to you in the future. Jan and I also have a good lineup of investor meetings next week, which I'm also really looking forward to hearing from them. But with that, I'll hand over to Steve to take you through the results.

Thanks, Richard, and good morning, everyone. I think we'll run through some financial headlines. But first, I think I'll repeat, I think in order to better represent the underlying performance of the business this year, we're presenting the results on an underlying basis. This excludes the impact of the GBP 1.9 million impairment on the intangible assets, following the review of our IT development portfolio, which Jan mentioned earlier, which is obviously a one-off item, non-cash item. So on this basis, we feel it's more sensible to look at the underlying mechanics of the business, or financials of the business. And on that basis, the operating margin was maintained a very healthy 32%. Turning to assets under management, I think you can see on the left hand chart that we've seen a good growth in AUM for the year, they grew 17%, driven primarily by a combination of net inflows and positive asset value increases, and we'll take a look a little bit further at those in a second. Revenue growth was more muted at 2% year-on-year, linked in part to 1 large client shifting their portfolio from a multi-product strategy to a lower margin passive strategy. The revenue impact of that for the year was approximately [ GBP 0.8 million ]. On an annualized basis, that's an impact of about [ GBP 3 million ] per annum. So that's a little bit of a bump in the road for us this year, but slightly hides the growth that stands behind that for the year. As already stated, underlying operating margin was unchanged from last year at 32%. Costs have been managed in line with revenue growth despite continued inflationary pressures, particularly on salaries. Underlying profit before tax increased by 1% to GBP 14.8 million, which on a statutory basis was down by 12% to GBP 12.9 million, obviously as a result of the previously mentioned impairment. Just drilling down a little bit more into the movement in assets under management. The chart shows the split of the $14.5 billion, again around 17% increase in assets under management from $87.7 billion at the start to the record high of $102.2 billion at the end of the year. Net inflows of $6.8 billion were predominantly still in the hedging business, although as Jan has already mentioned, we've started to see well contraction with initial flows into 2 new funds of approximately $320 million as at the end of the year. And again, positive equity market valuations also drove an additional $6.9 billion increase for the year. What does that mean in terms of sort of the income statement? There's obviously a lag on some of the AUM movements versus the revenue, but if we look at management fees, they grew by 1% again notwithstanding the reduction of approximately GBP 0.8 million as already mentioned for that 1 particular client that changed strategy during the year. Performance fees once again very strong flat year-on-year, albeit now shared between our enhanced Passive Hedging product and our FX Alpha product, both contributing GBP 2.9 million in performance fees, which is an excellent, excellent performance result for us. In terms of overheads, increased marginally by 2%, again reflecting continued inflationary increases, albeit now reduced since the prior year. As we all know, the inflationary environment is starting to settle down a little bit, so we're hoping not to have huge impacts of inflation going forward. In terms of operating profit margin. Again, on an underlying basis, the business has performed well in delivering a healthy operating margin of 32%, which is in line with last year. Just a word on the impairment. It was a write-off of GBP 1.9 million and we previously announced this prior to the year end and is linked to the decision to change the IT strategy and hence consequently impair previously capitalized IT development costs, which resulted in the non-cash cost to the income statement of GBP 1.9 million. I think it's briefly worth mentioning tax, we've obviously been hit with a slight tax increase this year. Corporation tax rate went from 19% to 25%. It's probably worth noting that on an underlying basis, without any change to the tax rate, our earnings would have shown an estimated 6% increase year-on-year. In terms of cash, cash generation, once again incredibly strong. We started the year with cash of GBP 14.5 million. We added 15.3 million pre-tax cash profits, which after tax and dividend payments, the closing cash balance was up 21% to GBP 17.5 million. Looking at the balance sheet and capital, as a reminder, our first priority when looking at the balance sheet is to ensure adequate regulatory capital and liquidity needed for the day-to-day operations. A regulatory capital requirement has increased in the last 3 years, which reflects the growth in the business, but we've continued to maintain a healthy surplus. The next priority is allocating the right level of investment to maintain our market leading technology and operational infrastructure in order to grow the business, on top of the strong foundations that we've already highlighted. This might include investment in new teams for products where there's a lag between recruitment and fund flow, but we balanced this against continuing to deliver an attractive operating margin, which again this year on an underlying basis was a healthy 32%. Lastly, we intend to pay a dividend consistent with our current dividend policy, which aims to pay an ordinary dividend in the range of 70% to 90% of EPS. Consequently, we've increased the ordinary dividend to 4.6p from 4.5p and have also announced a special dividend of 0.6p, meaning on a total dividend basis, we've increased the payment marginally from 5.18p last year to 5.2p this year. And finally on the financial outlook. In terms of outlook, our strong cash generation and consistent robust capital position provide a solid platform for the next stage of strategic development and growth. We expect management fees to be broadly flat this year, reflecting the full year impact of the change in strategy. Again from the client mentioned earlier on from one of the large clients that changed strategy, which will offset expected new business growth in the current year. We don't provide guidance on performance, especially at such an early stage in the current year, but feel that the current range of expectations seems sensible at around GBP 2 million. As we progress through the year, we'll be better placed to offer further guidance. On costs, again, this is something of a transitional year as Jan finalizes his strategic priorities. However, although we make an additional investment in internal IT development capabilities, costs will be carefully managed in line with management fees and are expected to be broadly flat year-on-year. We believe the actions that we are taking this year to enable us to accelerate growth beyond FY '25 and we'll provide an update on strategy and medium-term growth plans later in the year. I'll now hand back to Jan for his closing remarks, but just before I do that, this is my final earnings presentation after almost 21 years. So I'd just like to say, I thoroughly enjoyed my 21 years at Record. I offer my very best wishes to Richard as my successor as CFO. And also to Jan and the rest of the senior management team. I know they will do an excellent job in taking the business forward into the next phase. Thank you.

Yes. So to summarize, we start FY '25 in good shape. We are now more focused on a well-defined and complementary set of products where we have a competitive advantage and where we're confident that we can win. And we're building a specialist asset management firm with significant value add for our shareholders over the medium term. We have a balance sheet strength and core cash generation ability that can support our plans, and our assets under management are at an all-time high that comes also with a strong pipeline of opportunities. I'm delighted to be leading Record. I'm excited by the opportunities we see and I look forward to updating you on our progress later in the year. We'll open up for questions.

Rae, I see your hand is up.

Just a quick one to start with. Can you tell us a little bit more about that pipeline where you started the year? And I wonder whether Jan, you can also give us a bit more of an update on where we are with the infrastructure fund now?

Sure. Yes. I mean, as I described earlier, the way we've defined our product range now is very much focused on products that are strongly aligned with our competitive advantages, which are large customized solutions for large clients. And really, that's also the reason why there was, in my opinion, a bit of a need to be realistic with some maybe exciting but small opportunities. Not because they're not exciting, but simply because they cannot quite compete with the large transactions that we can do in what is our core range of products. And therefore, there's a relatively high hurdle for us to add new products to this range because what we do well, we do so well that when we do it, we do it in relatively large sizes. And so in that sense, all of the products that I described earlier are selected to be part of this pipeline because they have been very successful for us or because we believe they can be very successful for us. And the majority of the pipeline is described -- a lot of the pipeline, the products as described earlier, are established products. So our expectation of what they can do for us is very much based on experience. And then there's the new launches, again, as I alluded to earlier, which we're now working towards. And as I said, in terms of the infrastructure equity fund, we're expecting to launch that this year. But then again, conscious of very much the characteristics that we are exposed to in doing things at scale, based complexities involved in these things. So giving specific detail on timing is typically difficult.

Rob, please go ahead.

Just quickly, on the core products, is there nothing in the sort of the hedging suite that you're going to drop? So it's just, it's pretty much as we had before. There's no impact from in there?

There's nothing we dropped in that sense, but we do have crystallized very much what we focus on in terms of how we deliver to clients. So the products as presented are products that we would have had before. But we're very conscious that now being a bigger business, we have more specialized teams internally, we have more specialized -- more specific objectives for these teams in their focus on these products. And that means we've removed a number of things that previously wouldn't have been visible or much noticeable, but that would have set between these products very much where we would have said, well, they would have posed the risk of distractions there. So in that sense, to answer the question, yes, there's nothing really that we've dropped other than the digital efforts that we referred to earlier. But we are much more focused now on our structure and outlook in whom we present these products to and which teams with which targets pursue those revenue.

Okay. And just as a follow-up, when you talked about quality of earnings, I was just sort of curious as to exactly what you meant there? Because in some ways, some of the higher-margin products, they might have more of a performance element. So we might see more volatility depending on in any 1 particular year. I mean, we've had 2 great years, obviously, [ the ] performance fees the last couple of years. So yes, just like to know what you're thinking there.

Yes. So it's the quality of earnings, we would want, again across the product range, which we are working towards. We do want a good mix. And there's a lot of things that are very positive about the mix that we have. And again, that shows in the client longevity slide that we showed earlier. And again, I mean, Steve sort of described the one instance where an active product line has now switched to a passive product. But again, it's important to be positive about this. These are, in this specific case, this was a multidecade client of ours, and we continue to have an excellent relationship and -- so based on changes and very much idealistic changes on their side and decision towards passive and nonactive, that has nothing to do with our product. We're able to continue to serve that client, but that sits, of course, side-by-side with a lot of other clients where over the course of working with us, they started to do more. And so -- and also, I mean that, I think is really the foundation for us to be able to expand the product lines and deliver it. But large steps this is, because we do have longstanding clients that over time and over-working with us, do expand what they do with us. But just to answer the question in terms of quality of earnings, I mean, there is great longevity in our relationships. And of course, a lot of the products that we offer today are very much service-oriented. So again, that protects us to some extent from market movements. And some of them [ are active ] products, as you say, they come with maybe more volatility or in terms of, for example, performance fees. But as we move into, say, the alternative range of assets, both as a service provider and also as a product provider, you get a different structure of fees and that predominantly also locked in allocations over multiyear periods, which is something that we're not familiar with, which we're familiar with, but which we don't have currently in our core offerings. And I think, it's just being more diversified in that mix and somewhat reducing further our reliance on a couple of key clients in the existing product is what we mean.

Rob's, it's probably worth going back to your first question in terms of what's been dropped. Alternatively, what's been added, I think, is much more focused on hedging for asset managers, which is where we see a particular growth opportunity going back to the addressable market slide that we looked at earlier. I mean we've been doing hedging for asset managers in the passive hedging sort of box, if you like, for a long time. But we've now carved that out. We've got dedicated resources and team looking at that, and we see that as an area of potential growth for us. So that's a change effectively in terms of where the focus has pivoted slightly under Jan's leadership.

I just wanted to follow-up on your slide, talking about expanding the team in America, sort of dovetailing into what Steve was saying about having dedicated teams. What are you missing in America? What resources are you looking at there? And just lastly, you were talking about early on in the pipeline to raise questioners about how high are the hurdles. I mean, you're talking about you're not starting a fund unless it's $250 million, that sort of stuff? Or usually if you're developing a fund, [ you're an incubated fund ] and you follow it a little bit and you market it and all the rest. So I'm interested as to how this news. You just come into the market with a bang, or the big one. Is that because you've got another UBs who wants your skills?

Yes, in terms of the -- in terms of the U.S., we've hired a dedicated salesperson to cover the U.S. for us. And we've got another full-time investment person in the U.S. And then, again, internally supporting that from the U.K., we have a team that is specific to -- if we can go back to a product like active hedging. So if you look at the U.S. market for us, that's predominantly a market where it's strategies that are slightly more active in the nature than what we see in Europe, so we tend to see a lot more demand for active hedging solutions and also for FX Alpha solutions. And so those 2 groups of people, both with the team on the ground in the U.S. and the support from the U.K. are now sort of clearly defined and looking to push our U.S. assets. Where again, there's a nice cultural fit also from the point of view of an English company in expanding now in the U.S. that we have large AUM there, also good reference clients. And then in -- with regards to your second question on what should those hurdles be? I mean, these hurdles sort of should be such that any new product, I think, has -- can be seen to realistically over not so long time horizon compete with what our existing products can do for us, because internally, that has to be the trade-off and how we spend our time and how we cast our attention, yes. There is a bit of a complexity premium to these things. So again, I mean, like unless there's a good reason to expand our product range, we should focus on pushing the products we have, which have been successful as the AUM growth shows and as also then the numbers. So we just want to be conscious in when we take these steps. And then to answer your question, those launches should then be in what we consider the large launches and the burn should be relatively large, yes. And this should not be small funds where we then have to raise them up later.

Jan, a couple from me. It's Andrew Watson of Singers. Just on your comments around the pipeline, you talked about larger mandates. I appreciate the scalability in the business. But can you just talk a little bit around fee margin pressure and how you look to defend that? On the one hand, larger mandates often mean pressure, but I appreciate the customization, you look to defend fee margins around the value add there? And then my second question, we know there hasn't been very much volatility in the FX space over the last 12 months. And then looking at the transition of dynamic mandates into that passive category. Is that transient? Could we see that reverse as volatility picks up as we see policy divergence between different economies? Or is that a more permanent policy decision by the institutions that you're working with?

Yes. So -- let me take the first question first. In terms of, I think the fee pressure, again, as I mentioned earlier, I think it's important to -- across the product range, not only look at the level of fees, but also the type of fees. And then so again, we have different levels of fees and different margins across products, but for different reasons. Also, we are very appreciative of a lot of the lower fee products because they have other benefits for us as a business. We do continue across the products to expand what we do. As for example, as Steve said, where we now offer services to other asset managers, their needs are much more complex than what we're known from the pension fund community, for example. So [ it's going to be -- ] classical institutional investor has not quite the same complex needs as, for example, a real estate fund. And again, as I mentioned earlier, those needs are typically around different liquidity requirements. But the alternative asset space, due to its illiquidity, has very little liquidity. And that means that running derivatives portfolios comes with much more specific needs for optimization to ensure that derivative contract can be settled when liquidity is available, or to ensure that there's alternative solutions in place should liquidity not be available. And again, that's something where we now develop the service and the teams deliberately to offer a greater service there. And also to some extent then to resist any potential pressure on fees that we might see in the industry. And then, I mean, on the right hand side then of the list of products, again, the fees are higher there, but of course mandates are smaller. I mean, so -- as I said in response to that earlier question, even if we approach this with very much the ambition of launching it at relatively large sizes, if we look at our EM Sustainable Finance fund, that's a large fund, we hope to see that grow now. But of course it's still smaller than what we're used to on the servicing side when we look at large derivatives mandates that we run with the objective of risk management. So again, there is a trade off in fees and mandate sizes, even at the large sizes that we deal with, yes. In response to the second question, there's not been a huge amount of currency volatility, but there is much more geopolitical concerns now that we see. And there's also a much more political uncertainty with elections coming up in both the U.K. and the U.S. And also China has a big effect on the perceived deglobalization. So that if anything, we perceive as a shift towards more active or somewhat more customized solutions, slightly away from the pure passive positioning. So that switch that we've seen, as I said earlier, that there was ideology-driven, but if anything, we would see demand going the other way due to the way the investment landscape is changing and the need of investors to take investments or strategies that address their particular views of what these changes in the world mean for them.

Andrew, I'd probably just add to that, I think specifically with regard to that 1 client we've talked about, just to highlight that it is a 2-way street and we do -- as a business, that risk is always there, that clients change their strategic plan. But we have seen it going both ways. So we have seen clients go from passive to more actively managed mandates as well. But again, this comes back to the quality of earnings point. I think as we grow and we sort of expand across that product range, we are more able to take the hit on these sort of changes of strategy. So I think that sort of underlines what Jan's trying to say on the quality of earnings, that we won't be as impacted in future with these sort of changes in client strategy. But it's something that we see every now and again. But it is, as I said, a 2-way street. I think that's an important point.

Rob [indiscernible]

Yes. Yes, if I may just obviously you talked in the release about the next 6 months sort of working on the strategic elements. I mean, do we expect any more impairment charges as a result of that, or is that now behind us?

I would happily say, I think certainly from my point of view, I think that's behind us. I think that was probably one particular outlier where we needed to change things. That's not saying that things aren't going to change, but I don't foresee any material impacts going forward on that side.

Brilliant. I just wanted to say, Steve, it's been a pleasure, by the way, the last few years.

Yes. It has. It [ has been. ]

Wishing you all the best.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that.

That appears to be all of our questions. So unless there are any further, I think, we can perhaps pass back for just some closing remarks and then conclude the presentation.

Again, I would reiterate, I think Jan's closing remarks, I think the business is in a very good position, both in terms of new senior leadership team and from a financial perspective. So I think slightly a transitional year for us this year, but I think over the sort of medium term, I think the opportunities, pipelines look very strong, and we will have a stronger and more robust business going forward, I think, over the medium term.

And also now concluding what has been a series of changes, largely than triggered by the well-earned retirement of both Leslie and Steve. We are now a business again. We're across the full range of products and senior management. Every single person involved really has at least another 15 years ahead of them in their career. And then as we expand as a Group with more assets under management and more products that we offer, it's important to recognize that we now have a team that we believe will continue to do this as a very, very closely knit group over the next 2 decades. And that's a big change or how the business is perceived by clients. Again, with an eye on client longevity. It's important that clients know that this is a team they appoint today and that will continue to serve in this way for a long period in the future, but also changes the perception of the business internally in terms of long term planning and excitement about long term growth, given the opportunities that we see. So we're very excited.

Thank you. That now concludes today's presentation.

Thank you very much, Steve.

Thank you.

Thanks all.

Thanks very much.