RF Capital Group Inc. (RCG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Into order as it is now 11:00. So good morning, fellow shareholders and guests. I'd like to welcome you all to this Annual Meeting of Common Shareholders of RF Capital Group, Inc., and welcome also to those of you who join me as via audio webcast. My name is Don Wright, and I'm the Chair of the Board of Directors of RF Capital and in accordance with RF Capital's bylaws, I will be chairing today's meeting. I'll begin by introducing the people joining me at the head table. Dave Kelly, a Director and the President and Chief Executive Officer of RF Capital; and Francis Baillargeon, the Chief Financial Officer of RF Capital. We are also pleased to have members of our Board in attendance today, and I'd ask them to stand as I introduce them: Nathalie Bernier, David Ferguson, Dave Kelly which we've already introduced, David Leith, Jane Mowat, David Porter. Thank you. I'll begin with a few brief comments about last year. 2024 was a year of significant change at the leadership table at this firm. As we know, Dave Kelly, previously the Chief Operating Officer, was appointed President and CEO. Our vacant Chief Financial Officer role was filled with Francis Baillargeon's appointment in November. And in December 2024, we lost Scott Stennett, one of Richardson Wealth's longest-standing employees after a very long and courageous battle with cancer. He will be very missed. The company has navigated these transitions exceptionally well, demonstrating its resilience and adaptability. 2024 was also a year of execution with a well-articulated growth plan, the company has remained focused on the strategic pillars designed to create growth for the advisory teams and the business. Through a diligent effort to strengthen support for advisers and a refinement of the recruiting success, the company has been making good strides to ensure Richardson Wealth is the best choice for advisers to build strong practices and provide exceptional client service. I'd like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to each advisory team at Richardson Wealth, their dedication to their practices, to their clients is second to no one. Throughout a challenging year of internal change, coupled with the persistence of market volatility, I acknowledge their grip and perseverance and we'd like to recognize them for this excellence. I also wish to thank all of you who are joining us today and those who have submitted their proxies in advance. After we address the formal matters on today's agenda, there will be a presentation by management, providing further details on the company's 2024 financial and strategic results, an update on the company's first quarter of 2025 and an update on the company's initiatives to further strengthen support for our advisory teams to help them build and grow their practices and to recruit advisers to ultimately generate value for our shareholders. After their remarks, we will be pleased to answer and respond to any questions you may have. With respect to the proxies received before the meeting, more than 95% of shares voted by proxy will be voted in favor of each of the matters, sufficient to ensure that all motions before the meeting will pass. Accordingly, vote will be conducted by a show of hands. I will now proceed with the formal portion of today's meeting and call this meeting to order. With the consent of the meeting, I will ask Krista Coburn, our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, to act as Secretary of the meeting. With the consent of the meeting, I would also ask that Amanda Dellio, [ Matthew Bert ], Kareeshma Aliar of TSX Trust Company, our transfer agent, act as scrutineers of this meeting, to report on the number of common shareholders present in person and the number of common shareholders present by proxy, to tabulate the votes on any poll taken and to report to me as Chair of the meeting. We have received confirmation from our transfer agent indicating that the notice of availability of our proxy materials for this meeting, which included the notice of the meeting, former proxy and Management Information Circular was properly made available to common shareholders of RF Capital. The scrutineers also provided me with the report on attendance, confirming that the requisite quorum is present at today's meeting. Unless there is an objection, I will dispense with the reading of the notice of the meeting. I will also direct that a copy of the notice of the meeting, form of proxy and circular and proof of the delivery of the notice of availability together with a copy of the scrutineers' report on attendance at the meeting be annexed by the Secretary to the minutes of this meeting. Notice of the meeting having been given in accordance with RF Capital's bylaws and a quorum being present, I now declare that this meeting has been duly convened and constituted for the transaction of business for which it has been called. With respect to matters of business, to make the best use of our time today, certain shareholders in attendance today have confirmed that they are prepared to move and second each of the motions. For the purposes of voting on the matters of business, only holders of common shares as of the close of business on March 21, 2025, or their proxies are entitled to vote today. The first item of business today is the presentation of RF Capital's audited consolidated financial statements, the auditor's report thereon and the related management discussion and analysis. These documents were made available to registered common shareholders of RF Capital. We'll now proceed with the matters requiring shareholder action today, the first of which is the election of directors. The term of office of the directors will be from today until the next Annual Meeting of Common Shareholders or until such time as their successors have been duly elected or appointed. As set out in our management information circular, 11 directors are to be elected today. The following individuals have been nominated: Nathalie Bernier, Dave Brown, Vincent Duhamel, David Ferguson, Kish Kapoor, Dave Kelly, David Leith, Jane Mowat, David Porter, Sandy Riley and myself, Don Wright. Information regarding each of the nominee directors is set out in the circular. May I have a motion for the election of each of these 11 persons nominated as directors of RF Capital.

I move that each of the 11 persons nominated to be elected as directors of RF Capital to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Common Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed.

Thank you, Michael. Can I have a seconder.

I second the motion. Thank you, Lynne. Are there any further nominations? Okay. If there are no further nominations, I declare the nominations now closed. If any shareholder or proxy holder has questions relating to the election of directors, I request that they be asked at this time. Okay. It is now in order to vote on the motion. The vote for this resolution will take place by a show of hands. All in favor, please raise your hand. [Voting]

Contrary, if any? [Voting]

Noted. I declare the motion carried in each of Nathalie Bernier, David Brown, Vincent Duhamel, David Ferguson, Kish Kapoor, Dave Kelly, David Leith, Jane Mowat, David Porter, Sandy Riley and myself, Don Wright, are duly elected as Directors of RF Capital until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until his or her successor is elected or appointed. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors and the authorization of the Board of Directors to fix their remuneration. As set out in our management information circular, the resolution for approval is the appointment of KPMG LLP as auditors of RF Capital to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Common Shareholders and that the Board of Directors on the recommendation of the Audit Committee be authorized to fix their remuneration. May I have a motion on this matter, please?

I move that KPMG LLP be appointed auditors of RF Capital to hold office until the next Annual Meeting of Common Shareholders and that the Board of Directors on the recommendation of the Audit Committee be authorized to fix their remuneration.

Thank you, Lynne. Can I have a seconder?

I second the motion.

Thank you, Michael. If any shareholder or proxy holder has questions relating to the appointment of auditors, I request that they be asked at this time. The vote for this resolution will take place by a show of hands. All in favor, please raise your hand. [Voting]

Okay. Contrary, if any. [Voting]

I declare the motion carried. With voting on all business matters now complete, I would ask that the scrutineer compile the report regarding the final results, which will be published on SEDAR and by press release. Is there any other formal business that may properly be brought before this meeting? Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the formal portion of this meeting. May I please have a motion that the meeting be concluded.

I so move.

Would anyone like to second the motion?

I second the motion.

Thank you. All those in favor, please raise your hand. [Voting]

Any contrary, if any? [Voting]

I declare the motion carried and the Annual Meeting of Common Shareholders of RF Capital is now concluded. I want to thank you all for attending today. But before we hear from management, I'll ask you to please review the disclaimer on the screen about forward-looking statements. Following the management's presentations, we'd be pleased to answer any questions you may have about the company. Over to you, Dave.

Thank you. Thank you, Don, for your introduction. Welcome to the 25th floor Boardroom and to our webcast participants. [Foreign Language] I'm pleased to host you at our flagship offices in Toronto's Waterfront District. This is my first Annual General Meeting as President and CEO of RF Capital. You may remember, I was appointed COO in January of 2024 and, subsequently, named President and CEO in October of '24. In choosing to come to Richardson Wealth, I was convinced the strategy was a well-designed journey to become the brand of choice for Canada's top advisers and their clients. I was inspired by a clear and achievable plan that laid out the framework for the momentum that we needed. And 16 months in, I'm even more convinced that we're on the right path. After decades of experience in this industry, I'm firmly of the belief that independents are an increasingly attractive alternative for Canadian investors who are looking for truly independent wealth management advice. Based on our conversations with advisers and our strong recruiting pipeline, I'm also convinced that advisory teams at large investment dealers are seeing the opportunity to grow and thrive in places like Richardson Wealth, now more than ever. And these shifts are contributing to significant growth opportunities for our business. I was honored to be appointed as President and CEO, and I'm truly excited about the journey ahead. The 3-pillar growth strategy is aligned with what I fundamentally believe is needed to grow a great business in this industry, and that has not changed. I'm going to share a quick overview of what Francis, our new CFO, and I will present today. We'll start with a review of 2024, including an update on our 3 pillars, some important leadership changes and our financial results, which Francis will provide. Francis will cover the 2025 Q1 financial results as well and financial outlook, and then I'll provide 2025 business highlights. Then we'll open it up for your questions. But first, I want to acknowledge a major milestone in our company's journey. On November 25, we hit $40 billion in assets for the first time in our history. Our advisory teams are the engines of this success, and I'm grateful for their dedication to their clients. It's their perseverance and commitment during challenging times that led us to this moment. We're still focused on our long-term goal of $100 billion in assets, but also reaching an interim goal of $50 billion. We feel this will give us opportunities to celebrate more milestones and create a little bit more urgency and pace to get there. This requires a concentrated effort on operational excellence and execution, which brings me to Pillar 1 of our strategy. The focus of my attention in 2024 was on execution. Last year was about leading the work needed to strengthen the support for our advisory teams, doubling down on support, which is Pillar 1 of our strategy. And our goal here really was twofold. First, we want to make it easier for our teams to work here, enable them to free up their time to provide superior client advice and service. And secondly, we wanted to help our teams grow more valuable practices over time. To make it easier to work here, we were and continue to be dedicated to creating middle office excellence, which is delivered through our own adviser service center and also Fidelity Clearing Canada. And in support of our middle office excellence journey, we launched a pilot with select advisory teams and branches across Canada, really focused on freeing up unproductive time for our advisers and their teams to allow them to focus on their clients. I'm pleased to share that the pilot model achieved a number of things. It removed friction points, it reduced turnaround times, it provided our advisory teams with the feeling of trusted resources and partners supporting them for all their operational items. We're on track for a phased rollout of the national model, which has already begun, and we expect to have all our teams on board by June. I'm confident this will significantly improve the experience for our clients and teams. I'm encouraged by the progress that's being made by Fidelity Clearing. We've been very direct in communicating with them our key priorities and they're listening as partners. To grow more valuable practices, we enhanced existing platforms. We brought in a suite of business intelligence tools, giving our advisers critical data and insights with the intention of setting both practices and firm growth objectives in the same strategic direction. Here, we're also making steady progress. Recruitment is the key driver of our growth strategy. We welcome teams here in 2024, managing $1.8 billion in assets, which was a record year for us. We continue to grow our pipeline to over $31 billion, with a focus on ensuring we bring in teams who are aligned with our strategy, our culture and our values and with some refinement to our discovery and onboarding processes, we are confident in our ability to execute on this pillar in 2025. I'd like to add that the caliber of the advisers that we're meeting with are the highest that I've seen in my career. Recruiting success is often more about the who than the how many, and the advisers that we are meeting to profile Richardson Wealth are some of the very best professionals and people in the industry. To execute on our third pillar, acquiring or partnering with like-minded firms, there are many dependencies, including the availability of targets, the targets price expectations, our share price, economic stability and our access to other forms of capital. That said, we have and will continue to seek opportunities to work with parties that align with our strategy and in ways that will generate value for our advisers, our clients and our shareholders. As Don mentioned, 2024 was a year of significant change at the leadership team. Executive changes can be disruptive, but our corporate and advisory teams have adapted really well. It's my intention to ensure we have the leadership skills and experiences that we need to achieve our goals today and also moving forward. And the great news is, we have lots of talented people and leaders interested in joining Richardson Wealth. But as Don Wright noted in his opening remarks, sad news was felt deeply throughout the organization last year with the passing of Scott Stennett, Vice Chair of Richardson Wealth, who succumbed to cancer after a courageous battle. Scott's loyalty to this company was absolutely unwavering. His dedication to his team, to his peers on the executive committee was unmatched and the strength of his will to see the transformational projects that he led to the end was remarkable. What we'll remember most is that he was absolutely determined that his illness would not define him, and it didn't. Scott's legacy lives on in the DNA of this company. In terms of leadership changes to our Executive Committee, in November, we filled our CFO position. Francis Baillargeon, who you'll hear from shortly, brings experience with investment banks focused on both the investment and wealth management industries. I met him when he worked at TD Bank in corporate development and quickly developed a deep respect for his expertise and perspectives. Most recently, he spent 4 years as CFO for one of Canada's leading clean technology companies. I'm delighted to have him here as part of the Executive Committee. And in 2024, we conducted a very extensive search for a national sales leader. And we were very pleased with how many talented professionals across the industry were interested in joining our company in this capacity. In the end, it was clear that Kevin Shubley was the best person to lead the work to help our teams grow, make their practices more valuable and to ensure a relentless focus on creating operational excellence. In March of this year, Kevin was appointed SVP, Head of Advisory Experience and Growth. He's an accomplished leader with more than 2 decades of experience. And prior to joining Richardson Wealth, he held progressively senior leadership roles at TD, including leading their private investment counsel business. Last summer, we also welcome Marcus Chun, Head of Digital Strategies and Advisory Services. And Marcus has been leading the digital journey and just making sure our technology is aligned to the overall business vision. His mandate is to deliver significant value by optimizing operational processes, technology platforms to really help us deliver a state-of-the-art desktop program for our advisory teams. A transformational leader, Marcus joined us from BMO Private Wealth, where he was VP and Managing Director, Strategic Management and Initiatives, and he's also held leadership roles at RBC Wealth Management, including Senior Director of Strategic Execution, Canadian Operations. I'm equally delighted to have Marcus on the Executive Committee. Lastly, I would take this moment to acknowledge the upcoming retirement of our Chief People Officer, Lynne Brejak, who will be leaving upon the confirmation of her successor. After more than 10 years of dedicated service to Richardson Wealth, and his predecessor firm, Lynne is planning to shift gears and enjoy a new chapter in her life. Lynne has been a tremendous help integrating me into my role and a significant driver of culture, and she will be deeply missed. I invite you to thank Lynne directly for her many years of service with the company. Now I'd like to turn it over to Francis to provide our 2024 financial results, our 2025 Q1 financial highlights and 2025 financial outlook. Over to Francis.

Good morning. Thank you, Don and Dave. [Foreign Language] I appreciate the warm welcome from you and the team since joining a few months ago, and I continue to be incredibly energized by the quality and potential of this franchise. Today, I will first do a quick recap of our previously announced 2024 results and then a more detailed review of our financial performance for the first quarter of 2025, which we announced yesterday after market close. I'll then pass it back to Dave to highlight some of our 2025 priorities before we open it up to questions. With respect to 2024, we ended the year with AUA at $39.5 billion, up $4.3 billion from 2023, helped by rising equity markets as well as strong recruiting activity and an increase in assets of our existing clients. For the year ended December 31, 2024, RF Capital reported $369 million in revenue, an increase of 5% compared to 2023. Fee revenue was up 8% due to higher average AUA, which increased $2.2 billion or 6% and trading commissions, which increased 11%, driven by higher trading activity and client accounts. Corporate Finance revenue increased 37% and insurance revenue was up 9%, reflecting initiatives to drive sales in both those areas. Interest revenue decreased 18%, mainly due to a decline in benchmark interest rates in Canada, while client cash and margin loan balances remained relatively stable. Adjusted EBITDA was $57.3 million as compared to $59.5 million in the prior year as the increase in our operating expenses was slightly greater than the increase in revenue that I just mentioned. Operating expenses were up from 2023 due to costs related to our leadership transition in the latter half of 2024 as well as an increase in carrying broker costs from higher client trading volumes. As well, the mark-to-market benefit recorded on the revaluation of our share-based compensation liability decreased from $4.9 million to $3 million, driven by a lesser change in our share price. Discretionary expenses decreased from the year prior. As a reminder, while we do use the term adjusted EBITDA for comparative purposes, we did not incur any transformation costs or other adjusting items that impacted that figure in 2024. Moving on to our results for the first quarter of 2025. We ended Q1 with AUA at $39.2 billion, down $0.4 billion from the end of 2024. For the first quarter, RF Capital reported $99 million in revenue, an increase of 11% year-over-year. Fee revenue was up 17% due to higher average AUA driven by growth from markets, recruiting and net new assets exceeding the impact of adviser attrition. Fee revenue in Q1 also included annual performance fees from selected sub-advised products. Corporate Finance revenue increased 35%, while insurance revenue remained largely flat to Q1 of last year. Interest revenue decreased 14% due to a decline in benchmark interest rates, while average client cash and margin loan balances remained relatively stable. Adjusted EBITDA was $9.5 million as compared to $13.5 million in the prior year quarter. This result reflects an increase of $4 million in mark-to-market expenses on share-based compensation. In Q1, our share price increased, resulting in a mark-to-market expense on the revaluation of our share-based compensation liability due to our share price increasing from $7.51 to $10 at the closing of the past quarter. In Q1 last year, we had recorded a mark-to-market recovery of $0.9 million. And excluding the increase in these expenses, EBITDA was flat to last year, as the increase in revenue that I mentioned earlier was offset by an increase in operating expenses. Operating expenses were up due to primarily higher carrying broker charges as a function of trading activity and higher salaries and benefits reflecting annual inflation. Discretionary expenses decreased from first quarter last year. Turning to cash flow. As a reminder, we disclosed free cash flow available for growth, which is the cash flow that the company generates before any investments in growth or transformation initiatives. It provides an indication of the cash that we generate organically to fund our strategic plans. In the first quarter of 2025, we generated $2 million of free cash flow available for growth, up from a cash outflow of $13.3 million last year, primarily due to higher operating cash flows. Free cash flow itself is the net cash flow that the company generates after its continuing operations and considering its recruitment, transformation and strategic investments. In Q1, RF Capital had a usage of free cash flow of $1.8 million compared to a usage of $15.7 million in Q1 2024, driven by increased cash flow available for growth and partly offset by higher expenditures on real estate initiatives. Now I'll turn over to our outlook and some of the drivers of our revenue and profitability for the coming year. In 2025, AUA will continue to be driven by growth in client assets and recruiting and expected to correlate highly with equity market returns, which may be impacted by global economic conditions, including U.S. trade policies and tariffs, particularly starting in Q2. Interest revenue is impacted by Canadian benchmark rate trends, which economists expect to continue to decline before stabilizing later in the year and may be offset by higher client cash balances and margin positions. As far as operating expenses go, we are committed to finding savings and efficiencies where we can and driving operational leverage from the fixed costs and many investments we have incurred in the last few years to operate our platform. Furthermore, operating expenses will continue to be subject to mark-to-market expenses on RSUs and DSUs. Cash flow available for growth will be driven by the factors just discussed and primarily be deployed towards initiatives to improve our adviser desktop and middle office experience that Dave alluded to as well as adding new advisers to the Richardson Wealth platform through traditional recruiting and to a lesser extent, inorganic growth opportunities. Capital expenditures are expected to continue at normalized levels and will continue to support the growth of our adviser team footprint. With that, I'll pass it back to Dave to cover our 2025 business priorities.

Thank you, Francis. So I'll just briefly add on some of Francis' comments on the drivers of revenue and profitability. We've had an exceptionally challenging start to the year based on the complex global economic environment. This volatility has its impact on our industry and our business, and it may require us to make decisions that are prudent considering the times and may cause us to delay some intended investments. With so much out of our control, our approach has been to focus on what is within our control, and that takes us right to where we have been centered, which is the first 2 pillars of our strategy. As for Pillar 2, the uncertainty inevitably leads to challenges in recruiting advisers. The disruption in the market is very difficult for them and challenging to move clients when the times are as unsettling as they are by moving their books of business. We'll need to work through these challenges. And in the meantime, we'll keep close to those teams who are more ready to make a transition once the markets stabilize. This, of course, is not new to us. It's the nature of the business in which we work. I want to make a brief comment about our share price. As we know, our shares trade at a price that does not reflect the fundamental value of the business and its limited float and volume can cause greater short-term fluctuations than the stability of our business model might suggest. And while it's good to see some positive movement recently, it's not where it should be. Francis and I have been meeting shareholders and prospective shareholders in Toronto and Montreal and getting positive reactions to our story. Our message is resonating, and we'll continue to invest time to tell our story. Ultimately, any share price reflects revenue and earnings growth. As shareholders, you pay for growth, and that's what we're laser-focused on delivering. For 2025, there's 4 things that we're driving on with a real focus for our shareholders: First, it's delivering the key initiatives to increase adviser and employee engagement and satisfaction and ultimately retain assets. The focus here is on improving our mid-office excellence, and we're gaining some traction. Second is enabling and driving increased growth in net new assets, fee and insurance revenue through our existing adviser teams. Third is continuing to invite select advisory teams to positively contribute to our culture, our strategy and our assets under management. And fourth is making sure the people are organized in a way that provides their ability to do their best work and also drive efficiencies. Our focus on efficiencies was in place before the current market challenges, and we're committed to holding operating expenses in check and delivering operating leverage. As we move forward with achieving these goals, it's my intention to continue to strategically and thoughtfully deepen our partnership with our advisory teams. An important step in that direction was last fall when I had one-on-one 30-minute meetings with every advisory team. In those conversations, I reiterated what we're doing and why. And I also asked the teams for their input. Did they agree with our areas of focus? Or were there other areas that were more critical and required our attention? These were very transparent conversations, and I was pleased with the alignment on what needs to be done. I'm on the road again this spring visiting branches just to make sure we keep the momentum building on the discussions, and I'll repeat the one-on-one calls with every team this fall to keep that momentum high. In my view, these conversations are critical to building the mutual trust and respect that we need to be successful together. But we also have regular touch points with larger groups to ensure we continue to be connected. For our advisers only this year, we launched a quarterly partners conference call, where we come together to discuss the business, how we're doing from a financial results perspective, including resource allocations and key decisions. And each month, we host a national call for the entire firm to make sure we're taking the time to celebrate each step forward, big or small. Through these touch points, we're striving to instill even more alignment, resulting in greater confidence, trust and pride for our teams as we demonstrate a steady and continuous flow of progress. Now it's time to turn to you for your questions. So we'd be happy to take any questions you might have.

Yes, I have a question here. If I read this correctly, I believe you had losses in 2024. Profit-wise, I'm talking about. And also 2025, the first quarter, you still lost money. Am I correct?

Why don't you answer that, Francis.

Yes, you're right.

How much did you lose in 2024?

So in 2025 [indiscernible] have that number handy because we just reported, we were at $4.1 million of losses in the first quarter. And then in 2025, I'll get you the number from -- I can take up with you separately with the exact number in our financial statements.

So it's nice we're hiring all these advisers and all that. But if you can't make a profit, what's going on? I got some [ REITs ] that I own and every one of them has made money. What's happening here? Why can't you make a profit?

So the negative profit, which I would say is very close to 0, and we do believe we will be able to bend the curve, if you will, over time is a reflection of the investments that we are making in a competitive environment in order to retain our existing adviser teams and to some extent, to recruit, as you stated.

But still, if you cannot make a profit, no matter how many people, there is, it's -- I don't know where these advisers are coming from, but they don't sound very good to me, if they can't turn a profit in the last 2 years or so.

Yes, the advisers are good. I think it's the balance of investing for future profits and building those over time versus what you realize in the short term. And so we are still investing in the business, especially cash flow in terms of recruiting adviser teams with the goal to make sure that we earn meaningful profits going forward.

Or you could be like Corus down there. When I look out the window, I see Corus Entertainment, and they were doing good and now it looks like they're going bankrupt and they didn't make any profits either, but finally it was up to them.

So I would say, we're obviously very, very different...

I know you are.

Very different industries, so I can't comment on Corus. I would say we have a very prudent balance sheet management policy. We have some great partners in both our preferred shareholders and in our bank lending partners, and we're very comfortable under a fairly conservative risk appetite that we're able to meet our financial obligations. And again, we are running this business for the future and to scale, and that requires investment. If the environment were to change, we have different levers we could pull. The first obviously being different growth opportunities that we're invested in and then looking at other elements of our cost structure if the situation warranted it.

Yes. And are you allowing for a fact that Canada will go into a recession, sorry, if we're not in one right now, are you allowing for all this?

Yes, we do. We do regular scenario planning across a variety of economic scenarios. I think the beauty of our general business model is that over 83% of our assets are in fee-based accounts and so offer recurring and predictable revenue that while it does fluctuate, it certainly is recurring and predictable. And that's one of the reasons why we feel that our share price does not reflect the fundamental value of the business.

The growth in AUA year-over-year is about $3 billion. What's the split in that between market growth and acquired assets?

Your acquired assets and departed assets are just about flat. So it's a combination of market growth plus the work that our teams do to consolidate additional assets from their existing client base.

Like organic growth?

Organic growth.

So that's new money from existing clients? But so -- the advisers departing and arriving, that's about a wash?

That was about a wash in 2024.

Just to maybe link your question with the preceding one. The average return on client portfolio was about a 60% correlation or beta, if you will, to overall equity markets. So part of why we feel good about our financial situation is because we run a fairly conservative investment philosophies. Those are determined at the adviser level, to be clear, but I think there's generally a pretty good approach across our advisory practices in terms of preserving the wealth as much as growing it in our client portfolios.

What would be the split in the portfolios between Canadian assets and non-Canadian assets?

Geez, we're roughly 60% equity. I don't have that number in my hand. We would be predominantly Canadian, I would think, Peter. We can find that number for you.

Please.

Yes.

Any other questions anyone has? Okay. Thank you. I think that concludes our meeting for today. I think we're going to be around for a few minutes. If anyone has a question they want to ask one-on-one, feel free to step up and ask. Thank you very much for coming.

Thank you, everyone.