AGF Management Ltd

TSX:AGF.B

Earnings Call Transcript 2018-Q3

[Operator]

Welcome to the Q3 2018 AGF Management Limited Earnings Conference Call. My name is Christine, and I will be your operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Adrian Basaraba. You may begin.

[Adrian Basaraba, Senior VP & CFO]

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I'm Adrian Basaraba, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer of AGF Management Limited. Today, we will be discussing the results for the third quarter of fiscal 2018. Slides supporting today's call and webcast can be found in the Investor Relations section of agf.com. Also speaking on the call today will be Blake Goldring, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Kevin McCreadie, President and Chief Investment Officer.Turning to Slide 4. I'll provide an agenda for today's call. We will discuss the highlights of Q3 2018; provide update on key segments of our business; review our financial results; discuss our capital and liquidity position; and finally, close by outlining our focus for the remainder of 2018. After the prepared remarks, we'll be happy to take questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Blake.

[Blake Charles Goldring, Chairman & CEO]

Thank you, Adrian and thank you, everyone, for joining us on today's conference call. During Q3 2018, we continued to execute against our strategy and stated goals. I'll begin with some highlights.AUM ended the quarter at $38.8 billion, our highest level since 2013, with growth across all lines of business. Year-to-date, both our retail and institutional businesses are in net sales and showing significant year-over-year improvements. Our pipeline includes 2 strategic sub-advisory wins that will be invested in our mutual funds. We reported adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.20, which is 33% higher than the prior year. We achieved final resolution on the transfer pricing case, which resulted in a $4.5 million tax provision release related to the release of penalties. The board confirmed a quarterly dividend of $0.08 per share for the quarter. Starting on Slide 6. We will provide updates on our business performance. On this slide, we break down our total AUM in the categories disclosed in our MD&A and show comparisons to the prior year. Assets under management are up 11% year-over-year, and we experienced growth across all lines of business, which includes mutual funds, institutional, private client and alternatives. In particular, institutional, sub-advisory and ETF AUM increased 19% due to strong organic growth. And alternatives' AUM increased 12% due to co-investments for InstarAGF's latest investment. As noted on previous calls, once the fund is close to being fully invested, we can begin to market our second Essential Infrastructure Funds. Based on InstarAGF's current investment pipeline, we anticipate initial close of Fund 2 in 2019.Turning to Slide 7. I'll provide some detail on the retail business. Fiscal year-to-date, the mutual fund industry recorded net sales of $17 billion, down 56% compared to last year. The ETF industry saw similar trends with net creations down 15% year-over-year. Despite the softness in industry net sales, AGF sales trajectory continued to improve. Excluding large institutional series movements, our retail mutual fund business achieved net sales of $73 million year-to-date compared to net redemptions of $360 million last year. After Q3, 2 strategic partners made significant allocations to our mutual funds. This bodes well for our sales trajectory for the fourth quarter. The improvement in sales reflects our continued focus on clients. Year-over-year, our MFDA and IIROC gross sales for the quarter are up 16% and 23%, respectively. And we continue to have success with our key strategic partnerships, all of which remain in net sales. As you know, we undertook a major brand refresh last year, which has also contributed to our sales success. Third-party research shows a significant improvement in adviser perceptions of AGF. On that statement, I know what this company stands for. Our score has improved from 74% in 2016 to 95% in 2018. In August, we expanded our preferred pricing offering, which allows all eligible investors to automatically benefit from the lowest fee option available. This change, along with the management fee reductions announced earlier this year, were part of a multiyear initiative to ensure our product shelf is competitive and meets the evolving needs of our clients. We’re confident we have achieved these goals.Before we leave retail, I'll provide a brief update on industry regulation. On September 13, the CSA released its proposed rules on embedded commissions, which included a ban on the sale of DSC and low-load purchase options. In reaction to the CSA's announcement, the Ontario Ministry of Finance released a statement indicating the Ontario government does not support to propose regulatory changes as currently drafted. At this point, we're waiting for further clarity from the CSA and OSC on next steps. As a long-standing participant in the Canadian financial service industry, we will continue to be an advocate for a regulatory environment that is grounded in the needs of all investors. We strongly believe in upholding the value of advice, preserving investor choice and limiting the negative effects of unintended consequences.In anticipation of the industry changes, we've created a lineup of products that provide our clients with the opportunity and choice they require in this evolving investment landscape. Regardless of the outcome, our business is well positioned to meet the needs of our clients. Turning to Slide 8, I will now pass the presentation to Kevin.

[Kevin Andrew McCreadie, President & Chief Investment Officer]

Thank you, Blake. And as I've stated previously, our long-term target is to have 60% of our AUM above median over 3 years and 50% of our AUM above median in any 1 year. For the current quarter, our AUM above median was 18% over 3 years and 31% over the 1-year period. Our portfolio has a quality bias due to our disciplined risk management proxies. Similar to last quarter, such investments have underperformed while securities with momentum characteristics have continued to increase in value.As you can see on Slide 8, 1 year in global factor return is 5% of momentum, positive 2% for beta and negative 1% for earnings yield. Furthermore, trailing earnings yields, dividend yield, low volatility have all seen performance diminish over the last several quarters. We believe the quality inherent in our portfolio is focused on our investors over the long term. We don't believe that it would be prudent to chase momentum or a higher base strategy at this stage of the cycle. Our Morningstar ratings are largely unchanged and, particularly for our large funds, are comparable to industry peers.During the third quarter, we implemented The Office of the CIO, which includes the leadership representation from all investment disciplines and regions. The Office of the CIO will play an integral role in chasing the broader investment strategies across the AGF platform and will work with individual portfolio managers to determine and continue to implement risk guidelines and investment policies but also review and monitor performance portfolio [ holdings ], risk exposures and ESG integration.Moving on to the institutional side of the business. Not including retail sub-advisory and ETFs, we reported net redemptions of $300 million in the third quarter. As noted before, institutional sales can be lumpy quarter-to-quarter. Year-to-date, our institutional business still has a net positive sales of $0.5 billion as we onboarded clients with investment in AGFiQ and our fundamental active strategies. Our institutional sales team is focused on building momentum for our AGFiQ strategies. We are seeing considerable interest in AGFiQ customized and hedged equity solutions for pension funds, OCIO providers and investment consultants. We are also seeing increased interest in our emerging market strategies. As you know, Regina Chi joined as lead portfolio manager for our emerging markets team last year. Year-to-date performance for the AGF emerging markets fund is ranked in the 22nd percentile, a significant improvement from the last several years.With that, I'll turn the call back over to Adrian.

[Adrian Basaraba, Senior VP & CFO]

Thank you, Kevin. Slide 9 reflects a summary of our financial results for the current quarter, the sequential quarter and year-over-year comparisons. During the third quarter of 2018, we recorded $4.5 million of provision release related to relief from penalties for the transfer pricing case. For ease of comparison, we have included adjusted numbers, which I will refer to in my remarks.Total revenue was $2.3 million higher compared to Q2 2018 and $6.2 million higher compared to Q3 2017. The increase was largely due to higher earnings from Smith & Williamson and our LP investment in alternative funds. SG&A was $51 million, which is $4.2 million lower in Q2 2018, primarily due to timing of marketing expenses and lower compensation. We expect full year SG&A to stay within our guidance of $210 million. As mentioned in our previous call, the $210 million does not include severance charges and could be higher if further reacceleration of business performance materializes.Q3 2018 EBITDA from continuing operations was $32.2 million. And adjusted diluted EPS was $0.20, $0.06 higher than prior quarter.Turning to Slide 10. I'll walk through the yield on our business in terms of basis points. This slide shows our revenue, operating expenses and EBITDA, including fund operations as a percentage of our average AUM on the current quarter as well as trailing 12-month view. Note that the results exclude our earnings from Smith & Williamson, the alternatives platform, onetime items and other income.The revenue yield in Q3 2018 was 112 basis points. The 4 basis point decrease compared to the trailing 12 months is related to management fee reduction, which came into effect April 1; expansion of the lowest fee series, which came into effect in August; as well as the growth for institutional business, which earns comparatively lower fees. Q3 SG&A is 55 basis points, which is 5 basis points lower compared to the trailing 12 months, which is probably due to increased AUM and, as mentioned before, the timing of marketed expenses and lower compensation. This resulted in an EBITDA yield of 23 basis points, which is 2 basis points higher compared to the trailing 12 months' view.Before I leave this slide, I'll address our revenue rate in more detail. Our revenue tends to decline approximately 2 basis points per year on total AUM, simply because our sales generally go into funds with lower fees as compared to our redemptions, which tend to be in funds with relatively higher fees. Separate from this trend, we expect that management fee reductions announced earlier this year and the expansion of our preferred pricing offering will reduce revenue by about 2 basis points on total AUM in 2019 relative to 2018. This quarter, the trend accelerated slightly due to the growth of our institutional line of business. As you can see on Slide #10, average AUM for institutional sub-advisory ETFs and private client is $1 billion higher in Q3 compared to the trailing 12 months. Over the near term, our net revenue rate of reduction might accelerate if growth in the ETFs and AGFiQ institutional mandates gain more traction. We're pleased with our product positioning from a pricing perspective after executing on a multiyear strategy to align our fees.Turning to Slide 11, I will discuss free cash flow and capital uses. This slide represents the last 5 quarters of consolidated free cash flow, adjusted for onetime items, as shown by the orange bars on the chart. The black line represents the percentage of free cash flow that was paid out as a dividend. Adjusted free cash flow was $12.8 million in Q3 2018, which is $6.9 million higher than Q2 2018. This increase is mainly due to improved financial results and slightly lower DSC due to seasonality. Excluding onetime items, our trailing 12-month free cash flow was $42 million, and our dividend payout ratio was 60%. Considering both Stream and the Essential Infrastructure Fund, our remaining capital commitment to the alternatives platform is $37 million at the end of Q3 2018. We expect the majority of this commitment to be invested over the next 2 years. I'm glad to announce that we have achieved final resolution on the transfer pricing matter. We expect to receive the cash refund from our penalty relief in the upcoming quarters. Moving to other capital considerations. We repurchased approximately $2.6 million worth of shares to the NCIB in Q3, and we consider opportunistically repurchasing more shares in the future. Total long-term debt now stands at $170 million, and our operating line provides credit to a maximum of $320 million.Turning to Slide 12, we'll round out to -- I'll turn it over to Blake to wrap up today's call.

[Blake Charles Goldring, Chairman & CEO]

Today, AGF is a well-diversified, successful, growing and financially strong organization. As you may have heard, after 18 years as CEO, I'm excited to share with you my decision to transition into a new role as Executive Chairman for AGF. I'm equally pleased to announce that Kevin McCreadie has been named to Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer and that Judy Goldring has been named as President and Chief Administration Officer. These changes will be effective at the start of AGF's next fiscal on December 1, 2018. I believe that leadership renewal is a hallmark of great organizations, especially one that has a deep bench strength that we do at AGF. I have enormous satisfaction knowing that the firm is set up for success based on the strategic decisions that we've made and AGF's team efforts in driving toward these goals. It's with an immense pride that I look back at what we've achieved. When I assumed the role of President in 1997 and subsequently the CEO position in 2000, I set out an aggressive strategy to broaden AGF's business beyond its traditional retail mutual fund roots to become a diversified global asset management firm. This meant not only expanding our reach outside of the Canadian market but establishing a diverse set of business lines and client distribution channels, including global institutional investors and private client opportunities that best complement AGF's growing retail footprint. Today, we have done just that. In 1997, almost 100% of AGF's assets were held in the firm's retail mutual fund business. Whereas today, AGF has established a more diversified business with 50% of the assets in retail, 47% in institutional and private client assets and the remaining 3% in alternatives. Additionally, in 2000, AGF took important steps toward realizing our vision to become a global company by opening new offices around the world. Today, AGF has 14 offices with over 16 investment management professionals across our offices based in North America, Europe and Asia. AGF is now successfully positioned as a leader in international investment that is deep in capabilities and alternatives and quantitative investing while also firmly established processes integrating good stewardship and sustainable investing practices right across our platform.Always, has AGF thought to take advantage of what the evolving investment landscape has to offer. As such, I am determined, together with the board, that the timing is right to transition the leadership of AGF to Kevin McCreadie. Kevin is ideally suited to lead the new AGF, given his extensive experience in investment management and his past 4 years of dedicated and proven leadership of AGF's investment management and institutional sales teams. Kevin will continue on as Chief Investment Officer in addition to assuming his CEO responsibilities for the firm and will leverage The Office of the CIO structure that he implemented in August. The introduction of this new structure within his team was a critical step in Kevin's succession journey to becoming the next CEO for AGF. Judy Goldring is an integral member of the Executive Management Team, where she assisted in the development and execution of AGF strategy. Judy's promotion to President and Chief Administration Officer for AGF is a natural step for her and her career with AGF and is a recognized industry-leading senior executive and past inductee into Women's Executive Network Top 100 Hall of Fame. I would like to congratulate both Kevin and Judy on their new responsibilities with AGF. This will also be my last earnings conference call as I look forward earning my own next chapter with the firm. I want to thank everyone on the AGF team for all their hard work. I'm very proud of the results that we achieved in third quarter of 2018. We will now take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from Gary Ho of Desjardins Capital.

[Gary Ho, Analyst]

Just on the management transition, Kevin and Blake. Blake, you've taken on the Executive Chairman role. Just wondering how involved you'll be on a day-to-day basis side of things. And then second for Kevin, I know you're having the new Office of the CIO. Can you explain how involved you'll be on the CIO front versus the strategy side with the CEO role?

[Blake Charles Goldring, Chairman & CEO]

Yes. Thanks, Gary. This is Blake. My particular focus is going to be on dealing obviously with board matters. I sit on a number of different boards within the organization, Smith & Williamson, most notably. We also have major initiatives on our alternatives side, where I see this as an area of great interest for me. And our strategic relationships, as you can appreciate, I've got a pretty large Rolodex built up over well more than 30 years in this industry.

[Kevin Andrew McCreadie, President & Chief Investment Officer]

And Gary, it's Kevin. Yes, I plan we -- continue to be involved on the CIO side. I grew up in this business on the investment side of the house. So by -- but by putting the structure in place, basically taking the heads of our global team, heads of our North American team, chief of our Quant strategies, our Chief Risk Officer and the Head of Trading and put them basically in a governance structure that will help me. But I plan on staying active as the CIO. I think it's important for an investment organization to have that touch and feel. But as well, I think, as you know, we, as a team, have been active together of building this strategy broadly across the firm with a lot of new hires we brought in over the last several years with some of the promotions we've made. So I see the balance is setting pretty nicely. I don't see it as a stretch either way.

[Gary Ho, Analyst]

Got it. And then on the Smith & Williamson, good earnings contribution there this quarter. I think it's roughly $7 million. That might seem it's a bit high on a quarterly basis. Just wondering what's a good run rate to use. And just want to clarify, that is a net of tax number. And secondly, just on the S&W, are they still tracking an IPO in the back half of 2019?

[Adrian Basaraba, Senior VP & CFO]

So Gary, it's Adrian. I'll handle the first part of your question, then I'll hand it over to Blake. So yes, Smith & Williamson did have a good quarter. The results that we reported are after tax. And I guess, as you've noticed, the results can be lumpy. But maybe the best way to look at it is if you step back at current speed, Smith & Williamson piece is about a $20 million in equity earnings and about $10 million in dividends per year. And their organization has been growing, and we expect that to continue.

[Blake Charles Goldring, Chairman & CEO]

Just on the IPO front, I can confirm that things are on track and moving ahead and so contemplated towards the end of 2019 for an IPO.

[Gary Ho, Analyst]

Okay. Got it. And then just my last question, Adrian, while I have you there. Just on the expenses, sounds like you're quite comfortable with the annual guidance of $210 million. But can you kind of share with us how you think as we head into 2019? And perhaps, can you talk about some of the drivers behind that as well?

[Adrian Basaraba, Senior VP & CFO]

Yes. So for 2019, we're in the middle of our strategic planning and budgeting process. And expense control, as always, is going to be a key theme. But we're not ready to share any targets until the process is complete, so you'll hear more about that during our Q4 and year-end conference call in January. But again, I'll reiterate, the expense control is a key theme that we're working on for our strategic plan.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Graham Ryding of TD Securities.

[Graham Ryding, Research Analyst of Financial Services]

Just the comments around the pipeline for the sub-advisory mandates within your mutual funds. Is there any color on -- I think you said it's coming through this quarter, fiscal Q4. But anything you can quantify on that front?

[Blake Charles Goldring, Chairman & CEO]

Yes. They've actually landed already, and I think you'll be looking at a couple hundred million dollars.

[Adrian Basaraba, Senior VP & CFO]

Okay a couple of different mandates too, Graham.

[Graham Ryding, Research Analyst of Financial Services]

Okay. So these would be like your strategic partnerships that -- is that how I should think about it?

[Blake Charles Goldring, Chairman & CEO]

That's fair.

[Graham Ryding, Research Analyst of Financial Services]

Okay. The fund performance, you provided some color, Kevin, around your emphasis on quality and momentum. Is there -- I don't know. Is there any further color you can provide us on what you see would be required for fund performance to move towards your targeted 1-year and 3-year targets?

[Kevin Andrew McCreadie, President & Chief Investment Officer]

Yes. No, Graham, a couple of thoughts on this one. If you go back to the end of the year, just to remind you, where about 60% of our assets were in 3-year bucket over at the median. We've had, again, 2 large funds that are highly consistent over time, Global Core and Global dividend. Same manager, same team. And if you look at that fund, they represent a pretty significant weight in our complex, probably 14% between the 2 of them. And then when you think about them in some of our balanced accounts or funded funds, if you just put those 2 funds at the median right now, the complex probably sits roughly at -- when you include their representation in those other funds and those 2, were probably something like 50% to 52% over the 1 and 3. So we're not that far off in giving it to 2 funds. And given the fact that over time, Global Core can take bigger of the 2. It's had a track record of beating its benchmark on a 3-year basis by 97-or-so percent, and I think on a 5-year basis, 98% of the time in those rolling periods. So given the environment and given the investment process there, which is a -- think of it as a cash flow return, investment-type strategy, which is inherently leading to quality and things with more value, potentially, not value or deep value but just things that have a valuation connotation, it's not uncharacteristic to see this at this point in the cycle. So I'm pretty comfortable. Hopefully, that gave you enough color.

[Graham Ryding, Research Analyst of Financial Services]

No, that's good. You lost me a little bit on the 50% to 52% number over 1 and 3 years. How do I reconcile that with the numbers?

[Kevin Andrew McCreadie, President & Chief Investment Officer]

Yes, the way to think about it, Graham, is if I took those 2 funds, those 2 large funds, Global Core and Global div, and stuck them, just a pin on them and said that they -- not that they were in the third quartile but they're exactly at the median of the 50th percentile and their representation inside of our big elements portfolio. Again, if you just move those 2 large funds to the median, those other -- the impact on elements would push them significantly into the second quartile as well. So the complex is actually just being moved around by these 2 funds, and that's how you'd move them and the whole complex into that lower 50s, if you will. Okay. So it's not a -- when we look at it, it's not a broad problem. It's a narrow problem that is impacting the balanced portfolios, if you will, the funded funds.

[Graham Ryding, Research Analyst of Financial Services]

So bottom line, it doesn't feel like you're overly concerned that there's a systematic fund performance issue here, this is cyclical and this is sort of just your positioning relative to where the market is right now.

[Kevin Andrew McCreadie, President & Chief Investment Officer]

Correct. And even our growth strategies right now, Graham, for instance, which are in the top decile, top quartile over most of our peers, we've even -- the PM has [ grown ] that fund for 10 years, one of the best in the business, has derisked that fund, probably the lowest technology wave right now that he's had. So I think it's where we are in the cycle that is probably more driving some of the -- and I think it's probably just prudent. So yes, not concerned and nothing systematic.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Basaraba for closing remarks.

[Adrian Basaraba, Senior VP & CFO]

Thank you very much for joining us today. Our next earnings conference call will take place on January 23, 2019, when we will review our results for Q4 2018. Details of the call will be posted on our website. Finally, an archive of the audio webcast of today's call with supporting materials will be available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Good day, everyone.

[Operator]

Thank you and thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.