Perpetual Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Perpetual Limited full year results briefing. All participants are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Susie Reinhardt, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Great. Good morning, everyone, and good afternoon or evening to those joining us from other parts of the world. Welcome to Perpetual's full year results briefing, which will also cover our proposed acquisition of Pendle Group announced this morning. I'm Susie Reinhart, Perpetual's Head of Investor Relations. Before we begin today, we would like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which we present today from here in Sydney, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and recognise their continuing connection to land waters and community. We pay our respects to Australia's First Peoples and to their Elders past and present. We would also like to extend our respect and welcome to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who are listening in today and acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which you all work today. Presenting here with us is Rob Adams, Perpetual's Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, as well as Chris Green, Perpetual's Chief Financial Officer. There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. Before I hand over to Rob, we would like to draw your attention to the disclaimer on page two of both presentations. Rob, over to you.

Thanks, Susie, and good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you may be. Thanks very much for joining us today. As Susie mentioned, this morning we announced our proposed acquisition of the Pendle Group, and we'll take you through that shortly. But firstly, we'd like to present our FY22 results. So let's turn straight to that, shall we? We're very pleased to report our results today, which we think demonstrate strong outcomes and positive momentum across all areas of our business, with every division delivering double-digit growth in earnings for the first time in seven years. Over the course of the year, we have invested for growth across our businesses, delivering new capabilities, new products, and opening up new distribution channels and investing in our trusted brand. Importantly, our investment teams have delivered strong relative investment returns for our clients across the vast majority of our portfolios, with 79% of our funds outperforming their respective benchmarks over three years. Perpetual continues to be strongly placed to benefit from the current market cycle with a deep expertise in value investing, best represented through our Australian equities business and through Barrow Hanley Global Investors. We have also continued to invest in ESG across all of our businesses with further expansion of capabilities planned for FY 2023. Our investment has been growth focused and disciplined with our expense growth for the full year delivered within guidance. Our unique business combination, with around 30% of our total revenues coming from non-market-linked sources through perpetual corporate trusts and within perpetual private, has supported us extremely well through this market cycle, providing a real anchor for the group. So turning now to the high-level results of FY22. Perpetual delivered total revenue of $767.7 million, up 20% on the prior year. Underlying profit after tax was $148.2 million, up 21%. And net profit after tax was $101.2 million, up 39% on the prior year. And our return on equity rose 44 basis points to 16.2%. Key drivers of the result were a four-year contribution from Barra Hanley, improved relative investment performance and higher average equity markets compared to FY21 in our asset management businesses. Additional earnings from both our acquisitions of Jacaranda Financial Planning for Perpetual Private and Laminar Capital for Perpetual Corporate Trust and continued strong organic growth in both PCT and PP. Our board, as a result, has declared a fully franked dividend for FY22 of $2.09 per share, which represents a payout ratio of 80%. Turning now to some of our operational highlights for the year. In our asset management businesses, Perpetual Asset Management International, known as PAMI, and Perpetual Asset Management Australia, known as PAMA, our combined assets under management totaled $90.4 billion at the end of the financial year, which was lower than the prior year, mainly due to declines in global investment markets, particularly towards the end of the period. Despite these market movements, our relative investment performance across our asset management businesses has been very strong, as I mentioned, with 79% of our strategies outperforming over that critical three-year timeframe. We continue to see solid interest in our range of ESG capabilities, which we have expanded through the year. We've received over $1 billion in net inflows in FY22, with Trillium in particular having a strong year of growth. We are also seeing growing interest in our global equities capabilities, in particular, Barrow Hanley's global strategies, with just over $3 billion in net inflows over the year in total across all of our global equities strategies. Locally, our Australian asset management business, PAMA, saw its strongest year of flows into the PAMA funds from the important intermediary channel, strongest year in seven years, which is a terrific result for the business, and that positive momentum is continuing into the new financial year. In Perpetual Corporate Trust, which, as you know, provides essential infrastructure for key parts of the financial services industry, we achieved a new milestone with funds under administration surpassing the $1 trillion mark. In Perpetual Private, we saw yet another year of positive net inflows, making FY22 the ninth consecutive year of positive flows, which we believe reflects Perpetual Private's market position as a trusted financial advice business. Lastly, but something we are particularly proud of, this year we delivered an NPS score, a Net Promoter Score rating of plus 49, which is a record for Perpetual, which reflects the strong client advocacy across each of our divisions. So as you can see, across Perpetual we are delivering some terrific outcomes and that momentum is continuing into FY23. Our strategy to build a global asset management business, adding world-class investment and distribution capabilities, continues and it's delivering results. Over the year, we have invested significantly into the growth and development of our global distribution platform, with that investment including attracting several senior, highly experienced distribution individuals into the team in key roles in what is a very tough labour market. We have invested in building product structures and marketing infrastructure to attract new clients, with the launch of a USITS platform for the UK, Europe and Asia, and a US mutual fund platform now providing us with access to the all-important $30 trillion US intermediary market. In Trillium, although investment performance has been impacted by its low weightings in energy and defence sectors, which of course have seen upside due to the conflict in Ukraine, we have more recently experienced some very exciting client wins for Trillium. These wins include Trillium's largest institutional client in their 40-year history, with Formula Ply, a Danish client, recently, in fact, I think it was just this week, investing $430 million, so that's around $620 million into Trillium's global equity strategy. In Borough Hanley, while US equities and fixed income outflows have been an area of disappointment, we are extremely pleased with the strong interest in their array of global equity capabilities, which have been further supplemented through the launch of two new USITS strategies. an emerging markets value ESG strategy and a global value ESG strategy, both of which have received some large cornerstone investments from European clients looking for exposure to high-quality value managers that can also offer an ESG lens. In the last two quarters of FY22, our global equity strategies attracted around $250 million in net inflows per month. At our half-year results back in February, you might recall that I noted that I had confidence that Barrow Hanley's overall flows could look towards turning positive within 12 months. I think the momentum that we have in global equities, combined with the incredibly strong investment performance, we are therefore well-placed to turn flows to positive next year, of course, depending on market conditions. In the U.S. intermediary channel, we now have seven Barrow-Hanley mutual funds available for that critical market. Whilst it's early days, four of these funds have already received strong Morningstar ratings, which is a key prerequisite for many U.S. platforms. Just this week, we won a new mandate from one of the biggest wire houses in the U.S., which will commence with an initial flow of $100 million, and additional flows expected in the coming months. An important development towards the end of the financial year has been the building of early stage momentum for Barra Hanley here in Australia, most particularly in the intermediary channel. With international travel finally open again, key members of the Barra Hanley investment team have commenced visit schedules and their approach to managing global equities is clearly resonating locally here in Australia, with flow momentum starting to build. We feel very positive about the future for Barra here in Australia. Lastly, in PAMA, I mentioned earlier that we have reported the strongest flows from the intermediary channel in seven years. This result reflects the deliberate focus and strategy within our Australian business to diversify our client base into higher margin channels. The strong flow performance of our funds, particularly in Australian equities, places us in a very solid position for further growth in FY23. Perpetual does have, as I've mentioned, a truly unique combination of businesses. This is one of our greatest strengths, particularly during periods of global investment market volatility. As a diversified financial services firm, we have exposure to both market linked revenues and non-market linked revenues. Importantly, when combined, PCT and PP's non-market revenues contribute around 30% of total group revenue, which provides us with strengths through market cycles. These businesses are an important part of the broader perpetual group and remain key components of our unique business mix. PCT, as mentioned, continues to be a standout performer while helping to provide that stability of earnings through market cycles. PCT has delivered consistent year-on-year growth over the past decade, with an underlying profit-before-tax compound annual growth rate of 15% over the last 10 years. Its leadership position in providing essential services to debt markets and to managed fund clients, combined with its focus on digital innovation, gives us confidence regarding its continued growth and positive momentum. In perpetual private, our strong and trusted brand, combined with the addition of new advisors in recent years through our advisor growth strategy, as well as through the acquisition of Jacaranda Financial Planning in August last year, have combined to see us continue to deliver growth in net flows. We remain fully focused on the positive execution of our strategy in order to drive sustained quality growth across perpetual. At our FY21 results a year ago, we set out the priorities under each of the key pillars of our strategy. Throughout the year, we've made terrific progress in all areas. With all of these priority points well underway and significant progress made throughout the year in terms of new product development, the build-out of our global distribution team and our global operating model, and material steps forward in improving the efficiency and scalability of our operating platform. Many of these initiatives are multi-year projects, and you will see we have defined some as being in progress and areas we will continue to execute on in the coming financial year and beyond. I'll now hand over to Chris to present us our financials in more details. Thanks, Chris.