Litigation Capital Management Limited

Good morning and welcome to the Litigation Capital Management Limited four-year results investor presentation. Throughout this quarter presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives in the meeting itself. However, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand it to Patrick Maloney, CEO. Good morning to you, sir.

Good morning. Good morning to investors joining us here in the UK and good evening to those joining from Australia. Welcome to LCM's full year results presentation for financial year 24. I'm joined by David Collins for the first time who has joined LCM as our Chief Financial Officer. You'll hear from him as we go through the presentation in relation to financial matters. So I want to start off by just identifying some of the key points in terms of momentum that we have achieved during the past financial period. And the first one is the financial highlights. Total income of 44.7 million, which generates a profit before tax of 16.1 million Australian dollars. Net assets of 94 pence per share. and the dividend declared of £1.25 per share. In respect of our performance and our tracking performance, we have had eight realisations or eight investments mature during the relevant period, generating 56 million of gross revenue at a 2.4 multiple. We have an unrealized portfolio of ongoing investments of 58. We have post period end realizations early in the new financial period of 13.5 million. And that was generated at a multiple of invested capital of 9.5 times. In terms of our 13 year track record, we are tracking at a 2.9 multiple in respect of every single investment that we have realised during that 30-year period, inclusive of losses. In terms of powering long-term growth, we have increased very significantly the commitments in the last period compared to the prior period to 270 million Australian. That's an increase of 53%. And we'll talk a little bit more about our strategy in terms of new commitments as we present through the slide deck. We've committed capital of $725 million, and that's up 50%. In respect of the funds management business, the performance fees that we generated during the financial period of $12 million, over the cumulative duration of Fund 1 to date, it's generated performance fees of $40 million. Fund 1 is fully committed and 75% deployed at this point. In terms of the realisations in respect of Fund 1, they've generated a net return for LP investors of 61%. And that's a really important metric because that really solidifies our ability to go out into the market and raise capital in terms of Fund 3. Fund 2 is around 60% now committed, and we've got a really strong pipeline that's feeding into that, which should put us in a position where we are marketing Fund 3 in the coming months and certainly prior to the end of this calendar year. In terms of LCM's debt position, we have negotiated a new facility with our existing lender. It has two features which are important. The first one is we've negotiated a reduced interest rate in respect of that moving forward, and we've also negotiated some extra capacity. So we're really pleased with that. We have an expectation that we will have that completely finalised within about a month to six weeks. In terms of looking forward, we've got three strategic priorities that we're focused upon. And the first one is continuing to transition across into an asset management business model. Now, I'll talk a little bit more strategically about why that's important and demonstrate how we've been able to really maximise the returns in respect of every dollar of LCM's invested capital by utilising third party funds. So we're transitioning into the asset management really well. The next one is that we have reached a point in the evolution of LCM where we are ready to deploy a staged entry into the US market. Again, I'll talk a little bit more detail about this, but the US is the largest disputes market globally and presents a really fantastic opportunity for LCM. Now, as investors will know from when we have expanded LCM's footprint into other territories, we've always done that in a very disciplined fashion and we will enter the US market in the same really disciplined fashion. And finally, a really exciting development is that we have acquired a big data and artificial intelligence platform. That platform allows us really access to three things. First, an enormous amount of data that we simply could not gain access to through traditional methods. Secondly, the ability to originate opportunities in the market for investment that we wouldn't have access to otherwise. And it's enhancing our ability to really make decisions about which applications should translate into investments and which should not. So it should provide us with a really significant advantage in respective markets that we're moving into. So going back to our transition into asset management. LCM currently has raised just above $440 million US across two funds. We've partnered with the highest quality LPs and we've developed long-term relationships with them, which we expect to translate into Fund 3, 4 and 5 moving forward. We've been able to access the very best quality LPs in respect of that asset management model simply because LCM has been in this business since its very inception in Australia. We're one of the pioneers of the litigation funding industry. And we've been able to come to a funds management model with an exceptional track record. And that has allowed us to really gain investment capital from the very best LPs who will have the ability to grow with us through future funds. In terms of Fund 1, we've had about eight realisations now of investments. and they have generated a net return for LP investors of 61%. And that really solidifies our ability to approach them and gain additional capital for them in terms of funds moving forward. Fund two is performing in line with our expectations. We've had no realisations in respect of fund two to date. However, all of those investments are currently tracking in the way that we expect them to. In terms of performance fees, they're really starting to flow through to LCM and LCM's balance sheet. In the last financial period, we had approximately 12 million Australian dollars in respective performance fees. And over the life of Fund 1 to date, we've generated performance fees of around 40 million. We're really demonstrating the power of being able to leverage third party funds and how that translates into capital flowing into LCM's revenue line. We have an expectation that we'll be going to market and marketing fund three in the next few months, at least before the end of this calendar year. And we have some expectation that some of our existing cornerstone investors will continue to support us by going into funds three and moving forward from there. In terms of the asset management or funds management model, I think this slide really demonstrates the ability to leverage that third party capital. What we're doing here is we are really demonstrating the difference in terms of returns to LCM and LCM's revenue line from the old capital intensive model. of balance sheet investing as against the new funds management or asset manager model. These are all investments which have resolved in the past period. So the first one is a balance sheet investment. LCM's investment was 2.8 million. That, upon resolution, derived a 4.3 multiple of invested capital. LCM's total revenue and respect of that investment was 12 million. We now compare that to what that looks like in terms of an investment which is co-funded from balance sheet but utilising a majority of third party capital. We have a fund one investment, which has realised the investment was 6.8 million. LCM's contribution was 2.2 million. The overall investment generated a multiple of 3.8 times. In respect of performance fees, LCM generated 6.1 million, which was a blend really of our direct investment and performance fees. And what that has done is it's increased LCM's revenue or its return to a 6.6 times multiple, generating total revenue for LCM of $14.5 million. So investors can really see the leverage that we are able to bring to LCM's balance sheet as we scale this asset management model. I just want to move to the opportunity that which we have and is now available to us with respect to the US market. Most investors will recognise that the US is the largest disputes market globally. It's larger than all of the other markets that we have operated in historically. and it provides a very significant opportunity. The US market in terms of total commitments is estimated to be around $3 billion across our entire industry. In addition to it being a larger disputes market, it also has different types of investments which aren't currently available in any of the other markets that we operate in, and that is providing contingency law firms with a portfolio of capital to invest across a large contingent fee book. Now, that allows us to invest much larger amounts parcels of capital at reduced risk. In addition, the big data and AI platform that we have acquired recently is built for the US market. And we are looking at that in terms of expanding that into other markets, but it is tailor built to operate in the US market. just moving to the benefits that can be brought to us after acquiring this technology. And the first one lies in data. So this model gives us access to an enormous amount of data that we couldn't possibly crunch through in the more traditional way of sort of getting access to that data and then manually analysing it. The platform allows us to analyse, you know, great swathes of data very, very quickly in a way that we could not possibly do in a manual fashion. In many ways, the asset class of litigation finance is perfectly suited towards the use of data and AI strategies. But it's important to remember that what we are not doing here is we are not replacing the very skilled investment managers, which currently undertake that work, but rather enhance that job that they can undertake in respect of measuring the risk associated with investments by the use of data. The next aspect of this platform that I want to talk about is its ability to enhance our origination or give us access to enormous parts of the market that we currently do not have access to, not only in the US, but potentially in the other markets in which we operate. So it allows us to scrape data in real time. and give us access to disputes as soon as they're filed within the various jurisdictions across the US market. And finally, I want to touch upon the ability of this platform to assist us in terms of our underwriting capabilities or underwriting the risk of these investments. As I say, it's not a replacement for what we currently do with our investment managers, which is take a given set of facts, apply the law and predict the outcome. This allows us to apply enormous volumes of data to that decision-making process that we simply could not have done previously in the way that we undertake that due diligence exercise. So some really significant advantages that are available to us through the acquisition of that platform. Then looking at LCM more widely, as most investors know, we're a pioneer in this industry. We've got a 25-year track record. Over that 25 years, we have an 87% win ratio, and that's across circa 275 separate concluded investments. We have generated over the last 13 years industry-leading returns. a multiple invested capital of 2.86 times, and that's from $444 million worth of cash realisations. In terms of the markets that are available to us, and in particular the US market, they present a really very significant and large opportunity. The US market is estimated to be in the order of $700 billion per annum, and the estimated sort of... penetration rate in respect to the litigation finance industry is around 1%. So a really attractive market and a very large market. In terms of the capital that we're applying and the business model that we are applying to that market and the established markets that we're in, the funds management model, as we've demonstrated, really enhances the returns. We currently have two funds with 441 million of US dollars of capital under management. We maintain a conservative balance sheet, cash at the end of period, 53 million, and live cases as part of a portfolio of 58 separate investments moving forward. And finally, just touching upon our CAGR of 17% in net assets per share. I just want to remind investors of some of the attributes of our asset class, which are really important. The first one is that the returns that we're able to generate from these underlying investments is uncorrelated to the wider markets. And what I mean by that is at its most basic level, we invest in disputes and those disputes are resolved through one of two ways. They're either the subject of a commercial negotiation between the parties or they're adjudicated by a judge or an arbitrator. And that judge or arbitrator is unaffected by what's happening in the wider markets, whether the wider markets are suffering from economic stress or uncertainty or high inflation or high interest rates. They simply apply the law to a given set of facts and they adjudicate in that fashion. So the outcome of these individual investments is otherwise uncorrelated to what's happening in the wider market, unlike almost all other asset classes. We operate in a market which is largely underpenetrated. I've given you some of the data historically in respect to the markets that we operate. And now that we sort of look towards the US and moving into the US as we are, that is a vast and remains relatively underpenetrated at around 1%. There are enormous barriers to entry in respect of litigation finance as an asset class in a number of fashions. First of all, the ability to actually gain the skill set to be able to operate successfully in our asset class is exceptionally difficult to get. And for those of us who have operated in this industry since inception, we've managed to garner a significant amount of experience over those 25 years of operation. In addition, without a demonstrable track record that LCM has, it's very hard to get access to meaningful amounts of capital. I want to move next to the counter-cyclical nature of this strategy. We have economic conditions which are punctuated with uncertainty, volatility, and the potential for there to be economic downturns. Those types of economic conditions drive demand for capital in our industry. So right from one end, which is the insolvency and restructuring space, right through to the use of litigation finance by large and sophisticated corporate users. All of that market is the increased demand when you have uncertain economic conditions. Two more points to make. First of all, our investments and the individual disputes that we invest in tend to have a much shorter duration than equivalent asset classes that we're compared to, such as private equity and venture capital. So we're guiding investors that we expect that investments moving forward will average between 36 and 42 months. Some will be less than that, some will be more than that, but that is about the duration that we should expect moving forward. And finally, these investments tend to exhibit asymmetric returns. In other words, the ability to generate returns, which are a multiple of our invested capital, as distinct from the potential for loss, the returns can be much outsized compared to with the potential downside. And just moving forward to looking at LCM's track record over the last 13 months. sorry, last 13 years, that represents 208 million Australian dollars worth of commitments, deployments of around 155 million against that. We've got adjudicated wins, losses and settlements, and we can see the metrics which have been generated from those. So 149 million dollars worth of realisations at a 5.4 multiple. and an IRR of 143%. In respect of losses, notwithstanding that we've had losses, we've actually generated returns of 5.2 million from those. And then finally, settlements, the largest of those categories, $289.7 million worth of realisations had a 2.8 times multiple and a 203% IRR. And those all together generate our 13-year track record of 2.9 times multiple and a 77% IRR inclusive of losses. And the observation I'd make here is the requisite returns that one makes from an adjudicated realization of 5.4 times as distinct from settlements at a 2.8 times multiple. And then I'll pass over to David in terms of the financials.

Great. Okay, good morning, everyone. So I'm going to start on slide 15. And this gives you a summary of our investments broken down into three categories, being the investments that concluded in the period, the new investments that we added in the period, and then the ongoing investments that we have at the end of the period. And I think it's important to start with these three categories because they really drive then what plays out through the P&L balance sheets and cash flow statements. So if we start on the left-hand side, so you can see we had eight investments concluded in the period. That was six wins and two losses. And in aggregate, they generated $56 million of proceeds for LCM, inclusive of $12.7 million of performance fees. And I think as Patrick mentioned, that translates, the cases that concluded in the period translates into a 2.4x multiple of invested capital for LCM. For the new investments, we continue to see strong demand, and we've made 16 new investments in the period, which in total sum to new commitments of $279 million. That's up over 50% on the prior period, and I think the prior period was up a similar amount as well. I'll come back a little bit later on and talk about how we've been stepping up those new commitments to take advantage of the fund management model that we're now operating under. On the right hand side, you can see the ongoing investments, which is 58 ongoing investments at the balance sheet date. If we break those down, so 44 of those investments are co-funded via our fund management model, where we typically invest 25% of the capital into the cases, and the remaining 75% comes from the third party funds that we manage. And then 40 cases are funded 100% by our own balance sheet. The vast majority of those, in terms of committed and invested capital, relates to three historic Australian cases that we value on our balance sheet at cost, and I'll come back and touch on those a little bit later on as well. Finally, you can see on the slide, I've included a table which summarises the total commitments for LCM, for Fund 1 investors and for Fund 2 investors, alongside the amount of capital that we invested in the period and the cumulative capital invested to date into those ongoing 58 investments. And later on, I'm going to come back and talk about our progress in terms of both committed capital and invested capital, because I think those best signal the strong growth that LCO has been delivering over the last five years. So let's move now to talk to the P&L. So here you can see the $56 million of proceeds that we generated from those eight concluded cases with 43.3 million being the proceeds from investing our own capital and $12.7 million being the performance fees that we earned on the third party capital. To date, all the performance fees that we've earned have come from concluded investments in Fund One. So Fund One was launched in March 2020, and to date, seven of the investments in Fund 1 have concluded, all successfully. And so, cumulatively, we've earned over $40 million in performance fees from those successful conclusions to date. At a gross IRR perspective, they translate into an IRR of around 80%. And then in terms of what flows to our LP investors, net of the performance fees and net of all of the costs I think as Patrick mentioned, our LP investors are currently looking at a net IRR of 61%, which we think is a very strong performance. So for the eight investments that concluded in the period, you can see on the third line that LCM invested $23.8 million of its own capital into those cases. And so netted against the $56 million of proceeds, that gives us a net realized gain of $32.2 million. Below the net realized gain, you can see the net fair value impact on the P&L in the period of around $12.5 million, so somewhat comparable to the prior period. If I break that net fair value movement down, there's two key components to it. So the first of all is the fair value in relation to concluded investments that we write off on realization. So that's $30.9 million, which is a negative impact on the line. And then the positive impact is $43.4 million. And that relates to the fair value uplift in ongoing cases as we deploy more capital into those investments. And when I get onto the balance sheet, I'll spend a little time describing our approach to the fair value methodology and why we think it's conservative. So if you take the sum of the realized gains and the net fair value movement, you can see that we had Total income in the period of $44.7 million. And that is down on the prior period. But that simply reflects that the prior year had a greater volume of concluding investments. I think the key thing to focus on is the multiple of invested capital that we're generating on the concluded investments. And as mentioned earlier, that 2.4x multiple that we achieved in FY24, we think is still strong and is consistent with our long-term track record. Below total income, you see operating expenses, which came in at $19 million. That's a 20% increase on the prior period, and it's largely attributable to three factors. First of all, about 12 months ago, we put through a salary increase for all staff of 5%, and it was part of the annual salary review, and that just reflected the inflationary environment at the time. We've also had an increase in headcount revenues, four people over the period, which takes us up to 24 staff in total. And then we've also incurred some consulting fees in the London market as we've focused on enhancing our origination capabilities there. Looking further down the P&L, you'll see finance costs of $10.2 million. That reflects the impact of the higher interest rate environment on our debt facility. So if we bring this all together, it produces PBT of $16 million. million dollars for the period or 12.7 million dollars on an after-tax basis but just looking forward in terms of the tax rate I'd expect the effective tax rate to be 27.5 percent which is the average of the Australian and UK corporation tax rates. So if we move now to the balance sheet So again, starting from the top, you can see we've got cash of $53 million, which gives us a strong liquidity position. And if you look a little bit further down the balance sheet, you'll see borrowings of $61.9 million. So netting those two against each other gives us net debt of $8.9 million at the end of the period, so a modest net debt position. Below cash, you can see we have $15 million of debtors. Around $12 million of that has been collected post-period end. And then the main feature of the asset side of our balance sheet is clearly our investments. And you can see that broken down into two lines. So in total, the investments sum to 243 million Aussie dollars. And that's broken into investments held at fair value of $202.9 million. And that relates to 55 of those 58 ongoing cases. The remaining three cases are those old sort of Australian cases which are held at cost for historic accounting reasons, and that comprises the $42.1 million that you can see there on the balance sheet. Looking a little bit further down, well, actually, let's just pause there. So take that $243 million. So one way for you to think about is that conservative, et cetera, The cash that we've invested into those 58 ongoing cases is $128 million as at the period end. So if you take that 243 and you divide by 128, that will give you a multiple of cash invested at 1.9 times. And if you think about comparing that to our long-term track record of achieving 2.9 times, we think that gives you some evidence that the way that we are fair valuing these investments is conservative in terms of that balance sheet value. So moving down, further down the balance sheet to the liabilities section. So we've spoken about the borrowings. You can see the other balance beneath that is deferred tax and tax payable. The vast majority of that balance relates to deferred tax on the fair value assets on our balance sheet. So effectively by recognizing fair value on ongoing cases, we've created an unrealized gain on the asset side of the balance sheet. So we therefore need to create a corresponding unrealized deferred tax liability in relation to that unrealized gain. The other creditors that you see there at the period end primarily relate to invoices that we've received for case funding that have subsequently been paid post period end. And if you bring this all together, at the end of the period, we had net assets of $188.9 million equal to 94 pence on a per share basis. And it's worth also noting that 94 pence is net of the 2.25 pence per share dividend that was declared with the FY23 results and that was paid in the first half of this year. So let's move now to the cash flow statement. So we've begun the period with cash of $83 million. We generated cash from those concluded investments $56.7 million. We invested just shy of 40 million of our own cash into case funding. And it's worth noting that the typical life of one of our investments is between three and four years. So the cash that we invest into cases is typically spread across several accounting periods. Below that, we have $70 million of operating expenses and $9 million of interest costs. The difference between the amount shown here in the cash flow statement and the P&L is simply accruals. So we have some accruals for operating expenses for professional fees, rents, things like that. And for interest, we have an accrual for the original issue discount on our debt that we accrue for and we'll pay back when that debt is repaid. Below that we have the dividend and the share buyback, so summing just over $10 million in total. And I think as Patrick mentioned earlier on, the buyback is around 70% complete as of today, and that will continue until conclusion later this financial year. You'll also see debt repayments, so we took the opportunity to repay part of our borrowings, around $8 million, that was to reduce interest costs, and then the other cash movement that you see there is tax paid in the UK in relation to successful case conclusions in the prior period. But this leaves us with a strong cash position at the end of the period of around $53 million. So before I close, so we've walked through sort of P&L balance sheet cash flow, giving you a one-year view. I think given the long-term nature of this business, it's more interesting to look at what's happening over a longer period. And so on slide 19, I've set out here the growth in new commitments, committed capital, and invested capital. So new commitments is the new business that we're effectively adding every year. Committed capital is the sum of all commitments as at the balance sheet date for those ongoing cases. And then invested capital is the cash that we've invested into those cases to date. In my opinion, the growth in committed capital and invested capital are the best indicators of the growth that LCM has been delivering over the last five years. So you can see committed capital there has grown strongly at a compound annual growth rate of over 40% since FY19. And similarly, invested capital has grown at a CAGR of over 60% over the same period. And ultimately, it's the returns that we generate on this invested capital that will drive shareholder value over the long term. I think the other thing to note on this slide is you can see the change in mix. So over time, you can see the growth in the third party capital via our funds model. That benefits our shareholders because it reduces the capital intensity for LCM, but it also brings in the potential to earn lucrative performance fees on those third-party assets. And then the last slide for me is slide 20. And this is just showing you how our operating expenses as a percentage of committed capital have been steadily declining over time. So we've driven that growth in the committed capital base. And we think that the operating expenses will ultimately fall below 2% of committed capital. And I would take that as a good signal that we've successfully transitioned to an asset management model on a sustainable basis. So with that.