Record plc

Morning all, thanks very much for joining us this morning to discuss records for your results. Just before I hand over to Jan to kick things off, I could just kindly ask everyone to stay on mute for the duration of the presentation, and then we'll get to Q&A at the end. Without further ado, Jan, over to you.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our full year earnings presentation. My name is Jan Witte, Chief Executive at Record. And with me here today is Steve Cullen, Record CFO, and also Richard Heading, who will be taking over from Steve on the 1st of July. I'd like to thank Steve for his tremendous contributions to Record over the last 20 years, and also for his support to me as I've moved into the role of CEO recently. Today, in addition to the financial results for the year to March, 31st, which Steve will present shortly, I'd also like to give an update on the strategic progress and some of the actions we've taken during my first three months as CEO. So we'll start with an overview. So FY24 was another successful year for Echoword. Assets under management reached a new all-time high of 102 billion as at March 31st. Revenue grew by 2%, assisted by another strong year of performance fees. And there was performance fees in both enhanced passive hedging as well as across our FX Alpha products. In assets under management, we launched two new funds under our custom solutions product category, which are protected equities and GP stakes. And By the end of the year, they'd already reached an aggregate NAF of 320 million assets under management, which brings our total AUM on the asset management side to 4.7 billion US dollars. We also continue to make progress towards the launch of our infrastructure equity fund, which is expected to take place this year and which we're very excited about. Following my initial assessment of the business, since taking over as CEO, we've also taken a number of important steps to focus our product portfolio and to align, in particular, our IT strategy to our priority projects. As we've explained in our pre-closed trading updates, following a detailed review of IT investments, we've recognized a £1.9 million write-off on technology costs, And we've also discontinued our digital asset efforts. We'll cover that in more detail shortly. Our underlying profit margin was maintained at a very healthy 32%. And the board has proposed an ordinary dividend of 4.6 pence in line with our dividend policy, which aims to pay a progressive ordinary dividend in the range of 70 to 90% of EPS. and a special dividend of 0.6 pence, bringing our total dividend to 5.2 pence, a small increase on the dividend paid last year. Again, Steve will provide more detail on the financial results shortly. So here, I'd like to start with some context, particularly for anyone who's new to records. So Rekord has a track record built over 40 years of supplying high quality bespoke solutions to a large institutional investors. Our clients are public and corporate pension funds, as well as foundations trusts and other funds. And all of them have both complex currency needs as well as alternative investment needs. Since 2020, We've grown our assets under management by over 70%, and the majority of that growth has come from clients in Europe, but we've also built now a significant presence in the US. Clients value, about record, the combination of our ability to handle large, complex mandates, while also being small and flexible enough to address their unique needs. We do that through relentless focus on on client service backed up by sound processes and a deep expertise, which creates a proposition that works. And that shows particularly here, if we look at client longevity, our bespoke approach and focus on client delivery is what builds enduring client relationships. So more than half our clients have been with us for over six years and just under half of our assets under management are from clients who've been with us for over 10 years. These enduring client relationships are testament to our dedication to client service, which is a key strength of record and which we're proud of. So that's where the business is today. But the question is, what changes are we planning to make? So if you look at this slides, One of the first things I've done as CEO is to take a look at our strategy in terms of our product range. We have narrowed our focus to six distinct product categories encompassing both the currency and the asset management products. And it's all categories where we can offer a unique value proposition and where we can be best in class. One of the first things also you'll notice here is that digital is not on this chart. As I alluded to earlier, following the review of our product range, we have taken the decision to discontinue our digital asset investments. And we no longer believe this offers a commercially viable proposition with a significant upside to record, but we did not incur any material costs in pursuing or exiting these businesses. The products we see here cover a spectrum of needs from risk management to return seeking. First, on the very left-hand side, there's passive hedging, which aims to reduce portfolio volatility by removing currency risk, where we use derivatives to create a symmetric position to the currency risk in client portfolios and thereby remove currency risk from client portfolios. in its entirety. Enhanced passive hedging is an evolution where we add value by exploiting market inefficiencies in addition, but we do that without affecting the consistent protection that clients get in the passive hedging range of products. Hedging for asset managers, shown here as number two, was developed as an extension of our passive hedging expertise, but which has now become a standalone product where we have a dedicated team that focuses on the needs of alternative asset managers, where we offer bespoke passive hedging solution. And there we have a particular focus on liquidity management, which is of particular importance to these types of clients. Active FX hedging, which we sometimes refer to as dynamic hedging, has been at the core of Rekord's products for over four decades. Dynamic hedging aims to do three things. Firstly, reduce currency risk embedded in a portfolio through active management of the hedge ratios. Secondly, minimize cash flows. And thirdly, add value against benchmark. And that's one of the big differentiators here compared to the passive range of products. And then finally, there's Rekord's FX Alpha range of products, Where in particular in our multi-strategy product, we have all of the FX4 return drivers combined in a single balanced portfolio, which targets consistent returns in all market conditions. On the asset management side, our flagship product is the EM Sustainable Finance Fund with over 1 billion in assets. And this fund is a trailblazing FX-centric sustainability-led approach to EM local debt investing. In addition, we have a number of custom solutions, which includes our GP Stakes Fund and our Protected Equities Fund. But as mentioned before, we're also working towards a large launch in infrastructure equity and private credit, and we'll communicate these when they're ready to launch. When looking at this product range, it's also interesting to look at the trends in addressable markets, which we observe, which supports our efforts in these products. And then firstly, on the left-hand side here, we do observe a continued growth in pension fund assets under management, which is a result of aging populations, longer life expectancies, and also consolidation across the pension fund industry. But it means that large pension funds with international assets will continue to need what we do, and they'll continue to need protection against inflation. valuation fluctuations to meet their pension requirements. And then secondly, on the right hand side, we see that over the past decade, there's been a significant growth in asset allocations into private markets. And again, that trend is expected to continue. Our hedging for asset managers product addresses the specialist needs of these private asset managers, and they're often more complex currency hedging needs. And then also, again, as described on the previous slide, our asset management product range and our positions products where we benefit from this trend, not only as a service provider to the needs of alternative asset managers, but also where we become a product provider of our own. And that includes the emerging markets sustainable finance fund, which supports private investment into EM and frontier countries through de-risking specific investments on the currency side. But it also includes the earlier mentioned anticipated launches in infrastructure equity and private credit that again sit on this spectrum. If we now look forwards, then our next step will focus on delivering on three critical strategic objectives. First, we aim to deliver organic growth. And the steps we've taken, for example, this year, we've expanded the US team and in Europe, Andreas Kuster has joined us as CEO of EMF Frontier Investments. which is a role that also includes leading the Emerging Markets Sustainable Finance Fund, which, by the way, also now reaches its 30th anniversary. And again, that means that it now becomes eligible as an investment to a lot of people and becomes accessible through databases and searches where previously the track record wasn't. wasn't yet long enough. And Andreas was also instrumental in developing the founded partnership with us originally. And so in that sense, he's, he's exactly the right person for, for this job. And we're delighted to have him on the team. Secondly, we, we were focused on improving our quality of earnings. So as I've mentioned, we've reorganized our business around three, around six product categories, and we've seen some alternatives altogether. And, I'm confident that with this clearly defined responsibilities and accountability backed by targeted investments in people, systems, and brand, we will see an improved quality of earnings from this portfolio of products. And we also expect to see improved operational efficiency and client retention as a result of that. And I also want us to see, I want us to attract new clients in these product categories. Lastly, there's operational excellence. So Rekord has a proven proprietary operational framework. However, we do need to take steps to optimize that platform for our core products and in particular also to align our IT investments with our strategic objectives. And then, yeah, following the review of IT, we've appointed new IT leadership and expanded our in-house development capabilities. This will help us build an even more stable and scalable platform to support our core products. So as you see, we focused on six distinct product categories supported by two market trends, and we've set ourselves three strategic objectives. It is early days in my time as CEO, and my review of our product range and operational platform is ongoing. It will take a little time to finish this work, but I anticipate giving a more detailed update later this year, and our progress and future outlook on the business will be covered again then. Before I hand over to Steve to take you through the financial results, let me first hand over to Richard to give a few words of introduction.

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

Thanks, Richard. And good morning, everyone. I think we'll run through some financial headlines. But first, I think I'll repeat, I think in order to better represent the underlying performance of the business this year, we're presenting the results on an underlying basis. This excludes the impact of the 1.9 million impairment on the intangible assets. following the review of our IT development portfolio, which Jan mentioned earlier, which is obviously a one-off item, non-cash item. So on this basis, we feel it's more sensible to look at the underlying mechanics of the business or financials of the business. And on that basis, the operating margin was maintained at a very healthy 32%. Turning to assets under management, I think you can see on the left-hand chart that we've seen a good growth in our AUM for the year, they grew 17% and driven primarily by a combination of net inflows and positive asset value increases and we'll take a look a little bit further at those in a second. Revenue growth was more muted at 2% year on year, linked in part to one large client shifting their portfolio from a multi-product strategy to a lower margin passive strategy. The revenue impact of that for the year was approximately 0.8 million. On an annualised basis, that's an impact of about 3 million per annum. So that was a little bit of a bump in the road for us this year, but it slightly hides the growth that stands behind that for the year. As already stated, underlying operating margin was unchanged from last year at 32%. Costs have been managed in line with revenue growth, despite continued inflationary pressures, particularly on salaries. Underlying profit before tax increased by a percent to 14.8 million, which on a statutory basis was down by 12% to 12.9 million, obviously as a result of the previously mentioned impairment. Just drilling down a little bit more into the movement in assets under management, the chart shows the split Of the 14.5 billion, again, around 17% increase in assets under management from 87.7 at the start to the record high of 102.2 at the end of the year. Net inflows of 6.8 billion were predominantly still in the hedging business. Although, as Jan has already mentioned, we've started to see well contraction with initial flows into two new funds of approximately 320 million as at the end of the year. And again, positive equity market valuations also drove an additional 6.9 billion increase for the year. What does that mean in terms of sort of the income statement? There's obviously a lag on some of the AUME movements versus the revenue. But if we look at management fees, they grew by 1%. Again, notwithstanding the reduction of approximately 0.8 million as already mentioned. for that one particular client that changed strategy during the year. Performance fees, once again, very strong, flat year on year, albeit now shared between our enhanced passive hedging product and our FX Alpha product, both contributing 2.9 million in performance fees, which is an excellent, excellent performance result for us. In terms of overheads, increased marginally by 2%. Again, reflecting continued inflationary increases, albeit now reduced since the prior year. As we all know, the inflationary environment is starting to settle down a little bit. So we're hoping not to have huge impacts of inflation going forward. In terms of operating profit margin, again, on an underlying basis, the business has performed well in delivering a healthy operating margin of 32%, which is in line with last year. Just a word on the impairment. It was a write-off of £1.9 million and we previously announced this prior to the year end and it was linked to the decision to change the IT strategy and hence consequently impair previously capitalised IT development costs which resulted in the non-cash cost to the income statement of £1.9 million. I think it's briefly worth mentioning tax. We've obviously been hit with a slight tax increase this year Corporation tax rate went from 19% to 25%. It's probably worth noting that on an underlying basis, without any change to the tax rate, our earnings would have shown an estimated 6% increase year on year. In terms of cash, cash generation, once again, incredibly strong. We started the year with cash of 14.5 million. We added 15.3 pre-tax cash profits. which after tax and dividend payments, the closing cash balance was up 21% to 17.5 million. Looking at the balance sheet and capital, as a reminder, our first priority when looking at the balance sheet is to ensure adequate regulatory capital and liquidity needed for the day-to-day operations. A regulatory capital requirement has increased in the last three years, which reflects the growth in the business, but we've continued to maintain a healthy surplus. The next priority is allocating the right level of investment to maintain our market-leading technology and operational infrastructure in order to grow the business on top of the strong foundations that we've already highlighted. This might include investment in new teams for products where there's a lag between recruitment and fund flow, but we balance this against continuing to deliver an attractive operating margin, which again this year on an underlying basis was the healthy 32%. Lastly, we intend to pay a dividend consistent with our current dividend policy, which aims to pay an ordinary dividend in the range of 70% to 90% of EPS. Consequently, we've increased the ordinary dividend to 4.6 pence from 4.5, and we've also announced a special dividend of 0.6 pence, meaning on a total dividend basis, we've increased the payment marginally from 5.18 pence last year to 5.2 pence this year. And I think Finally, on the financial outlook, in terms of outlook, our strong cash generation and consistent, robust capital position provide a solid platform for the next stage of strategic development and growth. We expect management fees to be broadly flat this year, reflecting the full year impact of the change in strategy, again, from the client mentioned earlier on, from one of the large clients that changed strategy, which will offset expected new business growth in the current year. We don't provide guidance on performance, especially at such an early stage in the current year, but feel that the current range of expectations seems sensible at around £2 million. As we progress through the year, we'll be better placed to offer further guidance. On costs, again, this is something of a transitional year as Jan finalises his strategic priorities. However, although we're making additional investment in internal IT development capabilities, costs will be carefully managed in line with management fees, and are expected to be broadly flat year on year. We believe the actions that we are taking this year to enable us to accelerate growth beyond FY25 and we'll provide an update on strategy and medium-term growth plans later in the year. I'll now hand back to Jan for his closing remarks. But just before I do that, this is my final earnings presentation after almost 21 years. So I'd just like to say I thoroughly enjoyed my 21 years at record. I offer my very best wishes to Richard as my successor as CFO and also to Jan and the rest of the senior management team. I know they will do an excellent job in taking the business forward into the next phase. Thank you.

Yeah, so to summarize, we start FY25 in good shape. We are now more focused on a well-defined and complimentary set of products where we have a competitive advantage and where we're confident that we can win. And we're building a specialist asset management firm with a significant value add for our shareholders over the medium term. We have a balance sheet strength and core cash generation ability that can support our plans. And our assets under management are at an all time high that comes also with a strong pipeline of opportunities. I'm delighted to be leading record. I'm excited by the opportunities we see, and I look forward to updating you on our progress later in the year. We'll open up for questions.

Ray, I see your hands up.

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

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

Thank you. Thanks. Rob, please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for the presentation. Just quickly on the core products, is there nothing in the hedging suite that you're going to drop? So it's pretty much as we had before? There's no impact from in there?

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

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

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

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

Thanks, guys.

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

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

Thank you.

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

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

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

Okay. Thank you very much.

Rob? Rob, yeah, do you want to?

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

I would happily say, I think, certainly from my point of view, I think that's behind us. I think that was probably one particular um outlier where you know we we needed to change things um that's not saying that you know that the things aren't going to change but i don't i don't foresee any any material um sort of uh impacts going forward on on that side brilliant i think i just want to say to you it's uh been a pleasure by the way the last few years it has wishing you all the best thank you very much appreciate that right

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

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

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

Thank you. That now concludes today's presentation.

Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks very much.