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spk06: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Asset Marks Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct the question and answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. Today's call is being recorded. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Taylor Hamilton, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Hamilton.
spk01: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to AssetMark's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining me are AssetMark's Chief Executive Officer, Natalie Wilson, and Chief Financial Officer, Gary Zyla. Today, they'll discuss results for the third quarter and provide an update to AssetMark's business outlook for the remainder of 2021 and 2022. Following our introductory remarks, we'll open up the call for questions. We also have an earnings presentation that Natalie and Gary will reference during their prepared remarks. It can be accessed on our IR website at ir.acidmark.com. Before we get started, I'd like to note that certain statements made during this conference call are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent our outlook only as the date of this call and actual results could differ materially. Additionally, during today's conference call, we'll be discussing net revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted net income, all of which are non-GAAP financial metrics. Please refer to our earnings press release and SEC filing for more information on forward-looking statements, risk factors associated with our business, and required disclosures related to non-GAAP financial information. With that, I'll turn the call over to my colleague. Natalie, take it away.
spk00: Thanks so much, Taylor, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter earnings call. I hope everyone's doing well today. Starting on slide three, I just wanted to highlight that AssetMark continues to make a difference in the lives of our advisors and their clients, which has positioned us to deliver record results in the third quarter while also continuing to advance our strategy. Platform assets ended the third quarter at a record $86.8 billion, driven by an all-time high in net flows of $2.8 billion. This marks the third consecutive quarter of record-setting organic growth. Households and engaged advisors ended the third quarter at all-time highs. The growth of our households and engaged advisors points to the value of our platform as well as our expanded total addressable market, which we discussed on previous calls. We've also experienced record results for both top and bottom line financial metrics. Our net revenue was up a little less than 40% year-over-year to $101.5 million, making this the first quarter that net revenue has exceeded $100 million. Adjusted EBITDA was up more than 50% year-over-year to $44.8 million, and adjusted net income was up more than 60% to $29.9 million. Through the third quarter, year-to-date adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income are more than those for the full year in 2020. Turning to slide four, our ecosystem empowers growth-oriented, independent, fee-based advisors of all sizes with the highest quality capabilities and services. We deliver a fully integrated technology platform, personalized and scalable service, and curated investment solutions. We provide everything an advisor needs to run a successful and growing business. While our value proposition seems simple, we are the only participant that's providing a comprehensive open architecture outsourced solution for IBD-affiliated advisors, REA, and hybrid advisors. This alone separates us from other providers in the industry. In order to execute on our strategy, we are focused on five key components, as we talked about last time. Similar to last quarter, I will discuss each of the five key areas of our growth and our strategy in detailed progress detailed progress we're making in each. The first component of our reframe growth strategy on slide five is to meet advisors where they are, catering to varying affiliations and new and growth-oriented or lifestyle advisors. Last quarter, we discussed how advisors continue to migrate to the RIA channel and how At the Mark Institutional, or AMI, looks to capitalize on the secular trend. Today, I want to discuss our target demographic and provide some color around how AcidMark Institutional is designed to help these advisors grow. Data from Cerulli shows that smaller RIA firms, or those with less than $500 million in assets, are growing at a much slower rate than larger RIA firms. As both business owners and practitioners, these smaller RIAs face many competing priorities and demands on their time. Therefore, they need to strategically outsource core parts of their operations in order to remain productive and profitable. In fact, findings from our 2019 impact of outsourcing study shows that advisors who outsource benefit from stronger client relationships, higher acquisition of new clients, increased client retention, and stronger asset management growth. Asimark Institutional offers these smaller RIAs and outsource solutions to help them grow. While still in the early innings, I do want to provide an update on Asimark Institutional. We are building a strong pipeline of qualified leads, and in this past quarter, we've expanded our Asimark Institutional leadership team to increase our focus on growing our RA offering. Lastly, Asimark Institutional was officially approved to participate in a leading custodian's RIA referral program. Now turning to slide six, the second component of our growth strategy is to deliver a holistic... deliver a holistic... differentiated experience to advisors and their clients, providing an end-to-end, easy-to-use platform designed to create meaningful conversations between advisors and their clients while also saving advisors time. As we discussed the past few quarters, we are building a financial wellness program with solutions to support meaningful wellness conversations between the advisor and their client. We greatly advanced our financial wellness vision this quarter by closing Voya and beginning our initial integration. One of the strategic rationales for the acquisition was to accelerate our financial wellness vision and expand our ability to attract advisors in core and adjacent channels. We are making progress in realizing this rationale. We've added a single sign-on from eWealth Manager, which is our advisor portal, allowing advisors to sign up for a free trial. We've been hosting live demonstrations of buoyant for all of our advisors. And our sales team is actively using Income Planner, a tool powered by Voyant, in income planning conversations between advisors and their clients. And lastly, we started discussing Voyant with several large broker-dealer partners. The early reaction from our advisors to Voyant has been fantastic. At our Platinum Summit in August, advisors mentioned wanting an alternative to current financial planning options and felt that Voyant was the perfect solution as the only financial planning tool that shows advisors both goals-based and cash flow-based planning side by side and allows them to show the trade-offs between the two. We are excited about our advisors' initial reaction to Voyant and plan to complete the integration of Voyant's financial planning capabilities in the fourth quarter. A third component of our growth strategy is to enable advisors to serve more investors across the wealth spectrum, varying life stages, and across generations. Let's turn to slide seven, where I want to share two exciting additions to our platform. First, this quarter we launched the Asimark PEP, or Pooled Employer Plan. According to our annual share and wallet study, retirement is one of the largest areas where advisors are doing business away from Asimark. We've been diligently focused on enhancing our retirement offering, which accounts for about $1.6 billion in platform assets at the end of the third quarter. The PEP allows us to provide a more complete retirement solution for our clients. According to Cerulli, 51% of employers with 50 workers or fewer do not have access to a retirement plan, while more than half of Americans either own or work for a small business. The PEP helps to close this retirement plan coverage gap for smaller employers by allowing employers of any size, industry, or location to band together in a single 401 plan. By doing so, smaller employers benefit from economies of scale and lower cost while also gaining access to diversified investment and enhanced fiduciary support normally reserved for larger plans. The PEP, while still very new, further enhances our retirement offering, and we are already seeing proposals from our advisors. Second, we launched a suite of separately managed accounts last quarter. This launch included 12 SMAs from 10 best-in-class investment managers, many of whom are new to the Asmar platform. They include large-cap growth, value and core, dividend equity, and fanatic growth strategies, among others. As investor preferences continue to evolve, separately managed accounts enable advisors to personalize clients' portfolios with targeted asset class exposure and manage their tax efficiency, as well as offering increased transparency through direct ownership of securities. This new suite of SMAs complements the wide range of investment solutions on the Asmark platform and can be combined in a single account with other eligible solutions. Since launched in early September, our advisors have submitted over 1,500 SMA proposals in the amount of about $375 million. The fourth component of our growth strategy, as seen on slide 8, is to help advisors grow and scale their businesses by offering turnkey advisor solutions and programs. This quarter, I want to talk a bit more about one of our established programs, business consulting, an offering which we believe is a huge competitive advantage for Asimark. The mission of our business consulting team is to help advisors build a business that is sustainable and successful so that they can help their clients achieve their financial dream. Our business consultants support our advisors and their businesses at every stage of growth through scalable guidance and by identifying opportunities to increase value, drive growth, and boost their firm's performance. In the simplest terms, our business consulting team helps drive advisor growth in business health, which in turn helps drive our company's growth. Over 500 advisors representing a quarter of our total platform assets are taking advantage of our business consulting services right now. These advisors exhibit higher engagement and lower overall redemption rates. Currently, our business consultants are actively reaching out to advisors to help them through their advisor growth plan, which basically means our consultants are helping advisors take a look at their goals for 2022 and consulting with them on how to achieve those goals. Turning to slide nine, the final component of our growth strategy is to pursue strategic transactions by adding capabilities and assets that improve our advisors' ability to serve their investors and expand their businesses. We are more deliberately focused on M&A than we have ever been before. We continue to look at every opportunity that comes across our desk and are in active dialogue with companies that we feel would be a strong fit for our platform. In addition, we continue to be a very disciplined buyer. And while M&A is serendipitous, we remain well positioned to execute on M&A as evidenced by our $50.4 million of cash on our balance sheet and $135 million remaining on our credit facility. In summary, the third quarter was the best in our company's history. We posted record results and have advanced our strategy of empowering our advisors to continue to grow while attracting new advisors to the Asimark platform. I'm now going to turn over the call to Gary to take us through a deeper dive in our quarterly results and to provide some color on our outlook for the remainder of 2021 and 2022. Thank you, Natalie.
spk02: And good afternoon to all those on the call. I'll let you all know we're in our office today, sitting together for the first time in a year and a half, which is quite exciting. As Natalie discussed, third quarter results were outstanding, highlighted by an all-time high. platform assets and record numbers for net flows, revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted EPS. As usual, I will start with a discussion of our platform assets, then talk about our revenue, expenses, and then earnings. I will conclude with an update on our 2021 outlook and introduce our outlook for 2022. Starting on slide 10, third quarter platform assets were a record $86.8 billion, up 29% year-over-year. This growth reflects record net flows of $2.8 billion, partially offset by a negative $0.6 billion market impact net of fees. While the market has rebounded in October and so far in November, we remain, as always, cautious with our market outlook, given macro, political, and economic uncertainties. Year-to-date, annualized net flows as a percentage of beginning-of-year assets, 12.5%. Strong organic growth is continued in October as we will announce net flows of $890 million and platform assets north of $90 billion in our AMK report, which will be released tomorrow. Let's now turn our attention to our advisor metrics. In third quarter, we added 201 new producing advisors, or MPAs, for the second consecutive quarter. We are encouraged by the growing quantity and quality of new advisors on our platform. Our total engaged advisors at the end of third quarter was 2,749, an increase of 351 advisors since the third quarter of 2020. Our engaged advisors now make up 92% of our platform assets. Growing the number of engaged advisors on our platform is crucial to driving further growth of our business and its financials. Now let's turn to slide 11 to discuss this quarter's revenue. Entering the third quarter, our assets were at $84.6 million, leading to record revenue of approximately $140 million. As you know, we focus our revenue next on related variable incentives. in the third quarter of 2021, our net revenue of $101.5 million was up 38% year-over-year. This was driven by asset-based net revenue, which was up 36% to $95.5 million, and the introduction of revenue from Voyance, which was in total $3.5 million. Voyance revenue falls into two categories on our income statement. First, Voyance contributed $3.2 million subscription-based revenue, which represents revenue from Boyan's financial planning and wealth management software solution. Second, Boyan's consulting and training revenue was $0.3 million for the third quarter. This revenue falls into the other income line on our income statement. As an aside, we are so excited to welcome the awesome Boyan team to the Aftermark family. Turning to slide 12, I want to provide some perspective about the revenue opportunity in front of us. As discussed in detail during our first quarter earnings call earlier this year, our total addressable market from an asset perspective is about $6.3 trillion. To convert this to net revenue TAM, we assume the average rate AssetMark earns in each asset category. Added to this is buoyant non-asset-based revenue TAM about $500 million. This results in a $22 billion total revenue TAM. Asset Mark has approximately 2% of this overall revenue TAM with a long runway for future growth. Slide 13 details our year-over-year net revenue walk. As the waterfall shows, net revenue is off year-over-year driven money impact for asset growth, which generated $23.7 million in additional net revenues. Also adding to our increase in net revenue is a $2.8 million reduction in asset-based expenses. As a reminder, this is an ongoing saving primarily driven by restructured agreements with providers that we first realized last quarter. We also realized fee compression due to ordinary mid-shift of $1.4 million or approximately 0.65 basis points. This is below the one basis point we planned for each year. As previously discussed, subscription revenue from Voyant added $3.2 million in additional revenue, and Voyant drove the increase in our other revenue category as well. Lastly, spread-based revenue decreased $0.5 million year-over-year due to the decline in our average yield from 33 basis points to 27 basis points. Slide 14 shows asset-based net yield trends over the last five quarters. Because surveillance revenue is not asset dependent, we will stop discussing total net yield and only focus on asset-based yield moving forward. Our third quarter 21 asset-based yield of 45.1 basis points is up 0.6 basis points year-over-year driven by 1.3 basis points related to the measures we have taken to reduce our asset-based expenses offset by 0.65 basis points from feed compression which we have previously discussed. Now, let's discuss the census shown in slide 15. We continue to manage our expense base so it does not outpace our revenue growth. Total adjustment expenses increased 22% year-over-year to $100.6 million. Operating expenses were up 29% year-over-year to $56.7 million, given by a $6 million increase in compensation and a $16.8 million increase The increase in compensation expense is largely driven by two factors. First, our variable sales incentive costs increased as a result of our strong sales in the quarter. It's important to note that while our strong sales results increased our compensation expense this quarter, we will realize the revenue benefit from it in upcoming quarters. Second, we added 153 employees over the last year, or about 17% of our current employee count. Costing a third of this increase is the addition of our buoyant team members. The increase in SD&A is largely driven by a variety of incremental factors, including an increase in in-person events, travel, specialties, and increased costs associated with higher volume. Hence, growth does not reflect any material impact from the macro inflationary environment, but we are expecting a modest impact from that in 2022. Before I run through our expense adjustments, I do want to point out the addition this quarter of an adjusted P&L in our earnings release, which will hopefully provide further clarity on our adjusted numbers. We have gotten feedback that this will be helpful, and of course, we are here to serve. In the third quarter, we added back a total of $17.3 million pre-tax, which is comprised of four items. First, $7.9 million in non-cash share-based compensation. We accept non- cash share-based compensation in the fourth quarter to be approximately $6 million and a 2020 quarterly run rate between $3 and $4 million. The second adjustment to expenses is $5.9 million of amortization expense, of which $5.1 million is related to our 2016 sale, while the additional $0.8 million can be attributed to recent acquisitions. As a reminder, for bonding purposes, most of the expense in the 2016 sale will be fully amortized by year-end. Third, $0.9 million in acquisition-related expenses, primarily associated with our acquisition of Boynton OBS. And lastly, $2.3 million related primarily to reorganization and integration costs. Now let's turn to slide 16 to discuss our earnings report. Third quarter 2021 adjusted EBITDA with a record $44.8 million, up 53% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 32%, up 460 basis points year-over-year. Approximately two-thirds of our margin improvement this year is the result of favorable macroeconomic conditions, with the additional one-third as a result of our ability to scale our business by focusing on expense management while still investing in future growth. Our recorded net income is $12.3 million compared to $8.6 million in the third quarter of 2020. This marks the second consecutive quarter positive gap income. Our adjusted net income through the third quarter was $29.9 million, 40 cents per share. This is based on third quarter that we share out of 74.7 million. Our adjusted effective tax rate in the third quarter was 23.5%. lower than the 26% used in the third quarter of last year. This decrease is driven by tax efficiency we created in 2020. For further color, please see the adjusted net income walk on slide 21. Turning briefly to our recorded third quarter balance sheet, let me update you on our cash and debt position. We ended the quarter with a little over $50 million in cash and $135 million available on our revolving line of credit. Now we discuss the cash on our balance sheet the ability to generate cash, and our low debt positions as well to pursue future M&A opportunities. Now let's turn to slide 17 and discuss our expectations for 2021. We are raising our guidance based on our strong organic growth in the third quarter. In just a few months left in the year, we expect net revenue for the full year to be between $377 million and $379 million, representing 27% year-over-year growth. We expect adjusted EBITDA for the year to fall between $157 million and $158 million, a growth rate of 37%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin will expand about 300 basis points for the whole year. We are extremely pleased with the year-over-year growth in 2021. Now let's discuss our early tape in 2022. Please turn to slide 18. Our financial model only starts with asset growth. We expect our organic growth to be 10 plus percent in 2022. Assuming a modest market risk of 3.5%, we expect our assets to grow between 13.5% and 15.5%. Driven by the strong momentum from 2021, we expect our net revenue growth to be in the high teens to low 20s. This assumes the asset growth is slightly offset by about one basis point of fee compression, which is our regular expectation. We expect our operating expenses, which consists of compensation and SG&A, to increase in the high teens. For clarity, we anticipate this year-over-year increase to be driven by four items. First, about a third of the increase is due to volume. Second, about 25% of the increase is due to the full-year impact of buoyance. Third, about 15% is expected to be driven by your return to travel and in-person events. And finally, the last one-third is driven by increased investments, specifically into new products and talent acquisition. As a reminder, our disciplined expense growth will not outpace our revenue growth. As always, we are focused on realizing improved margin on our revenue and growing earnings. We expect our adjusted EBITDA to be up 20-plus percent year-over-year, and we expect margin expansion of around 180 points for the year. With that, I'll hand it over to Natalie for concluding remarks.
spk00: Thank you, Gary, and thanks to everyone again for being on the call today. We are well positioned to end the year strong and to enter 2022 with a lot of momentum. I look forward to sharing future updates at upcoming conferences and on subsequent earning calls. This concludes our prepared remarks today. I'd like to now turn the call back to the operator to begin question and answers.
spk06: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you're using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We will pause it briefly to allow questions to register. The first question is from Patrick O'Shaughnessy with Raymond James. You may proceed.
spk04: Hey, good afternoon. So you mentioned in your prepared remarks that you're more deliberately focused on M&A today than ever before. How would you characterize the deal pipeline right now?
spk00: Thanks so much, Patrick. So the deal pipeline is pretty good right now, but you know this better than anyone, I'm sure, that valuations are incredibly high right now, and there's a lot of competition for any acquisition opportunities that come across. uh as i mentioned in my remarks we're aggressive but also a very disciplined buyer and we have parts of the market that we think are attractive and would add to our value proposition to advisors and in those cases we are attempting to bid as aggressively as needed to win but at the same time not overstep we want to make sure that our acquisitions are are accretive over the short to medium term got it appreciate that and then
spk04: It seems like maybe the light is – we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here in terms of the interest rate environment, and the market is now starting to expect one or two hikes in 2022. How are you guys thinking about asset marks sensitivity to interest rate increases at this point?
spk00: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for the question, Patrick. I'm going to hand that one off to Gary. He can take you through the details of what we've modeled into 2022, what we haven't, and what our thoughts are in terms of our sensitivity.
spk02: Hey, Patrick, how are you doing? You know, so just in terms of the outlook for 2022, we are assuming no interest rate increases in the numbers we shared with you. You know, our view of the dot plot is sort of that if something does happen, it will happen later in the year. And so there is upside that we would be very excited to partake in. When we think about rate increase, you know, most of our cash offering, Patrick, is that non-discretionary cash. And so AssetMark will generally realize about 80% of the rate increases with about the other 20% or 25% going to the end client in terms of crediting rates. We do offer a high-yield cash account, which is a subset of our overall cash. In those accounts, the client earned a lot more. It would be more like a 50-50 split. But that is a smaller subset of the overall cash. So overall, I'd say about three-quarters. We would partake in about three-quarters of whatever the rates go up.
spk04: All right. Terrific. Thank you.
spk06: Thank you. The next question is from Ryan Bailey with Goldman Sachs. You may proceed.
spk05: Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking our questions. Natalie, I was wondering if we could come back to slide 12 and the potential revenue opportunities you're seeing. I was hoping you could sort of walk us through the interplay between the growth in the IRA market relative to IBD and sort of how that revenue opportunity splits over time. And then I think relative to that, what are your sort of medium-term aspirations for AMI? Like, what would the offers be, the functionality, and how do you think you would –
spk00: Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing, you know, I'm sure you're aware of is that the RAA segment, the RAA, the hybrid, and the independent segments, those are the three segments of advice that are growing the most quickly. And they're growing, the RAA segment specifically, RAA and hybrid are growing, I think it's four points faster than the next fastest growing segment. And so, I mean, clearly that's being driven by a wide variety of things. Investor demand for independent fee-based advice. Investors have never been more aware of the need for an advisor that's a fiduciary than ever before. This is driven by regulatory changes and the media that was generated by regulatory changes with Department of Labor's fiduciary role in Reg BI. In addition, advisors' practices, advisors' businesses, are valued much, much higher if they're independent and C-based and recurring than they are in more of a commission orientation. So many advisors, for business reasons, are choosing that channel. And then last but not least, advisors in the REA channel, they have a lot of potential partners or resources to use to help them run effective businesses. And so it's really important that here at AssetMark, we have services that are geared towards RIAs and independent advisors. It's part of the first part of our growth strategy, making sure we meet advisors where they're at. And for us to have a complete solution for RIAs, we need to have the ability for them to trade and manage their own model, which we launched with the AssetMark managed portfolios offering in March. We need to have a community of RIAs so that advisors can share best practices, build relationships among other REAs. And we launched that in May of this year with the first AFMARC Institutional Summit, and then much, much more frequent interactions between that community. We have to make sure that we have the products and services that REAs need as it relates to investments. You know, that's a journey you're always on. But we began that journey with the launch of Asimark Institutional. We're looking into other high-priority products for RAAs. And then the outsourcing solutions that RAAs need at a smaller size so that they can scale and compete. And we talked about that earlier in our earnings call. What differentiates us from other providers is that we can provide an incredibly high level of service and support for our AAs to help them grow at relatively small sizes. And so when you look at us relative to the custodians, the custodians have much, much higher minimums for the same level of service and the same level of support we've been provided after mark. When you look at the broker dealers offering to RIA, those RIAs are typically affiliated with them in some way or using their home office platforms. We're completely open architecture. We don't ask our advisors to use our proprietary solutions in any way. So we also benefit from being open architecture. Last but not least, our advisors are very completely independent from us. They're our clients. And so we fight to serve them at the highest level every single day. And you compare us to the aggregators in the market. They clearly have an ownership position in those RAAs. And so the RAA has to make a decision about their own capital structure to join those firms. So that's how we differentiate ourselves from the three largest competitors in the market.
spk05: That was incredibly helpful. Thank you, Natalie, for providing that context. Follow-up for Gary. I'm going to be the annoying person once again on this quarter. Does the guidance for the full year of 21 imply that EBITDA and net income are going to be down for 4Q relative to 3Q? And then maybe for 22, can you help us think about how much of the growth year-over-year for revenues in EBITDA are coming from buoyance?
spk02: Sure, so I guess in the first question, you're reading it correctly. You know, in fourth quarter, we do believe revenue will be from the prior quarters of revenue is growing as it should. But we are investing more in fourth quarter. You know, as we've come through the year, we have held off on some investments we want to make because we want to make sure that we are, again, measuring our spend. But we anticipate significant compensation costs in fourth quarter, as well as investments in some of our key product initiatives heading into 2022 at the right time make those investments. So you should expect to see that next quarter, which is why the total year numbers that we showed you are what we have targeted all year long, which is why we're satisfied with that. We are focused on the 300 basis points margin expansion that we're providing year over year or generating year over year. But, you know, corner to corner, it is one.
spk00: Hey, Ryan. This is Natalie. I just want to add something to what Gary said there, which is, As you may recall, Asimark builds in advance. And so as the year progresses, we get more and more certain about what the revenue total will be at year end. And so part of our discipline, the reason we can expand our margins year after year, is that we invest more as our certainty rises. And so you should always expect later in the year for our investments in future growth to go up.
spk02: Got it. Thank you. Ryan, go ahead. I forgot what you asked about 2022, Ryan, my apologies.
spk05: I was just asking, revenue and EBITDA contributions from Voyant, sort of like roughly what percentage increases we're getting from that?
spk02: Oh, right, right. I have the numbers in my head. I'm trying to translate them to the percent increases. So, I would say, let me do the math real quick on that, Ryan, and I'll come back to you. I do have the numbers in my head, but I don't know how the percent, how it affects the percent increase on my head. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.
spk06: Thank you. The next question is from Jerry O'Hara with Jeffrey. You may proceed.
spk04: Great. Thanks for taking my question this afternoon. I think you've made a couple of references to increased investment around new product and perhaps initiatives. I was hoping you might be able to kind of flesh that out a little bit and either talk about it thematically or if there's any additional context you might be able to provide that would be helpful.
spk00: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for the question. So, I mean, clearly our investments and new initiatives fall in the categories of the five elements of our growth strategy. So as it relates to meeting advisors where they are, we're going to be investing in new channels, exploring new channels and deepening our penetration in the channels that we're already in. And to do that, we need to, you know, add to the services that we offer. For example, with our RAA offering, We want to make sure that we add to our advisor-managed portfolio offering, add new security types, add new capabilities, et cetera. As it relates to delivering a holistic, differentiated experience, we're investing deeply in financial wellness and the future of eWealth Manager, which is our advisor and investor portal. Make sure that we are saving advisors time, increasing their effectiveness, and delivering a great experience for investors. And then as it relates to enabling advisors to serve more investors, we're expanding our offering to include high priority share of wallet areas. So we'll expand into more separately managed accounts. We'll expand into more customized solutions, direct indexing, SRI, the high growth areas in the market. As it relates to helping advisors grow and scale their businesses, we're investing in the outsource solutions that we've talked about in the past, whether it be administrative services outsourcing, tax transition outsourcing, expanding on our marketing outsourcing. We're investing in those areas. So those are the key areas of investment for us.
spk04: Okay, that's helpful. And then perhaps one for Gary. I think you mentioned prepared remarks. Can you remind us what sort of the steps you've been taking to reduce asset-based expenses are and what, you know, how we might be able to sort of see that flow through next year's guidance? Thank you.
spk02: Sure. So what we discussed, I mean, we discussed this a little bit last quarter as well. We have universal providers, whether they're strategists, broker-dealers, universal providers that we pay asset-based fees through. So we'll get into which contracts and whatnot were renegotiated. But through that process, as we keep growing, we continue to find scale, great points and contracts, et cetera. And so the changes that went into place last quarter reset our basis points on assets. And you probably should use that modeling going forward. And yes, Marilyn?
spk00: I was just going to say, when you're finished, you might want to give the buoyant numbers. So, Ryan.
spk02: Sorry. I'm very on note. So, did that answer that question there? Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. And to Ryan's question, I'm sorry, I did the math. It's between both revenue and EBITDA, the growth number that we were showing there for 2022, about three to four points of both the revenue and the EBITDA growth are due to avoid a full year contribution next year.
spk01: I think we can go on to the next question in the queue if there are any operators. Thank you.
spk06: Thank you. The next question is from Michael Young with Truist. You may proceed.
spk03: Hey, thanks for taking the question. I appreciate the numbers on buoyant contribution for 2022 as well. I was going to follow up on that and just kind of see if there's any other further ways to kind of break down the growth year over year. It looks to be pretty strong headed into 2022 coming off of a strong market performance and tougher comps. from 2021. So just, you know, trying to think about sort of the new initiative contributions and in particular, you know, should we expect a more sizable contribution from PEP in 2022 or is that more of a 2023 initiative?
spk00: Yeah, so as it relates to the pooled employer plans, we are in the very early innings of that offer. So while we're really happy with the early growth, I wouldn't expect it to be material until 2023 at the earliest. And then as it relates to buoyant, you know, as it relates to buoyant and buoyant growth, we're really pleased that their growth has been a balance of growth outside the U.S. in the enterprise market, Growth outside the U.S. in the independent market in the U.K., in Canada, and Australia. And then the beginnings of growth inside the U.S. because of relationships that we're helping buoyant form either with independent affiliated broker-dealer advisors who use Asimark, RAAs who use Asimark, and then broker-dealers who Asimark has relationships. So really, really excited about the balance of the growth with Voyant. And we continue to monitor and make sure that we're investing as needed to help that part of our business be as successful as it can possibly be inside the U.S. and outside the U.S. And then I think just related to growth and growth in 2022, you know, we're getting a lot more experience as it relates to Ackermark Institutional. And we've expanded that team and scaled that team. We'll be returning to the road, which While we've been incredibly effective in growing AcidMark while we've been in a remote workforce environment, for new producing advisors, for those clients who are looking to make a wholesale decision to use a new platform, to partner with a new platform, meeting face-to-face is important. Obviously, we had mentioned buoyant growth and how excited we are about that. And we're also investing in other sources of new producing advisors in 2022. And so there's just some other areas of growth in 2022 that we're very excited about.
spk03: Okay, great. And then, you know, just as we looked at 2022, there's some potential tailwinds, like was mentioned earlier, interest rates or stronger market performance. We were already off to a good start this quarter, which could affect next year, etc. Should we think about, you know, additional upside from other opportunities as being spent on, you know, continued kind of platform improvements and technology upgrades? Next year, or would some of those drop to the bottom line? Just kind of general thoughts on how you would kind of manage that throughout the year.
spk00: Yeah, so I'll start with the general thoughts, and then I'll leave it to Gary to add some specifics. But every quarter when we bill in advance, we look at opportunities to do both. So we look at opportunities to invest in our infrastructure, so investments for future scale, opportunities to invest for future growth. If we'd like to accelerate an investment that's already underway or we feel there's an opportunity we'd like to add to our mix. or if we feel like it's more appropriate to drop the improved revenue to the bottom line to expand our margins and also provide more capital for future M&A. So every quarter, we're very disciplined about having conversations where that next dollar should go. That's part of how we make sure we're growing revenue over the medium and long term while we're also expanding margins every year. And Gary, I don't know if there's any specifics you'd like to add.
spk02: Well, I would just add, Michael, that, you know, as we see tailwinds from the market right which help our revenue profile you know now is right as a business we're making that decision regularly in 2021 you know our margins increased enormously because we let some of that fall the bottom line but we did take some of that to the best i don't know exactly 50 50 or something but there's some We'll make a decision along the way, but we're going to let some fall on the bottom line in this panel, if we should, but we're going to take the opportunity to invest in the future. And so the upsides of the market or interest rates will be both invested in as well as help improve our earnings.
spk03: Okay, great. And if I could just sneak one last follow-up in on the M&A front. You know, you're rolling out into a lot of new TAMs, new markets. with a lot of new opportunities. So should we think about kind of the bias in terms of M&A and M&A dollars spent towards kind of strategic, you know, product expansion opportunities versus consolidation opportunities as there have been in the past or any other color kind of just in terms of direction of M&A that you guys are pursuing?
spk00: Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, as you know, we have a two-pronged strategy capabilities M&A, which allows us to pull forward delivery of essential products and services to our advisor clients and then scale. And we love scale M&A because it allows us to invest more in our client relationships. It allows us to invest more in building over time. And we like both, and we like to invest in both. We're potentially a little more focused on capabilities in that there are scale acquisitions that also give you capabilities. And right now, advisors have never needed more support from their partner than, you know, ever in the past. And as a result, we need to make sure that our platform is expanding to serve these new and evolving outsourcing needs. But either, we feel really, really strongly about either because they both, in the end result, they both allow us to deliver more for our clients over the long term.
spk03: Okay, great. Thank you.
spk06: Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Patrick O'Shaughnessy with Raymond James. You may proceed.
spk04: Sorry about that. Thanks for taking my follow-up. So your net new engaged advisors in the quarter was 58, which is still reasonably healthy, but it was your slowest quarter, I think, of the past six. I'm trying to figure out what do we make of a little bit slower quarter in terms of adding engaged advisors versus the really strong growth that we saw in your flows in the period?
spk02: yes you know it's an interesting observation and and um part of the engaged advisor growth uh has a market tailwind um obviously and just on the edges but the market was down in the quarter and so that does cause a little you know headwind in terms of that number right on the edges but it certainly does come into play that the market was down in total for the quarter um so i You know, I think we generally look longer term because we can't look at the quarter periods like that. And so, you know, when we talk about the year-over-year, the 350 over four quarters, I think that's a better way to divide that by four and say, on average, you're going to get somewhere 90 to 100 a quarter or something to that effect. I think that's how we would look at it, Patrick. And then that view is supported by the fact that net flows are really strong before, right? And so we really are making a lot of progress in our major projects.
spk04: Okay, I appreciate it. Cool, thanks.
spk06: Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I will pass the conference over to Natalie for closing remarks.
spk00: Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you taking the time to learn more about Atomark, and we look forward to talking to you again in January or February, I guess.
spk02: Thank you.
spk06: Goodbye. That concludes the Asset Marks Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines.
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