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Operator
Greetings and welcome to the InvestNet first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Josh Warren, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, sir. You may begin.
Josh Warren
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Josh Warren, Chief Financial Officer of InvestNet. Thank you for joining us on today's first quarter 2024 earnings call. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that our earnings press release, supplemental presentation, and associated Form 10-Q can be found under the investor relations section of our website at investnet.com. This call is being webcast live, and a replay will be available for one month under the investor relations section of our website as well. During the call, we will be discussing certain forward-looking information. This information is based on our current expectations and is not a guarantee of future performance. I encourage you to review the cautionary statement on slides two and three of the supplemental presentation for the potential risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed by the forward-looking statements. Further information can be found in our regular SEC filings. During this call, we will be referring to certain as-adjusted financial measures. Please refer to the appendix in our supplemental presentation for reconciliation of these as-adjusted financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Joining me on today's call are Jim Fox, our Board Chair and Interim CEO, and Tom Sipp, Executive Vice President for Business Lines. On our call this afternoon, we will provide a company update as well as an overview of the company's results during the first quarter. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. During the Q&A, please limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up. You may get back into the queue if you have additional questions. I'll now turn it over to Jim Fox.
Jim Fox
Thank you, Josh. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our Q1 2024 earnings call. We appreciate your time and look forward to highlighting for you the strengths and opportunities InvestNet provides for our clients and shareholders. Let me start with our Q1 results, which represent our focus on disciplined execution. Q1 revenue was $325 million, representing a 9% growth over Q1 2023, and near the high end of the guidance range. Adjusted EBITDA was 70 million, slightly above our guidance range, and representing a 22% adjusted EBITDA margin and approximately 350 basis points of margin expansion when compared with Q1 2023. Adjusted EPS for Q1 was 60 cents, also above our guidance range, up 30% from the 46 cents we reported in Q1, 2023. AUM net flows were 12.5 billion and annualized organic asset growth rate of 12%. Free cash flow in Q1 as always is impacted by seasonality, but improved more than 40 million year over year. Josh will discuss our results in more detail later in this call. As we look forward, InvestNet is in a tremendous strategic position for growth. We are uniquely able to deliver for clients through our connected ecosystem and extensive capabilities. InvestNet continues to be in this leading position because we are executing on what our clients need. We have unmatched scale that the leading wealth management firms, RIAs, and broker-dealers rely on to power their businesses. We are the industry leader by assets, advisors, and accounts. We've invested in our technology and data capabilities connected to the broadest set of solutions. One, we are providing meaningful data insights, over 20 million each day, that enables advisors and home offices to make better decisions and put more assets on our platform. Our technology is industry-leading and connects all parts of the advisor workflow. You see this in client engagement and in industry recognition like the annual T3 survey, where investment finished in the top three in 13 separate categories. Third, our investment platform is the largest in the industry with the broadest set of solutions. Investments, alternatives, insurance, credits, and supported by the leading product producers in the industry. We have a talented, experienced, and aligned leadership team that is driving the next phase of InvestMet and delivering results. All of this is why we are deeply and broadly embedded in our clients and partners, driving the growth and productivity of advisors by providing the leading wealth management platform to the industry. We have connected the pieces of InvestMet to create scale and competitive advantage, which leads to revenue growth, operating leverage, and improving free cash flow conversion. We're focused on execution, delivering greater value for our clients, and that in turn creates value for our shareholders. I'd now like to turn it over to Tom Sipp, who leads our InvestNet business lines for an overview of the drivers of the business. Tom? Thank you, Jim.
Tom
I would like to start today with a very important KPI that underscores our progress. In Q1, we delivered $12.5 billion of AUM net flows into our asset management marketplace. This compares to $30 billion for all of 2023. Now, let me highlight the key drivers of this progress and exciting momentum. The investment wealth management platform continues to be unparalleled in both capabilities and scale. We provide access to the solutions advisors need to provide holistic advice. We are essential partners for our clients, asset managers, and product manufacturers. And we continue to enhance the breadth and depth of our technology capabilities to solidify our leadership position, drive sales, and deliver financial results. Let me provide some context for the marketplace we serve by highlighting some of what we confirmed via our advisor survey. We conduct a survey each year to help inform our roadmap and ensure that our strategy is aligned with what our clients are looking for. I'd encourage you to review the survey deeply when it comes out over the next few weeks, but today I want to call out a few key highlights. The average broker-dealer affiliated advisor expects to increase their fee-based mix by 10 percentage points in the next five years. That's a tailwind to utilization of managed accounts and thus a tailwind to utilization of investment. Most advisors do not want to be a CTO. They don't want to assemble, integrate, and maintain a plethora of point solutions. In fact, roughly half of the advisors that are assembling their own tech stacks today say they would prefer an all-in-one solution. Third, advisors want more seamless workflows. A more unified experience is the primary reason an advisor changes technology providers. This advisor feedback informs our strategy of offering a best-in-class, one-stop technology and fiduciary platform. Investments we've made in the last few years in our proposal engine and managed account solutions position us to attract flows to our platform and accelerate revenue growth in the years to come. These trends align with our focus. Specifically, we have enhanced the planning to proposal process to help the advisor go from a financial plan to implementation of the full set of investments and solutions an advisor needs to holistically service their clients. In fact, in Q1, we experienced the highest usage of our proposal generation capability. This enabled the $12.5 billion of net flows into an AUM marketplace in Q1, as compared again to $30 billion for all of 2023. Finally, within our PMC solutions, Our high network solutions, direct indexing, and tax overlay capabilities have each seen year-over-year growth of more than 38% in assets, accounts, and advisors. Our turnkey asset management program is industry leading. We have over $450 billion of AUM and continue to take managed account share. Operating from an industry-leading position allows us to deliver more functionality, better technology, and deeper integration than anyone in the industry. This is a significant competitive advantage and one that we will continue to press. We work with over 700 asset management partners to deliver for our advisor clients. We are seeing more interest from asset managers to partner with us to provide an even more customized, integrated, and seamless experience. This will positively impact the client experience as well as our economics. This is how we are driving our results, and I want to underscore what those results are. InvestNet during Q1 had revenue growth of 9%. We are serving over 109,000 advisors with over 19.6 million accounts, totaling over $6 trillion in platform assets. We have improved margins, and prudent expense management will remain a focus. Positive AUM annualized organic growth of 12%, handily outpacing growth rates of other large TAMs and wealth managers. AUMA accounts grew 11%, and AUMA accounts per advisor grew 10%. Our client service scores continue to show improvement year over year. So what's next? We continue to enhance the features that drive further adoption and usage of the platform, because that is what drives our top line. We will continue to make it easier for advisors to seamlessly move from planning to implementation as we see the impact of facilitating more client and advisor actions in our flows and cross-sell initiatives. We will be rolling out enhanced outsource trading and model management capabilities to enable greater efficiency for our advisors and investment. We will enhance our unified managed account and unified managed household capabilities which allow the advisor even more ability to personalize portfolios for their clients, but at scale. Jim mentioned earlier the number of insights we deliver to advisors every day. We are incorporating those insights into the tools that advisors use to make them actionable, powering our advisors to be more effective with their clients. Additionally, we will continue to focus on integrated experiences for advisors and clients. We recognize that an integrated wealth management plus custody experience is a key component of a truly connected technology platform. So we are working to deliver the account opening, funding, and servicing workflows between our wealth management platform and custody back office functions in one single experience. We have and always will support a multiple of choices for every channel in the industry to meet the needs of our clients, which will be different depending on their persona. What we're doing is impacting our clients and driving our results. The continuous delivery of enhancements of our technology, tools, and solutions drive discrete revenue opportunities and create the competitively advantaged leading platform. We've connected the components to meet client needs and drive holistic client relationships. Now let me turn the call back over to Josh.
Josh Warren
Thank you, Tom. I'd like to focus my remarks on three things. How the strength of our business translates into our attractive growth algorithm, the operating leverage in our business, and our balance sheet. Our client foundation supports our growth algorithm. The result is growing and durable free cash flow as we expand our offerings and extend through the value chain. Our strategy is consistent. to focus on expanding our footprint among our existing advisor base by delivering mission-critical technology, including both software and solutions. As I have mentioned previously, we do not depend on advisor count growth to drive our growth algorithm or continue to expand our margins. As the advisor landscape continues to evolve, we are implementing differentiated pricing strategies to better focus on growing with our clients and delivering an integrated platform across products. As a reminder, our wealth solution segment generates both asset-based and subscription-based revenues, while our data and analytics segment generates subscription-based revenues only. InvestNet has traditionally defined asset-based revenues as primarily consisting of variable fees for providing our platforms. In our wealth solution segment, across diversified client channels, these pricing constructs provide the breadth of solutions to fit the industry and enable InvestNet to grow. InvestNet has delivered strong and structural organic asset growth measured by our consistent net inflows. We believe that structural growth from consistent inflows represents one of the most enduring features of our franchise, despite variability from cyclical or seasonal factors. We view the inflows into Wealth Solutions asset-based revenue accounts during Q1 of nearly $33 billion as a confirmation of our strategy to expand our relationships with existing clients. Q1 flows demonstrate both InvestNet's positioning as a market leader, as well as specific actions we are taking to grow wallet share with our clients. Although mix will vary from quarter to quarter, we have significant opportunities to continue to go deeper and grow with our longstanding clients with our connected ecosystem of comprehensive capabilities. A couple of call-outs regarding our net flows. Approximately $17 billion of Q1 inflows were related to a longstanding enterprise client, a top 10 regional banking firm, extending their use of our platform to replace an in-house reporting tool late in the quarter. These low-fee assets appear as AUA flows and create a mixed headwind to our overall effective fee rate, which is reflected in our outlook. Our March quarter end numbers... also reflect one approximately $10 billion hybrid RIA. In other words, a firm operating as both an RIA and a broker dealer that has been in the process of leaving our platform for several months. This firm used InvestNet for reporting only and was not a significant contributor to our revenue. We had anticipated this deconversion away from our platform during Q1. Given the longer than anticipated timing, we carried the assets as part of our March results. The net outflow from this idiosyncratic event should be reflected during Q2. During Q1 2024, total asset-based revenues generated by Wealth Solutions was over $202 million, a 15% increase from Q1 2023, supported by improving market conditions. Year-to-date, equity markets have continued to be strong, while the yield curve has showed signs of normalization, despite remaining inverted, as it has been since 2022. Investors often keep cash in their portfolios for liquidity needs and defensive reasons. However, cash balances have remained at all-time high levels given attractive short-term rates where investors are being paid to wait. Investors with large cash on the sidelines run the risk of missing a longer opportunity. As research suggests, time in the market leads to better results than attempts to time the market. Client propensities to hold more assets in cash has created a headwind to our results. albeit one we view as temporary. We believe money invested in the debt and equity markets will help investors accomplish their objectives and be more creative to invest in its financial results. During Q1, our wealth solutions subscription-based revenue of $84 million represented a 5% growth over Q1 2023. Q1 wealth subscription-based revenue included approximately $3 million of FIDEX revenue. FIDEX, a leading marketplace for annuities, was formed in 2018 to enable financial advisors to provide insurance and income protection products to their clients. FITX is integrated into the InvestNet platform. In accordance with GAAP, InvestNet has historically consolidated FITX's operations on our financial statements. In connection with the recent funding round for FITX, with new capital led by insurance company partners and InvestNet clients, During Q2, we anticipate deconsolidating FITX in accordance with accounting rules, reflecting updated governance of that entity. While investment did not participate in this funding round, we remain the largest shareholder in FITX, owning approximately 38% of the company. During 2023, FITX contributed approximately $9 million of consolidated revenue, with approximately 90% of its contribution in subscription revenues. On an overall basis, Wealth Solutions revenue grew to over $289 million during Q1, representing 11% growth over Q1 2023. Turning to our data and analytics business, which generates subscription-based revenues across open banking and alternative data offerings, during Q1, our DNA revenue was $35.1 million, representing an 8% decline from Q1 2023. As mentioned on previous calls, the March 2023 regional banking turmoil created a headwind for that business, and the comparison is relative to a primarily pre-turmoil base. Overall, this business continues its path to stabilization. Some actions we have taken include improving the quality of API exchanges, improving uptime, reduced incident response time, and securing several contract renewals. We will keep all stakeholders updated as this transformation progresses. For DNA, sequentially Q1 represents a modest decline from Q4. The primary source of that decline was in professional services revenue, which has been higher than historical trends during the last few quarters. Relative to Q4, DNA had a less than 1% sequential decline in subscription revenue, consistent with our stabilization efforts. We believe the actions taken will stabilize and orient that business for future growth. Now moving on to expenses. As a reminder, the platform infrastructure investments we have made over the last few years enable us to achieve operating leverage by growing revenues ahead of costs to expand our profitability and grow our free cash flow. As previously detailed, InvestNet's costs consist of a combination of non-controllable and manageable expenses. Our non-controllable expenses include asset-based payments to third parties, which move in tandem with revenue growth and are common for the wealth industry. During Q1, our direct expenses were nearly $127 million, including $118 million of these asset-based costs. However, most of our cost base is manageable. Manageable costs fall into three general categories, compensation-related, whether delivered in the form of cash or stock, non-compensation expenses, and capital expenditures. Because of our scale, we expect an overall year-over-year decrease of these manageable expenses in the mid to high single digits for 2024. Let me walk through the components. As a reminder, during 2023, investment reduced its headcount by 10%, consistent with the conclusion of a period of elevated platform infrastructure investments. For 2024, while we expect our stock-based compensation to be approximately flat year-over-year, We expect total 2024 compensation-related costs, regardless of accounting treatment regarding software development, to be down in the mid to high single digits year over year. This includes all salary, benefits, severance, and stock-based compensation. The second major area of total cost is non-compensation expenses, which encompasses all operating expenses, including first, any direct expenses unrelated to our previously described non-controllable asset-based costs. Second, GNA. Third, non-compensation related software development costs that were capitalizable based on the stage of development or deployment. fourth consistent with our emphasis on free cash flow we consider manageable expenses comprehensively and include several non-discretionary items including income taxes our net cash interest expense and any other economic or cash costs we expect a reasonably similar level for these non-discretionary expenses in 2024 as in 2023. Overall, given our scale, we anticipate our 2024 non-compensation costs will be modestly lower versus 2023, despite inflationary headwinds, and we will continue to focus our expense efforts on this area going forward. The remainder of our total expenses are CapEx, which for Q1 was approximately $2 million, reflecting the timing of spend rather than any variance from our 2024 expectation of approximately $10 million. When we aggregate the three components of our manageable costs, compensation-related, all non-compensation costs, and capital expenditures, we expect our 2024 total manageable costs to decrease overall in the mid to high single digits. As a reminder, this includes both all cash costs, whether capitalized or treated as operating expenses, as well as stock-based compensation. In addition to adjusted EBITDA, which is a useful metric to track our performance, we are committed to providing greater transparency regarding our free cash flow. Free cash flow for Q1 2024 was negative 20 million, reflecting seasonality and an improvement over the negative 62 million during Q1 2023. My and our focus will continue to be on improving this number in 2024. Turning to our balance sheet, consistent with the seasonality observed in previous years, InvestNet's cash position declined during Q1 to $61 million. As of the end of Q1, our leverage ratio, defined as total debt less cash over trailing adjusted EBITDA, was approximately 3.1 times. This ratio represents another modest decline quarter over quarter and approximately a full turn of reduction from this point during the prior year. A tranche of convertible debt, which we pay 75 basis points of interest on, is due in Q3 of 2025. Given our low cost of carry, we intend to continue to be patient and prudent regarding our capital structure. Our fully undrawn $500 million revolver provides optionality as we patiently evaluate market conditions and look for further opportunities to enhance our capital structure. In total, we believe our strong liquidity position and continued deleveraging give us flexibility as we pursue our strategy. We are modestly ahead of schedule with respect to our deleveraging as we continue to look forward from our period of necessary and elevated platform infrastructure investments. We expect to further reduce our leverage ratio during 2024. As mentioned previously, beginning in Q2, we expect to account for FITX as an equity method investment In connection with our expected deconsolidation of FedEx, we have moved those assets and liabilities into separate line items on our Q1 balance sheet. Looking ahead for the second quarter of 2024 and consistent with how we've provided information previously, we expect revenues to be between $337 and $345 million, representing 9% growth over Q2 2023, assuming the midpoint of the range. Adjusted EBITDA to be between $71 and $75 million, The midpoint of our guided range would represent approximately 350 basis points of margin improvement versus Q2 2023, and adjusted EPS to be between 60 and 65 cents. Investment continues to be in its leading position because we are executing on what our clients need and delivering shareholder value. We have unmatched scale that the leading wealth management firms across channels rely on to power their businesses. Our first quarter results are a testament to to our differentiated products, deepening client relationships, and inherent operating leverage in our business. We see tremendous runway for future continued growth and margin expansion from here and look forward to updating you in future quarters. Before we take your questions, I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you to our shareholders, analysts, and the entire InvestNet team. These calls are important milestones for us to share our progress and articulate our vision. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to your questions.
Operator
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. And you may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from the line of Devin Ryan with Citizens JMP. Please proceed with your question.
Devin Ryan
Okay, great. Hi, Josh, Jim, and Tom. Thanks so much for taking the question. Hey, Devin. Hey, so I guess I just want to start on the flows. And you gave a lot of good background there around the strength and the quarter. And I appreciate, you know, there's going to be some nuance quarter to quarter around different things when you hit the enterprise win and then the RIA outflow that will impact 2Q. But it sounds like more broadly, you guys are feeling really good about how the strategy is coming together around flows. And even if we adjust for the enterprise win, it would still be a good quarter there. So, I just want to dig in a little bit more and just get a sense of, like, is something changing in the environment where you're just seeing maybe more momentum or deals are accelerating in the pipeline because counterparties are feeling more comfortable? Or is it really just the strategy is winning out? I'd love to just get more of your perspective on that and then just the sustainability, forgetting that there's going to be some lumpiness quarter to quarter with different idiosyncratic events.
Josh Warren
Sure. Yeah, Devin, thanks for the question. Really appreciate it. And first off, you're right. I mean, let me first point out how proud we are of our flows during Q1. We did $32.7 billion of net flows, you know, purely at a headline level. You've been covering investment for a long time. That's our biggest flow quarter since 2015. It's a reflection, as you say, of the focus and commitment that we have to our clients. But one thing just I want to maybe a couple things to call out to your question. The first is I just want to make sure that one thing that we are focused on not losing sight of, even with a substantial number of $33 billion, is each and every dollar of flow is an advisor who's using the InvestNet platform to drive their business, help someone achieve an objective. But You know, like I mentioned in my prepared remarks, structural inflows are one of the most enduring features of our wealth franchise. The composition, to get into it a bit, that gives us confidence that our clients are doing more with us. And that momentum, in our views, creates a nice setup for future growth. So in the first quarter, to break it down, $12.5 billion of those flows were AUM. That tends to be a higher fee. And then there's an additional $20-plus billion of flows which were AUA. These are lower fee, but they're incrementally profitable business for us. There, as you say, always ins and outs, but being a structural grower means having that track record of net inflows. And look, regarding the AUA, many times AUA activity gives us a foot in the door that could cause other higher revenue margin products down the road. This situation in Q1, the one I described, maybe a little different from that pattern. The $17 billion was a current client outsourcing more to InvestNet, retiring an in-house tool. So think of it as a client using our scale. Very natural for a platform business, one with longstanding clients who are just looking to do more with us. So I'd say in aggregate, Devin, we view that case study, the other case studies that underlie our flows, as evidence of our strategy working.
Tom
I would just add, this is Tom, I talked about the $12.5 billion of AUM flows. That compares to $30 billion for all of last year. That's a combination of our asset manager marketplace, and we have very solid growth. And partnering with the biggest asset managers in the marketplace, they're leaning in more and more with our platform and deploying their sales force and driving flows onto our platform. And then our proprietary products, we're starting to hit scale. And we've talked about high-net-worth solutions, direct indexing, tax overlay products, and those cross-sells and delivering those solutions in an integrated way throughout our technology is working.
Devin Ryan
Okay, terrific, Keller. Thank you all. And then a follow-up just on data and analytics trends. You haven't heard too much quantitative on the outlook there the last couple quarters. Appreciate there's been some impressive lines around maybe strategic things you're thinking about there. But if possible, it would be great to just get a little bit of an update around some of the business drivers and things you've been doing to kind of better position that business and just more broadly how you're thinking about the outlook there as well. Thank you.
Josh Warren
Sure. So I tried to cover a couple of them in my remarks, but we have several initiatives that we're excited about, really with all sort of focus of helping to drive growth going forward. So first step is stabilization, and then secondly, we're reorienting that business for future growth. I'd say we have a variety of opportunities in front of us. And just we're certainly going to keep you updated as these initiatives continue to play out. But some of the ones I mentioned, you know, improved uptime, improved API exchanges, just generally a higher quality business, a higher quality franchise. You know, we're excited about the transformation journey that we're on. And, you know, we view this quarter's results, particularly on subscription revenue, which has been generally flat over the last couple of quarters, as an early return that we are stabilizing that franchise and we'll return it to future growth.
Tom
Yeah, this is Tom. I would just add, you know, we are focused on stabilizing the business, stabilizing, you know, the data sources from our client base and, you know, innovating and creating new products. You know, the... The underlying client activity, you know, throughout 2023 was down, you know, consistent with overall market activity. That we've seen some slight recovery if you look at some of the usage or underlying usage data. But it's really stabilized the business that we have, stabilized the data set, and then we've reduced the cost base to improve the operating margins and then gradually, you know, grow it from here.
Devin Ryan
Okay, terrific. Thanks so much, everyone.
Tom
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Michael Cho with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.
Michael Cho
Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my question. Josh, I just wanted to touch on one of the topics you highlighted. I think you called out, you know, kind of investment approach towards differentiated pricing as you grow with your client base. I think there's been some news during the quarter about maybe some competitors raising prices for some of their products into the RIA client base. Just curious how Investnet is thinking about this competitive dynamic, and maybe you could just kind of help unpack or flush out what you mean by differentiated pricing approach for Investnet solutions.
Tom
Yeah, Michael, this is Tom. I'll start, and maybe Josh can add. So in the RIA space, we have changed our pricing You know, we're considered a premium product, you know, and our pricing is premium compared to our competitors. And we do have pricing leverage, you know, based on the investments that we've made over the past couple years. You know, we have really the best trading platform in that space. And the overall platform and client service, you know, feedback is really, really positive. And our approach has been to bundle, you know, mainly analytics and then integrate and cross-sell managed accounts and create a more holistic relationship with the REA versus just a technology or software relationship. So if you look at just the software, you're seeing higher rates, higher pricing, bundling with analytics, but more importantly, you know, we're cracking open a very, very different, you know, holistic relationship with the firm that has meaningful, you know, upside, you know, opportunities as you then integrate and scale the fiduciary opportunity.
Josh Warren
Maybe I would just add to Tom's point of bundling that which is previously sold separately or that which our competitors need to sell separately. That's a major differentiator for us. But as far as some of the ins and outs of pricing, things like minimums, things like breakpoints, You know, we've been taking a fresh look at it, and, you know, most of the quarter-to-quarter stuff you see is generally a function of mix. As you know, Michael, our contracts are long-dated. Our clients are on long-term contracts, and a lot of these initiatives are going to play out over the course of the next couple years ahead, and that's why we're so enthusiastic about the runway we have in front of us.
Michael Cho
Okay, no, great. Thank you for all that, Tyler. And then just a quick follow-up on free cash flow. You know, you highlighted the seasonality from 1Q. Just kind of thinking through how we should frame kind of cadence of free cash flow for the remainder of 24 and any kind of, I realize it's early, but any kind of initial thoughts or framework around how we might be thinking about normalized conversion ratios as we kind of look beyond the you know, maybe the 25% margin once we get there.
Josh Warren
Sure. Well, you're right. I mean, Q1, like we mentioned, obviously has some seasonality there. That's been evident in the first quarter of 23, the first quarter of 22, and was evident again in the first quarter of 24. But what we were able to deliver as far as improving our free cash flow of $42 million relative to where we were in Q1 is something we're proud of. We're proud of the fact that we are leaving Q1 with more cash on hand and a lower leverage ratio than we were a year ago. With regard to the general flow through, the guidance that I provided as far as our overall cost outlook, that's everything. That's a fully cash-based approach, which is consistent with how we think, consistent with how we budget, consistent with how we are thinking about the company and thinking about the opportunity ahead. So as far as conversion going forward, you know, some of the cash consumers, things like severance, things like one-time restructuring, you should all expect 2023 numbers to not be appropriate run rates going forward, and we'll just keep you updated as we continue to make progress there.
Michael Cho
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Alex Cram with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Alex
Yeah, hey, good evening, everyone. Just following up on the pricing question, but specifically, I guess, related to the guidance for the second quarter, looks like a pretty steep decline in the implied fee rates, quarter over quarter. I assume that some of the one-time changes here in terms of the flows that you pointed out, those two items, just wondering, is that the bulk of it, or... Would you highlight any other specific mixed items that is contributing? And I'm asking because really, if I look at the last three quarters, the deceleration in pricing, again, implied pricing has accelerated a little bit. So just wondering, is there any other underlying trends you would point out?
Josh Warren
No, Alex, you've got it. I mean, the fee rate is declining, but I would say it's declining for the right reasons. These are new revenue opportunities which are consistent with our strategy. From quarter to quarter mix is the primary variable. And I would say the blended fee rate is probably two things, the two headlines. One is just clients holding assets in cash, number one, and then this higher mix of reporting assets that I referred to earlier. Those are the major drivers.
Alex
Figured I'd ask anyways. Thank you. And then just another one. On the first-party managed products, I've asked about this in the past. You certainly highlighted some of the high net worth, some of the managed accounts here as growing faster. But if I look at that number in aggregate, that $40 billion that you're standing at, it's been both on a quarter-to-quarter, year-over-year basis, very much in line with the overall AUM and AUA growth. Look, it's keeping up, but at the end of the day, I think this was supposed to be a big focus area. So just wondering what you need to do to really accelerate that and having those growth rates stand out. And if there's anything else going on where maybe those products are just not getting the right traction in the marketplace for whatever reason. Thanks.
Tom
Yeah, I would say when you look at the data, the high net worth tax overlay and direct indexing Growth rates, as I said in my remarks, are very strong. And if anything, they're accelerating. The 38% plus growth rates in advisors, assets, flows, accounts. Where we're seeing net outflows is in our proprietary models business. And these are models that we created 10 plus years ago. And we created the marketplace and then opened it up with third party managers, which thus created more competition. You know, if you look at it just from that lens. So those third party, those proprietary models have been in net outflows. We've just recently launched our proprietary ETFs and we're recapturing some of those assets instead of them leaving the firm. And they're just less competitive over time, you know, just based on the broad marketplace and other options that are available. But now that we're launching, you know, the ETF business or products and you create an ability to recapture those assets, those outflows will decrease. And then you're going to see the growth from the other initiatives really take hold because we see this high net worth DI tax overlay as very sustainable, persistent growth. So it's been really the drag from that, you know, long-term proprietary models business that's impacting the numbers.
Alex
Fair enough. Thanks, guys. You're welcome.
Operator
And our next question comes from the line of Surrender Thin with Jeffrey. Please proceed with your question.
Surrender Thin
Thank you. I'd like to start with a question about just the data insights engine and the 20 million insights that you're generating daily. Any color on what you're seeing in terms of from an advisor perspective in change of behavior, interactions, how we should interpret that metric and how that's kind of been helping the business so far?
Tom
Yeah, Surinder, I would say a couple things. So, you know, we're generating about 80 different use cases across those 20 million insights. And there's a handful that are really taking hold. So, you know, a couple examples would be tax opportunities, you know, accounts or positions that, you know, we're serving up to the advisor where they could be, you know, they would benefit from a tax overlay capability or accounts that the Advisor is managing, and there may be ways to manage it more efficiently, and we're serving that up both to the home office and to the advisor. And then annuities that may be out of the surrender time period and maybe at a higher fee, and there are replacement products that are more suitable for the client. So when you dive in, there's probably five to ten use cases that are resonating and advisors are using more and more. Another important aspect is delivering these insights where the advisor does business. So it's one thing to develop the insight and then send them an email. We're actually delivering the insights within their core user experience and operating platform. And that will make a big difference over time around the advisor's ability to see an action against that insight. And then we've done a lot of work to deliver those analytics within our financial planning engine. So create a financial plan. come up with a recommendation, and then connect planning to our wealth ecosystem where you can then transact and deliver more fiduciary solutions. So it's a combination of the insight driving the, you know, teeing up the advisor to deliver against the financial plan, but then making it easy to follow that financial plan. And for us, the benefit is more AUM, you know, over time. So we're seeing traction. It's still a lot of opportunity, a lot of greenfield, and we think there's a lot of interest in the insights as we continue to deliver them throughout the platform. Thank you.
Surrender Thin
And then in terms of just when I think about a follow-up on some of the pricing questions here, or just on the AUMA side of the business, the fee rate's been relatively stable when we look over the last, few years. But one of the things is that the AUM percentage has gone up kind of materially from roughly 40% a few years ago to 50% today. But the fee rate hasn't really moved. Any color there? Is there a certain mix shift underneath in the product set that you're selling where it's just slightly lower fee AUM type products that are in that mix now? Or what should I help understand that?
Josh Warren
No. Surinder, I would think of it as even though the mix is moving, as you correctly surmised, between AUM and AUA, you know, AUA and in particular some of our big blocks of assets that are reporting only are really – And then when you look at it all together on a blended basis, you start to see that phenomenon. The reporting assets, those are essential. They enable successful client relationships. They enable a foundation in many respects for clients to do more business with us. But you should think of that as, to a certain extent, dragging down the blended fee rate as when you sort of lump everything together in terms of AUMA into a mix.
Tom
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We have reached the end of our question and answer session and with that, this will conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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