Janus Henderson Group plc Ordinary Shares

My name is Kaziz and I will be your conference call facilitator today. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Janice Henderson first quarter 2023 results briefing. All lines have been placed on mute during the presentation portion of the call to present any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answers period. In the interest of time, questions will be limited to one initial and one follow-up question. in today's conference certain matters discussed may constitute forward-looking statements actual results could differ materially from the project projected in the forward-looking statement due to the number of factors including but not limited to those described in the forward-looking statements the risk factors section of the company's most recent form 10k and other more recent filings made in the set sec Janice Henderson assumed no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. Thank you. It is now my pleasure to hand the call over to Ali Dibaj, Chief Executive Officer of Janice Henderson. Mr. Dibaj, please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today on Janice Henderson's first quarter 2023 earnings call. I'm Ali Dabaj, and I'm joined by our CFO, Roger Thompson. In today's call, I'll start with some thoughts on the quarter before handing it over to Roger to run through the details. After Roger's comments, I'll provide a progress update against our strategic initiatives, and then we'll take your questions following those prepared remarks. Turning to slide two, market conditions have remained volatile and difficult to navigate. Recession fears, higher interest rates, banking sector worries, particularly regional banks, and increasing cautious market sentiment have all contributed to an uncertain market environment. Even with this market backdrop, we are pleased to have delivered a good set of results this quarter. Assets under management increased 8% to $310.5 billion due to positive markets, FX, and $5.5 billion in net inflows. The quarterly flows are from improvements in all channels. Significant inflows into the institutional channel, are the result of the hard work and dedication of teams across the firm, as well as nascent confidence among some of the most sophisticated clients and consultants in the world that our firm is on the right track. Last earnings call, I said that we would expect to deliver intermittent quarters of neutral to positive net flows as an indication that our strategic plan is taking hold, which is what happened this quarter. And while we are encouraged by the net inflows, one quarter does not make a trend. We are not at a point where we can consistently deliver positive flow results from quarter to quarter yet. For example, we need to rebuild our institutional pipeline, which takes time, our retail flows continue to be negative, and as part of our fuel for growth, there will be pockets of unprofitable AUM that we will look to exit, which will impact flows negatively. Again, there's reason to be encouraged by the efforts of our talented and hardworking Janice Henderson team as manifested by our flow result this quarter. and there's still much work to be done to deliver organic growth over the long term consistently. We continue to expect one to two quarters of positive flows over the next one to two years. Turning to investment performance, it is solid in aggregate, with 70% of assets ahead of benchmark on a three-year basis. It's during difficult times like these when our clients and their clients need our differentiated insights, investment discipline, and world-class service the most. We are in a period where money is no longer free and going forward, differentiating between the good companies and bad companies, the haves and have-nots will be the key to generating alpha. This is what our world-class investment teams in equities, fixed income, multi-asset, alternatives, and more around the world do, and it positions us well to deliver the best possible investment outcomes for our clients and their clients. Net-net, our financial results are good, our strategy is starting to take hold, We have much work to do to become consistent, and we have a strong and stable balance sheet. I'll now turn the call over to Roger to run you through the details of the financial results.

Thank you, Ali, and thank you again to everyone for joining us on the call today. Turning to slide three in investment performance. Investment performance versus benchmark is solid and improved over Q4, with at least two-thirds of assets beating their prospective benchmarks over all time periods. While we're pleased with the results, which includes the balance strategy moving back above benchmark on a one year basis to go along with its strong long term performance, the one year fixed income performance still has work to do. Fixed income performance has improved over the first three months of 2023, but the one year number continues to be impacted by the historically tough year for bonds in 2022. Importantly, the longer term periods remain very strong. Investment performance compared to peers continues to be competitively strong. with 70%, 61%, 81% and 90% of AUM in the top two Morningstar quartiles over the one, three, five and 10 year time periods. Slide four shows company flows. As Annie mentioned, net inflows were $5.5 billion compared to $11 billion of net outflows last quarter. This is our best quarterly result in quite some time. Although we're pleased with the result, Our goal is to deliver consistent organic growth over time, and we're not there yet. Turning to slide five for a look at flows by client type. Net outflows for the intermediary channel was $700 million compared to $3.4 billion in the fourth quarter. The improvement is attributed to significantly better results in the US, whilst a mere decline compared to the prior quarter. We've told you that U.S. intermediary is a key pillar in our strategy of Protect and Grow, and Ali will give you some more detail and information about that later. This quarter, several strategies were positive, including the AAA CLO ETF, global equity income, our mortgage-backed security ETF, overseas, and U.S. mid-cap growth. For U.S. mid-cap growth, we previously told you that performance was strong, and this return to inflows was the first quarter of positive flows, since the fourth quarter of 2019. In the EMEA region, a risk-off sentiment and higher interest rates are impacting results, particularly in the UK. Institutional net inflows were $6.9 billion. Recall on last quarter's earnings call, I said that we are winning new business in institutional and that I had no new large redemptions to tell you about. The gross sales came from a number of sophisticated institutional investors into several different strategies, including $4.1 billion across a range of enhanced index mandates from a sovereign client, $1.7 billion into Australian fixed income from a large global reinsurer, and $1 billion into global multi-sector fixed income from another sovereign investor. Reiterating what Ali said, the quarterly fundings represent a meaningful portion of the late stage pipeline, and the team is working to replenish and build a sustainable pipeline, but it will take time. In addition to the strong gross sales, the quarter included unusually low gross redemptions. We'd anticipate a higher redemption rate going forward, all else equal. Finally, net outflows for the self-directed channel, which includes direct and supermarket investors, was $700 million. Slide six is flows in the quarter by capability. Equity net inflows in the first quarter were $3.3 billion, compared to $7.5 billion of outflows in the prior quarter. As I mentioned on the previous slide, the result includes approximately $4 billion from an institutional funding into enhanced index strategies, which are part of our diversified alternatives capability. This was partially offset by continued but significantly lower equity outflows from our retail channels. Net inflows for fixed income with $3.6 billion compared to $1.9 billion of outflows in the prior quarter. We are encouraged that despite the challenging short-term investment performance in fixed income, we have a breadth of product that is able to capture flows across multiple channels and regions. Several strategies contributed to positive fixed income flows in the institutional channel, including Australian fixed income, global multi-sector fixed income, US buy and maintain credit, and multi-asset credit. In the intermediary channel, fixed income ETFs have positive flows of $780 million in the quarter, led by the AAA CLO ETF and our mortgage-backed securities ETF. Total net outflows for multi-asset were $800 million, driven by the balance strategy within the retail channels. Whilst the net outflow is in part due to 2022's short-term performance, the medium and long-term performance remained very strong. And as I said, the one-year metric is now back above benchmark, adding to its very strong long-term numbers. Finally, net outflows in the alternatives capability was $600 million, primarily from the absolute return strategy in the UK and continental European retail. Moving on to the financials, slide seven is the US GAAP statement of income. And on slide eight, we explained the adjusted financial results. Adjusted revenue decreased 5% compared to the prior quarter, primarily due to lower seasonal performance fees, which were partially offset by higher adjusted management fees. Net management fee margin for the first quarter was 49.8 basis points, which is lower compared to the prior quarter. The decline is due to mix shift resulting from the large institutional wins being at lower fees than our blended fee rate. In the near term, our success in institutional will impact our blended fee margin, but over time, we continue to anticipate a stable net fee margin as we execute our strategy. Compared to the same period a year ago, the net management fee margin increased four tenths of a basis point, which is counter to the fee rate declines at other peers. First quarter performance fees of negative 15 million are due to US mutual fund fees. Outside of US mutual funds, we have minimal AUM subject to performance fees in the first quarter. For the second quarter, we estimate aggregate performance fees of negative five to negative 10 million. This includes approximately negative 15 million from the US mutual fund performance fees, which are partially offset by other performance fees driven primarily by UK investment trusts. Looking at the full year, all else equal, we estimate aggregate performance fees could range towards the more negative of our current range of negative 35 to negative 45 million. This includes roughly negative $60 million from US mutual fund performance fees. Clearly, the result will be dependent on future performance. Continuing on to expenses. Adjusted operating expenses in the first quarter were $278 million, down 1% from the prior quarter. Adjusted LTI was up 17% compared to the prior quarter, largely due to seasonal payroll taxes triggered by annual vestings in the quarter. In the appendix, we provided the usual table on the expected future amortization of existing grants for you to use in your models. The first quarter adjusted comp to revenue ratio was seasonally higher at 50.1%. This higher rate is primarily due to the payroll taxes on annual LTI vestings at the beginning of the year reset of payroll taxes and retirement contributions, in addition to lower performance fees. Adjusted non-comp operating expenses decreased 8% compared to the prior quarter, primarily due to lower G&A expenses partially offset by the anticipated increase in marketing spend. Lower than anticipated non-compensation cost in the quarter is due to timing of our expenses. Full year 2023 operating expense expectations remain unchanged. They are adjusted compensation ratio in the range of mid 40s, adjusted non-compensation percentage growth of mid to high single digits compared to the prior year, which suggests significant acceleration in our non-compensation costs for the remaining three quarters of the year as we execute our strategy. Lower first quarter non-compensation expenses are temporary, as savings realised to provide fuel for growth have occurred sooner than the reinvestment in the business. Going forward, we anticipate non-compensation expenses to increase, reflecting areas of opportunity we discussed last quarter, including marketing and advertising in our US intermediary business and investments supporting our other strategic initiatives. Additionally, we expect amortizing previously capitalized costs through the G&A line of our P&L related to the order management system transformation project once the project goes live late in the second quarter. Moving to adjusted operating income for the first quarter, that was $106 million, down 14% over the prior quarter. First quarter adjusted operating margin was 27.5%. Finally, adjusted diluted EPS was 55 cents. The quarterly EPS benefited from mark-to-market on seed capital and other investments coupled with interest income. Skipping over slide 9 and moving to slide 10 and look at our liquidity. Our balance sheet remains very strong during this period of market volatility. Cash and cash equivalents were $830 million as of the 31st of March, which is down from the end of 2022, primarily from the payment of annual variable compensation. The first quarter cash position is typically our lowest given seasonal cash needs. Compared to the same period a year ago, our cash and cash equivalents are 6% higher, reflecting our conservative and purposeful approach to capital management in order to maintain balance sheet flexibility during this uncertain economic environment. We have a strong liquidity position and will continue to balance the capital needs and the investment opportunities of the business with returning capital to shareholders. Based on the ongoing market volatility and opportunities we see in investing in the business, organically and inorganically, at this time we do not anticipate buying back shares via an accretive programme in 2023. We will continue to return cash to shareholders through a strong quarterly dividend and the Board has declared a 39 cents per share dividend to be paid on the 31st of May to shareholders of record as at the 15th of May. With that, I'd like to turn it back over to Ali to give you an update on our strategic progress.

Thanks, Roger. On slide 11, we provide an update on some of the progress made during the quarter against our three strategic pillars of protect and grow our core businesses, amplify our strengths not fully leveraged, and diversify where clients give us the right to win. In protect and grow, we've talked previously about the importance of protecting and growing our US intermediary business. As Roger mentioned, We are encouraged by the early progress in the US intermediary business, including the first quarter flow results. In April, we launched a national and local brand campaign. I know some of you have already seen or heard the advertisements that will span print, digital, and other media. Promoting the Janis Henderson brand is something new for us and a change from what we've done in the past. The data analyzed tells a compelling story that brand matters. There are a lot of great funds out there, but if the brand isn't relevant, it's difficult to capture flows. The national brand campaign will be active through the end of the year, and we're excited by its potential. Additional progress made in U.S. intermediary includes selectively upgrading the talent and increasing wholesaler-client engagement, including the acquisition and use of data. Under Amplify, we've talked about our institutional and diversified alternative businesses before. In the institutional business, we've been restructuring coverage to be more aligned to different client types, helping us to better serve their needs through greater specialization. We've already made some new appointments and other professionals are joining in the coming months. In diversified alternatives, which includes multi-strategy hedge funds and enhanced index funds, we talked last quarter about a strong pipeline entering 2023. This pipeline translated to double digit percent growth in AUM compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. Now turning to diversify, we continue to look actively to buy, build, or partner. We have a strong pipeline of activity and the current environment is creating opportunities. As I said previously, we will be disciplined in identifying where to buy, build, or partner. We want people who are like-minded in terms of culture, investment mindset, and client service. Finally, underpinning our strategy are cost savings to provide the fuel for growth. We are committed and on track to deliver the $40 to $45 million of the previously communicated cost savings and have concrete plans to reinvest the savings back into the business on behalf of our clients and their clients. This includes the examples I discussed of the recently launched brand campaign in the US, selectively upgrading and adding talent across the firm, and better aligning our client coverage. As Roger mentioned, these expenses will accelerate in the coming quarters. In conclusion, I'm proud of the progress manifested this quarter. We delivered positive net flows, solid investment performance, good financial results, and continued to execute on our strategy, including providing the fuel for growth to reinvest back into the business. The quarterly flow results, while encouraging, is not an inflection point yet, and we still have much work to do. We are in the early days of executing our strategic plan, and the path to achieving consistent results will not be linear. Our focus continues beyond controlling what we can control to deliver desired outcomes for our clients, shareholders, employees, and all our other stakeholders. Let me turn the call back over to the operator to take your questions.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press Start followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, it is Start followed by 2. As a reminder, in the interest of time, Questions will be limited to one initial and one follow-up question. So our first question comes from the line of Mike Brown of KBW. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. So, Ali, you noted that the pipeline of M&A activity is robust here. Can you just contextualize, you know, what you're seeing there, what you're thinking about, you know, from a strategic perspective in terms of opportunities and how are seller expectations progressing here? It sounds like the opportunity set is quite good, but just, you know, curious how those conversations have been evolving this year. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike. So, yeah, the... M&A activity is quite high these days. There was a little bit of a lull, I think I mentioned that a couple quarters ago, and now very much to your point, there is a lot of opportunity that's out there. Expectations are becoming a little bit more realistic, not everywhere, not for everybody, but certainly we're seeing some opportunities out there. Now remember, we're going to be looking at many things, almost everything that comes through. There's probably not a deal that happens that we don't at least know about, but we're going to be very, very disciplined in deciding what we buy what we perhaps build internally, or certainly what we partner with external folks as well. And the reason for that isn't just to make sure we deliver for our clients, make sure we deliver for our shareholders as well. It's very, very important to make sure we are client-led in our M&A plan. You've heard me say that before. We want to make sure that we diversify where we have the right to win, and that's really going to be client-led. So it is robust out there. It's tough to obviously determine what timing something will happen, but we are hopeful that, you know, something matches what our client needs are and what our abilities are, and so we'll bring that forward. Now, I don't want to suggest that M&A in and of itself is a strategy. It most certainly is not. It's supporting our strategy around the protect and grow and find first buy. What's really important, really exciting, is we don't need M&A to grow. We don't need M&A over time, right? Again, set this quarter aside, but we don't need M&A to get to where we want to be in terms of our growth trajectory. That's because we have great businesses internally. Think of our U.S. equities franchise that we have as an example that has shown extraordinarily good performance over short, medium, and long term. We can build that business and improve that. So M&A is a useful tool to support our strategy, but we have a great set of core businesses we want to expand and grow, and you're seeing signs of some of that right now.

Okay, great. And just switching gears to the outlook on the fixed income side for the industry, clearly we're seeing flows picking up there. How are you thinking about that opportunity for Janus and how are you positioning the firm to win your fair share of the industry flows?

Sure, I can start and I'll pass over to Roger for more details. You're correct, fixed income is a big topic of conversation with our clients. If you think back historically, there really have always been three reasons why one would invest in fixed income. One is diversification. Two is for regulatory or capital charge perspectives, purely if you're an insurance company. And three is yield. Now, for a number of years now, we all know that yield was not one of the drivers of investing. And so now it is. And it's exciting. It's an exciting time for us that has a very high-performing, particularly over the medium and long-term performance measures, fixed income business. Our clients are asking us about it, and we have a broad suite of products across the board in fixed income to deliver on our clients' needs, whether it be in a short-duration form like JAAA or vanilla ETFs, whether it be in core plus areas like FlexBond, Develop World Bonds, even JMBS, which is another ETF that is CMBS, RMBS. Or just risk your assets, multi-asset credit, multi-sector income, those types of forms. So we have a panoply of products to deliver on our clients' needs in a world where fixed income is becoming much more relevant. And we are very much positioned to deliver that to our clients in our strategy.

Yeah, I don't think there's a lot more to add on that, Ali. As you say, it doesn't seem to be a sort of common thread on where we're seeing demand from clients, but the great news is that we've got products that align with their demand in many areas.

Okay, great. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you. Our next question comes on the line of Patrick David of Autonomous Research. The line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I thought your comments on the redemption rate being abnormally low was interesting, which is not exactly what we've seen from some of your comps. What do you think drove it looking so much lower? And then why are you so confident it's going to get worse again?

Look, it's a great question. So if you take a step back and disaggregate the quarter and the drivers of what we see It was clearly from a flow perspective a solid quarter, and you can just aggregate that in a few ways. So some things will be repeatable, some things we don't think will be repeatable until we are consistently delivering on everything that we need to deliver for our clients. One of them, as you mentioned, is very much lower outflow rates. We have to just look at our history to see what we've been outflowing, and you can do that as well as I can, and this quarter was a little bit better. is it all because of all the great hard work that we're doing from a business perspective and we have been doing hard work, we have been improving our interactions with our clients? I think you could say that. For sure, there's some element to that. But one has to admit that there's some serendipity in that as well. Serendipity in terms of timing of inflows, but also serendipity in terms of clients in some ways waiting and seeing, waiting and seeing what we're doing from a business perspective and what the new strategy is going to bring. I would say that some of the benefits of the inflows came from clients who were waiting to pull the trigger, waiting to see if the strategy is on track. And I think, you know, at least in this quarter, they've decided that some folks were waiting that our strategy is on track and they're willing to pull the trigger. So, look, we'll see what the go forward suggests. We're not suggesting that, as I mentioned a moment ago, that One quarter creates a trend, but we're pleased with the hard work across our firm. We're pleased with the interactions we have with our clients, the activity levels. We're seeing some improvement in some of the underlying markets from a market share perspective, but it's going to take some time.

All right. Cool. Helpful. And then a broader question. I'm sensing in my conversations over this quarter that Australia is coming up a little bit more in money in motion and Australia is becoming a bigger and bigger opportunity. but with a lot more barbelling between passive and alts. So I think Janice is kind of uniquely positioned to take part in that. Are you seeing the same thing? What products do you think are best positioned to benefit from that? And then on the other hand, any large back books of AUM there that you think could be at risk from that money in motion?

Thank you. Patrick, yes, we are seeing Australia have money in motion. You know, we want to make sure we capture a fair share of that. we do have both local, so to speak, products that are catered to that marketplace. Think about our Australian fixed income business. Think about some of our sustainable products that are down there as well, and others. We think we can certainly deliver on some of the needs and take advantage of some of that money in motion, and we're getting some of that money in motion. To be fair, we're also getting some of those products being exported to very sophisticated clients outside of Australia as well, given the strength of the skill sets that we have from an investment perspective in Australia. There's clearly going to be areas where we're going to lose out on that as well. We're going to lose out on folks looking for other things than what we have, but we think the net of it is that Australia's business is extraordinarily strong. We continue to deliver on what our clients' needs are, and we do see opportunity of money in motion, particularly at our market share in that region.

Our next question comes from the line of Daniel . The line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. Wanted to follow up on your comments about exiting some unprofitable AUM and maybe talk about what strategies or where regions that that's coming from. And then also given the kind of success in the institutional channel this quarter, and you mentioned lower fee, but if you could put some you know, framework around how to think about some of these mandates in terms of that relative to the overall fee rate.

Sure. Thanks, Dan. So first on the culling, so to speak, look, we've always had an ongoing discipline at Dennis Henderson of looking at different mandates, different pieces of the business, and getting a sense of whether they're profitable, whether they're as efficient as they should be, and looking at that very carefully over the years. I think as you've heard from us before with Fuel for Growth, which is creating fuel to be able to invest back into the client, we want to make sure that we're even more disciplined on that, even more focused on the ongoing review of profitability and efficiency across the firm for different mandates. We are going to be surgical. We're going to be deliberate. but we wanted to call it out as it's not something that's insignificant. To your point, does it have a fee rate correlation to it? It might, but it also depends on how much it costs to service some of these functions and strategies. So we just want to be mindful of that and call that out for you all.

I think just to add to that, Adam, as you said, the decline is sorry sorry pat as you said the decline is due to you know these large fundings from some sophisticated institutional clients into some um lower fee products which is which is uh where we are today over time we expect to see that continued success in institutional uh that will be in a blend of products uh and as we see continued growth in our in our intermediary business over time uh we'd expect to see our fee rate uh normalize or stabilize as it has done. And again, I just remind you that over the full year, our fee rate is actually up four-tenths of a basis point from this time last year.

Understood. Thank you. And I guess, Roger, just to follow up a clarification on the guidance for performance fees, are you assuming the performance is flat from here as you think about the full-year guide, or is there some assumptions of beta or improvements?

Yeah, we assume relatively flat performance from here. So performance will be what it'll be during the year, but that assumes basically flat performance.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Siganpula of Bank of America, Maryland. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Al, and congrats on the strong flow quarter. Can you walk us through the plan you've developed to build the institutional pipeline? What I'm looking for is, have you reallocated resources between different client verticals? How are you interacting with consultants differently? Have you tweaked product pricing? And also, which funds or retail funds have you relaunched into the institutional channel?

Hey, Craig, thanks for the question. Yeah, so institutional is a big focus of us from a strategic perspective, and we most certainly have changed the way we tackle institutional. The great thing is, and I'll kind of answer that last part of your question first, we have a great set of products that we can bring to the institutional channel. They're institutional quality investors, they're institutional quality performance processes, long-term track records that We just didn't take to the institutional channel in a disciplined manner, particularly in North America. And so seeing that opportunity, seeing that opportunity to amplify those strengths based on our U.S. equities franchise, our fixed income franchise in the U.S., elsewhere around the world, looks like an interesting opportunity. Again, not one that turns overnight. You all know the sales cycle and the development of a client relationship cycle takes a while. But it's certainly something that we're very focused on and very excited about. And you've seen some of the fruits of that labor come through in this quarter. From a more practical perspective, you're exactly right. So we have reorganized that business, reorganized the regions. We've brought in extraordinarily strong new talent to the team over the course of the past, call it roughly a year. People with relationships, people who've been doing this for a while, people who can get us in front of institutions who, I'll give you a very clear example, say, geez, I didn't know that you had these products in institutional. I didn't know that you could take these products. I thought of you more of a retail business, almost a direct quote from a client, and we ended up winning that mandate with the institutional client. So you are seeing a lot more of an organizational structure that is conducive to bringing some of our products that we've had for a very long time to institutional. you're seeing that in our activity levels. Our activity levels are up quite significantly in institutional. We talked about that actually I think last quarter or so, and that continues. The word is getting out there. The word is getting out there among our large sophisticated institutional clients and consultant partners that we have something that can deliver our clients' needs, and we are starting to deliver that. So again, we are very energized about what we're seeing so far from the team.

Thanks, Ali. And just as my follow-up, how are you viewing the dividend now? I know you're covering the dividend, but dividend coverage is on the low side if the market declined last year. And this is somewhat impacting your ability to build excess capital, which I think you want to do, and opportunistically buy back stock when it's low.

Do you want to start on that one, Ali? Okay. As you say, our dividend is full and well covered. Dividend yield is strong. Our dividend methodology or our capital methodology is unchanged. We have a hierarchy of needs, which is to ensure that we have the regulatory and working capital that we need. We then invest in the business both organically and inorganically. Should we not have a better use of capital, we'll return it to shareholders. And as you said, we've successfully had both a strong dividend and a buyback over the last few years. As we stand here today, the dividend, as I say, remains well covered. But we're seeing some opportunities in what Ali's been talking about, both in terms of organically and unorganically investing in the business. And also, particularly given the volatility of the markets, we're very happy with the dividend as it stands. and, as I said, have not put forward for a buyback for this year. But should those things not come about in terms of that investment needs, then we would obviously be looking to return cash in that consistent manner.

Thanks, Roger.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nigel Pitterbay of Citigroup. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Just first of all, on the LTIP expense, I hear what you're saying about, and it's usual, obviously, about the first quarter having that tax impost. But it does sort of strike me that around about a third of what you're expecting the full year expense to be, it is relatively high. Is there any particular reason for that or?

Both Q4 and Q1, Nigel, includes some mark-to-market, as obviously the market has arisen. So the full year number which we've given you in the appendix assumes flat markets from here. But other than that, yeah, it is just the calendarization of that first quarter. So there's about $4 million of mark-to-market in the first quarter as well.

all right okay thanks and then maybe just coming back to one of the previous questions just on performance fees i mean previously you said that you do have a number of funds at or above their high water marks um so it seems as if you're not allowing for much in terms of performance fees over and above you know the negative drag from the fulcrum fees i mean do you think you've been sort of, is that a sort of conservative assessment that the guidance you provided today on for your performance fees or, you know, do you think, how do you view that?

I'd say, yeah, as I say, things can go either way. We saw some very strong things come through late in the second quarter, in the second half of last year, in terms of performance fees where our excellent investment teams delivered some very strong performance and obviously that can happen but we have significant AUM in performance fees in the second quarter particularly in the CCAV range and the absolute return strategy in the UK OIC but most performance there is sort of at or around benchmark and high watermarks at the moment so we're not currently anticipating that based on current performance there's only a couple of months to go so it would be A pleasant surprise, but I think it's the correct answer to assume relatively low performance fees from those in Q2. Obviously, Q3 is then a relatively quiet period, and then we have some performance fees that come due in the fourth quarter. Obviously, that's a little bit further away, and we'll update in future quarters.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andre Badnik of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions. Can I ask firstly around the timing of the incisional flows? Do they come early or late in the quarter, just in terms of helping us to think about the management impact?

They were blended through the quarter, really. Sorry, Ali.

No, I was going to say the same thing. There were several of them that came throughout the quarter. I don't know if that helps you.

Probably, thinking about it, probably a little bit earlier. There was more in January. So that does make that performance, that fee impact through the quarter. Okay.

Thank you. And my other question was around how long were you in discussion for with the various mandates you ended up winning? Were they fairly recent? Are we talking some of them half a year or even longer? How long were they in the pipeline for?

It varies when you look at what's come in. I think if you want to disaggregate it more broadly, There was certainly a certain amount of serendipity of things falling into the same quarter, there's no question. But there were folks who were new and funded relatively early, and we could, from an operational perspective, in some of the improvements that we've done, certainly fulfill that for them. There was a subset, exactly as you described, Andre, that were, as I mentioned a little while ago, wait and see. They saw and they didn't wait, and so they pulled the trigger, so to speak, to trust us with their capital. So I'm not sure there's a perfect answer to this. Generally speaking, these things are, I don't know, call it nine months in the making, typically, in terms of when you actually hear to when you actually go through in the funding. But some of these relationships are, you know, three, four, 10 years old. So there's not a great answer to that question. These were a mix of all.

Cheers. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Blosstein of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Ali, a little bit of a strategic question for you. So when you guys talk about buy, build, or partner, it sounds like the activity rates on the buy side are picking up. But if you were to think about in the next 12 to 24 months, which one of these areas are you likely to be

most active in and i think we can all kind of picture what buy looks like but when you're talking about build a partner what are some of the key areas that you're looking to do that in sure thanks for the question alex um so so look first and foremost our priority is to grow the business that we have that's what the protect and grow and amplify legs of our strategy are all about we talked about institutional we talked about some improvements in u.s intermediary etc And then, of course, yes, you're right. There's a diversified piece, which is the buy, build, or partner. Look, I would argue that the build and particularly the partner areas are looking relatively fruitful. And an example of kind of a combination of a buy or build is what we did with our emerging market debt team. I remember we brought them on board in September. They had zero assets, so it was kind of an accu-hire, so to speak. And then we're close to over $1.5 billion, almost $2 billion of committed capital to that. So that's an example of the type of thing we could do that sort of melds the buy and the build. And there's some really interesting opportunities to partner as well. I think our strengths are very, very clearly that we have a phenomenal client base and world-class investment acumen, and we can marry that to deliver on our client needs in a partnership form as well, which could be quite interesting.

Got it. Okay. And then a clarification question on the institutional pipeline. When you guys are talking about rebuilding it, given strong fundings this quarter, can you help quantify where the institutional pipeline of one but unfunded mandate stands today and the composition pipeline?

So we don't actually talk about the pipeline historically at Janus Henderson. What I will say is that, I guess, three things. One is there are many things in the pipeline. And as I mentioned in an answer to another question, we're all very enthusiastic about the team that's there and the activity levels that are there bringing our best-in-class investment strategies to the clients. That being said, it's going to take time, especially as a certain amount of clients who are waiting did pull the trigger this quarter, as you saw, or in Q1, as you saw. and it's going to take a little bit of time to rebuild that. But there's a lot of interest, whether it be in kind of global or international businesses that we have, and emerging market debt, as I mentioned a second ago, and liquid alternatives, and fixed income. We have a real great palette to offer our client base there. So we're excited about the opportunity of the institutional to continue over time.

All right, great. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Worthington of JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe first, you're having improved success in your ETF business, particularly fixed income ETFs. Are you seeing success on particular platforms? And if so, why? And then what are you doing from a marketing perspective here to sort of continue and broaden the success that you're having?

Thanks for the question, Ken. There's no particular platforms that I'd say that are disproportionately driving some of those flows. What really it comes down to is we have marriage of a really unique set of investment capabilities around the securitized world in particular, whether it be JAAA, whether it be JBS, others, vanilla, and then matching that to our client needs. client needs, particularly an environment on the short-term duration side for most of the needs here in this fixed income environment. And so it's a great marriage that we can deliver through a partnership through our US intermediary platform, platform partners in particular. On the marketing side, look, there are a few things, right? So number one, and I'll mention this more in a second, we are doing the broader brand marketing, which we'll get to, but from ETF perspective, A lot of it is about education, so to speak, right? Education in an environment where yields are where they are and the uncertainty is where it is. We have the opportunity to bring, again, these clients through our U.S. intermediary partners, the opportunity to invest in these types of products, which are quite unique to us. And so it's a lot of education. Now, that being said, going to the first point, we have spent time on marketing. It's, again, something that's a little bit different than we used to do in the past, as you heard in kind of our earlier more prepared remarks. And what we found from the data perspective is that Janice Henderson has a great amount of brand recognition, but we have to get into a little bit more of the consideration set for decisions made by advisors and partners that we have, either consultants or institutional or U.S. intermediary partners. And part of what we're trying to do with this marketing view is, gosh, we have something to say now. We have something to say. We're a great firm. We have differentiated insights. We have disciplined investments. We have world-class service. And we want to, as our purpose statement says, invest in a brighter future together. And the data suggests that if we get that in front of folks, the consideration set becomes broader for our client base. Brand actually does matter is what they say. that the data would suggest. And the last thing is we're doing this, to be fair, as a little bit of an experiment. We have analytics behind what we're doing from a marketing perspective to try to get a best sense of what the ROI is, how we're going to use it, where we're going to use it, what products, to your point, Ken, are going to be benefited by some of these brand marketing. And so we're going to iterate and test and learn on that in a rather sophisticated manner actually going forward. Great.

Thank you. And then institutional, you know, win rate increased this quarter. How does the fee rate on the one business this quarter kind of compare to your overall institutional fee rate? Is this business coming in at sort of like, you know, similar? Is it higher? Is it lower? Is price a factor in sort of winning business? Just wanted to throw that out.

Yeah, it's a great question. As you said. Go ahead, Roger. I was going to say, as you said, there were some very strong mandate wins this quarter from sophisticated institutional clients, which were in areas of lower fee products, particularly around enhanced index. So that is what has come through the pipeline this quarter. That is what has brought the fee rate down a little bit this quarter. But as I said, that broad pipeline that Ali's been talking about, what we've been building, the persistency in that is what we've got to build out. That's a blend of product. So our alternatives, our liquid alts business is a mix of a multi-strategy business and an enhanced index business. This quarter, we saw some very sizable flows coming in enhanced index, but multi-strategy is an area where we've seen, and we've talked about this previously, where we've seen and are seeing a lot of client and consultant interests around the world, and that obviously is a high-fee business. And we've got a range of things in that pipeline, but this quarter, Yeah, there was a range of enhanced index and fixed income product from, as I say, from larger clients in the institutional space at lower fee. So it's at a lower fee than our institutional rate.

Roger said it well, Ken.

Yeah, I hear that. What I was really after is, like, I hear the mix, and you get high fee products and low fee, but did you have to, or... are you using price to win business? Is that part of the strategy? Were the products priced the right way before or maybe they weren't priced the right way before and you're using price as an adjustment? I wanted to just maybe take the conversation beyond just the mix.

Absolutely not, Ken. So I appreciate now I understand where you're trying to get at. No, there's no new or different apples to apples fee pressures at all. It's all based on mix. There's a natural mix effect, as you mentioned, of ebb and flow between channels in particular. That showed up in the quarter. Over time, we should continue to expect that our fee rate will be flat to going up. And if you were to look at the fee rate over a longer period of time, Q4 had a little bit more, I guess, ebb than flow in some of these lower fee rate mandates. And this quarter had a little bit more flow than ebb, so to speak. on some of the channels that drove the fee differential. So to answer your question very directly, pricing is not part of our strategy to get more business.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Bedell of Deutsche Bank. The line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just back on the institutional side, different set of questions, but as you're marketing to the institutions, do you see them shifting money from other either asset classes or rather is it switching from other managers in terms of your success and the role of consultants also in the channel versus your direct effort? And then I guess sort of more broadly, given the enhanced or the improved traction in the institutional channel versus the AUM that you do intend to exit that obviously is less profitable and lower fee. But we should be thinking of this as sort of a net growth avenue on the institutional side, even considering the culling of some of those unprofitable land dates.

Thanks for the question, Brian. So let me disaggregate that into three areas. One is, first, what's happening from our client base and what are they looking at? I think one of the most important themes that our clients are thinking through right now is this view that the past 10 years were externally easy to just ride the wave, particularly based in kind of pure passive mandates and deliver pretty good performance. On the go forward basis, all of our more sophisticated clients, and I'm sure others of our competitors as well, are saying, gosh, we need to figure out how to create alpha out of the haves and have nots in whatever we invest in, whether it be equities, whether it be fixed income, whether it be some of the alternative areas. How do we accentuate the alpha creation between the haves and have nots? The good news for us is that that's what we do all day at Janus Henderson. That's why we have 340 people on our investment teams to pick. the have-nots, perhaps less relevant over the past few years where money was free, but increasingly relevant among our clients and the broader asset management industry going forward. So we're very, very clearly seeing, to answer your question very specifically, a shift from many clients who were relegating a lot of their assets to passive to actually coming back to folks like us, and I'm sure some others, but folks like us, to get into the differentiation of have-nots. Some of that is manifested through things like a product we have called Enhanced Index. It's kind of a passive underlying or index underlying, and then it's an alternative overlay onto that effectively, which has been very successful for a number of years. That's kind of dipping the toe in the water. And then we have folks who are going even further, whether it be in fixed income, whether it be in equities, whether it be in other places of our business. and realizing that the go forward is not going to be the same most likely from a market performance perspective versus the go behind. So that's one of the major first topics I just want to raise that very important question, Brian. The second thing is you mentioned consultants. You know, it's a little bit of an answer to the question that Craig asked earlier as well. We didn't really have a concerted consultant servicing and partnership effort at the firm until relatively recently. We didn't have a global head of consultants. We do. We didn't have a long-tenured North America head of consultants. We have a great one. And so partnership with consultants is an extremely important thing for us. It's important because it delivers better results for our clients. And so that's exactly a place that we are focused on, and those relationships don't turn overnight, obviously. But over time, they do, and we're seeing some of the fruits of that labor already start to play out. Your last question, if I kind of parse through it, you know, it's tough to tell what our flows are going to be. Obviously, for the quarter, we're pleased by the results on the institutional side of things. There will continue to be ebbs and flows. As Roger said earlier, and it was brought up in a question as well, I would say that the outflows were – lower than one would see from a run rate perspective from us. And I'd rethink what the go forward should be to be more like a historical outflow level as well. And we're watching and trying to service our clients as best as we can. And the proof will be in the pudding over time, again, not overnight, but over time in terms of delivering for our clients.

Okay, great. And then just quickly on the advisor side, this has been asked, but a little bit of a different question. Are you gaining more traction, do you think, within the individual advisors at the firm, or is the future growth more about onboarding either to new platforms or adding products onto those platforms? And then on the branding campaign, I imagine it's targeted broadly, but is there a retail component? to that as well, such that retail investors would say they would gain brand recognition of Janus and they may be asking for Janus product as a result of the branding?

Yes, let me tackle those. First, it's both. We have very broad reach to many US intermediary clients, for example, or global intermediary clients, but they typically don't have many of our products on their platforms. we're known for a few things. Most importantly, however, we're known to be a trusted partner. We're known to have great investment acumen. And that very much opens the door for us to step into product number two and number three and hopefully beyond. And that's something that the team is very focused on and has had good success in doing that. But it also is that we don't have as broad a reach as we could across the advisor base. So it really is a driver of both of those. And And I'd like to think that over time we can gain share through both of those vectors of growth. And I will say here that the U.S. intermediary team, as an example, where we've made some changes, some personnel changes, is really showing some signs of improvement along both of those dimensions, which we should be very proud of and shareholders should be grateful for. The second thing, to your point, from a marketing perspective, yes, absolutely. Look, we are, as I mentioned, experimenting. This is a little bit of a petri dish, and we're measuring everything. For those of you who know me know that I do that. We're measuring everything and we're seeing how we can test and learn and get a better understanding of where absolutely an advisor sees us and says, hey, I recognize that name. Sounds like they have something to say. Let me actually pick up the phone or respond to an email that I've received or take that one-on-one meeting with an investor or a salesperson. And in fact, Brian, we're seeing that play out. We're seeing that happen. There are clear anecdotal at this point examples of that, and we think we can continue to do that. Again, we're going to test the ROI. We're not a pure B2C company, but we certainly think that there's opportunity to create a reminder of our brand in people's minds, both intermediary and institutional.

That's great. That sounds very encouraging. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ed Herring of CLFA. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions. Just the first one, just to clarify, did you say you only expect one to two quarters of positive flows over the next two years? And in that, can you just highlight where you think the biggest headwinds on the flows will be for your business over the next two years?

Sure. So our guidance hasn't changed. We've given indication that we would expect the hard work that we're doing from a strategic perspective, whether that be the marketing we talked about before, whether it be the personnel changes and continue to build a world-class team, whether that be the reorg that we've done to make decisions faster, whether it be the strategies that we played in, protect and grow, amplify, diversify, et cetera. We believe to show traction or proof that that is showing this strategy is showing traction, would be one to two quarters of positive flows over the next, yes, one to two years. Now, we just had one, and we still think we can get one to two quarters, including this one, over the next one to two years. It takes time, as you all know as students of this industry, to really get to consistently positively flowing businesses in this industry. Now, that ties to your second question, which is if you look at the growth rate for this industry, it's not a rapidly growing business. And so the major headwind, to be fair, is the underlying growth rate from a net flows perspective in this industry. We are overcoming our self-created headwinds. Again, that will take time, but we continue to face the headwinds of the industry from a net flow perspective, at least on the active asset management side. Hopefully that helps, Ed.

Yeah, and do you expect to still see outflows in equities and potentially inflows in fixed income? Or are you seeing this broad outflows from actively managed money still into ETFs or into private equity or other asset classes as a headwind for you and the industry, that is?

Look, from an industry perspective, as I mentioned a second ago, I do believe, we do believe that the go-forward methodology of delivering capital to our clients, our clients, clients, delivering performance to our clients, our clients, clients will not be the same as it has been over the past 10 years because money won't be free going forward. I have and have not differentiation will be much more important. Does that suggest that there's a wholesale shift from passive to active? Gosh, I would certainly hope so. I do think that our most sophisticated clients, which is usually the kind of leading indicator are looking at that question very acutely and beneficial to us. They're entrusting us with that point of view of have and have nots. They're entrusting us with the brighter futures of their client base.

I think to add to that, Ed, we've talked a lot about institutional. I think another thing to make sure that you've you're aware of is the improvement in the U.S. intermediary business. Natalie's talked about some of the things that are coming further to that in terms of the brand campaign, etc. But some of the biggest improvements in U.S. intermediary were actually in equity. And we've talked over the last year probably about the significant improvement in the performance of mid-cap growth, which had some fantastic long-term numbers. But had a tough 2020, beginning of 21. Had a fantastic 22. And flows take a little bit of time to recover. But in Q1, we saw that happen in our U.S. advisory business. We saw a dramatic turnaround in enterprise, which is that mid-cap growth strategy, as well as improvements in overseas and global equity income. So we are seeing some strong flows into equity.

Okay, no, that's helpful. But then just to go back on it, where do you see the outflows? Is it just across the business and across just industry trends before, you know, it's just not getting the gross inflows, so you've just got natural outflows that are going to drive it for the next couple of years?

Look, I think we are looking to stem the tide of the industry trends, which overall have not been an extraordinarily fast-growing business.

Our next question comes from the line of Bill Katz of Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Just coming back to expenses for a moment, as you think through your initiatives to reposition the platform across your three initiatives, where are you in terms of that spending cycle? Is that something that you would expect to complete this year, or would you expect that spending pace to continue into next year? And then if so, how might you fund that?

Yeah, so it's a good question. Thanks, Bill. I think first of all, as I've said, and hopefully I've been clear that our expenses, particularly in non-comp, are low in Q1. And the guidance we've given of an increase of mid-to-high single digits year on year still stands, which means we'll accelerate in quarters Q2 to Q4. And that's because we've realized what we call our fuel for growth savings. where we've looked to be more efficient in our business, the $40 to $45 million of cost saves that we talked about in the summer of last year. We've realized much of that, and that's a little bit ahead of where we've been investing in these strategic initiatives. As Ali said, this important brand campaign actually kicked off in April. So you'll see that acceleration coming through in Q2 to Q4. I think your broader question is, are we then done? We will look to continue to fund through efficiency. So if we continue to see, and as Ali said, we're testing and learning through this. So if we are looking to spend more money, it's because we're seeing success. So I think we're making the investments this year. If we see success in that, then we can continue to invest. Otherwise, we're at a good level as where we are. But there are other things out there as well. It's an inflationary environment, as we all know. The dollar has come off its extremely strong highs. So we're seeing some cost acceleration elsewhere, but that's all built into that guidance.

Okay, thank you. And then, Ali, maybe one for yourself. Just you mentioned a couple of times throughout the call and the Q&A that the M&A pipeline is sort of seizing nicely. If you were to sort of think about maybe two or three key areas of focus for you to complement your existing book of business, what might that be? And then how should we be thinking about sizing or maybe seizing of that specific line of portfolio, pipeline, excuse me. Thank you.

Sure. Thanks, Bill. So our view on M&A hasn't really changed. I'll answer that back after your question before the front half. Our view on M&A is that acquiring things that our clients want from us is a good game plan. What generally that means is that clients don't look for us necessarily to just have scale of size, right? Just being bigger in something, buying things that overlap with things that we already have doesn't generally serve the purpose of what a client wants. We already have it. It's already very good. We can deliver that to the client with our world-class client service and investment acumen. However, If it's something that we don't have, something that clients want from us, we can acquire to build our scale of skill. The emerging market debt example is a great example and a test case for us on that front. So we're not looking to get bigger for the sake of getting bigger. We're looking to get bigger because we can bring more skill sets to our clients to build off of the very strong foundation that we already have, which we are very, very positive on and can continue to improve. Now, if you think about where clients are giving us the right to diversify, it's very clearly around a few areas. Most importantly, under the private rubric. So take private credit, for example. From a private credit perspective, there are many different flavors. Obviously, private credit, we're being very judicious given this market environment about what we should and could do for our clients. but they're seeing us from a fixed income perspective, having a very, very good franchise underlying what we do in fixed income from a performance and process and people perspective. Well, can we augment that in the private world where a lot of our clients are looking at? So we are very clearly looking at that. And the benefit would be to buy or partner with a group of folks who want to grow their business, not just to tick the box, but grow their business and really fit into our extraordinarily robust and and an increasingly strong distribution pipes, so to speak, to deliver on our clients. So it's one of the big areas of an example that we've talked about before, but there are other possibilities, right? We are unlikely, for example, to go into the pure kind of private equity world on the flip side of privates, but could there be ways that we participate in that growth cycle over time? We could, we have to think about other and creative ways to buy and partner as well as build internally. But the main focus right now, Bill, is around the broader private landscape for us.

Thank you for taking the questions.

Thank you. Our final question of the day comes from the line of John Dunn of Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Maybe just a quick one on ETFs. Is there an outlook for maybe more launches, given how well AAA and MBS have gone? And then maybe outside of ETFs, any other launches on the horizon you would highlight?

Sure. Let me start there. On ETFs, as you know, at over $6 billion of AUM within ETFs in a relatively short period of time, we are very pleased with the success there and expect continued success in that area. Our philosophy is, again, I'll be a broken record on this, but it's really important to be client-led. So if we have a set of investment skill sets that can be utilized to the benefit of our clients, and if the client wants it in form X versus form Y, sometimes I call it if they want it in pink or if they want it in yellow, we should be able to deliver it in pink or in yellow. And ETF is one of those wrappers, vehicles that we can provide to our clients, and particularly our clients right now, disproportionately in the retail world, who can get access to things that they can't get otherwise. These are institutional-level products that we're bringing to the retail environment, similar to what we're doing from a retail set of products that are institutional-level that we're bringing to institutional. The broader scope of it is around some of the Securitize skill sets that we have internally in our fixed income landscape and bringing that to our client base. Have we filled out the suite? No, we haven't filled out the suite that we could fill out, but we're seeing a lot of success, a lot of focus on the ETFs that we have right now. So I would anticipate more launches there, building on the success that the team here has built. Will there be new launches otherwise outside ETFs? The second part of your question, the short answer is yes. We have to be innovative in what we deliver. We did launch, I believe, two new products in Q1 around the world. We will continue to drive new products. But again, we're not throwing spaghetti sticks at the wall and seeing what happens. We're going to be very disciplined, very diligent with the capital and the effort that's required to do that because we have a great foundation of businesses already. investment processes and acumen already that we can already expand and bring to our client base. So, yes, there will be more, but we'll be judicious in delivering to our clients' needs based on the foundation that we already have.

Got it. And then just maybe regionally, you mentioned a pickup in U.S. intermediary, maybe a little more muted in European retail. Can you just frame Asia channel-wise, maybe outside of Australia?

I'd say relatively steady in that marketplace. There's a little bit of a wait and see from a geopolitical perspective that we hear from our clients out there. I don't think there's massive money in motion at this point, but we are, again, in the desire of growing our business. We are very much looking to deliver for clients in those regions. We see an enormous amount of opportunity, which will come over time again. But market share for us is going to be part of the name of the game in that marketplace.

Thanks very much.

Thank you. As there are no additional questions waiting at this time, I'd like to hand the conference back over to Mr. Dibaj for closing remarks.

Well, thanks, Candice. Thanks, everybody, for joining. This quarter's results suggest that the team here at Janus Henderson, who I'd like to thank, is working extraordinarily hard, aligned with our strategy, making changes to deliver for our clients, our shareholders, our other stakeholders, and over time will continue to deliver progress like this. Thanks very much, everybody.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Janus Henderson first quarter 2023 results briefing. Have a great day ahead. You may now disconnect your lines.