Pzena Investment Management Inc Class A

Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call

10/20/2021

spk02: Hello and welcome to the Pazina Investment Management Reports results for the third quarter of 2021. My name is Charlie and I will be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may register to do so by pressing start followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to your host, Jessica Doran, to begin. Jessica, please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on the Pazina Investment Management Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. I am Jessica Doran, Chief Financial Officer. With me today is our Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chief Investment Officer, Rich Pazina. Our earnings press release contains the financial tables for the periods we will be discussing. If you do not have a copy, it can be obtained in the Investor Relations section on our website at www.pazina.com. Replace of this call will be available for the next two weeks on our website. Before we start, we need to remind you that today's call may contain forward-looking statements and projections. We ask that you refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from today's comments. Please note that we do not undertake to update such information to reflect the impact of circumstances or events going forward. In addition, please be advised that due to prohibitions on selective disclosures, we do not, as a matter of policy, disclose material that is not public information on our conference calls. Now let me turn the call over to Rich, who will discuss our current view of the investing environment.
spk05: Thanks, Jessica. We human beings are irrational decision makers. It's not just my opinion. Decades of behavioral economics research and several Nobel Prizes have been handed out in support of this conclusion. We simply tend to make biased judgments, sometimes out of recent experience, sometimes out of a hard-wired predisposition towards loss aversion. The evidence is powerful. We humans are simply irrational economic actors. The truth is effectively the platform upon which value investing is built. Value investors capitalize on the realization that human biases impede rational decision-making, and the resulting mispriced assets are available for those willing to systematically override their biases and apply rational economic analysis for their decisions. Let's consider the choice of which asset class offers the most attractive future return profile today. Using our estimated normalized earning yield as our metric, the cheapest quintile of the 2,000 largest global stocks offers a yield of more than 13%. Compare that to the estimated normalized earnings yield of the full universe of global stocks at just over 6%. And treasury bonds and euro bonds each offering yields of just 2% or less. And yet current sentiment, investment literature, stock price momentum, all would have one belief that the better choice is to be found among assets with lower projected earnings yields. The rational actor would obviously prefer the double digit return opportunity embedded in the cheapest stocks. But let's consider one of the most common current arguments for avoiding the cheapest stocks today. Namely, I prefer quality. Or, okay, so let's look at the facts. The cheapest quintiles of both U.S. and non-U.S. stocks have 10-year average revenue growth rates of 6% and 8% and 10-year average returns on equity of 17% and 13% respectively. By any analytic frame, I think it's fair to say that this is a fertile hunting ground for quality businesses. Let's also consider the near-term projected earnings of the cheapest stocks. Wall Street analysts are projecting value stocks to grow their earnings at more than 20% compounded annual growth rate through 2023, a higher rate than projected by analysts for growth stocks. And we can buy these growing high-quality value stock businesses for prices at 60% or more discounted to their growth brethren. Our message and conclusion is clear. We think the value cycle is still in its early stages. There will no doubt still be bumps in the road ahead, as there always are, but to ignore the data is to fall prey to the irrational decision-maker's fate of suboptimal outcomes. You can count on us to always stay true to our value discipline and therefore offer a counterbalance to this all-too-human reality. Let me close with a few comments about our business. We closed the quarter with assets under management at nearly $51 billion. We had net outflows of a billion for this quarter, but this comes after positive net flows last quarter of 2.2 billion. As we have remarked over the years, our flows can be lumpy. I'd like to offer as evidence that the marketplace rewards our value discipline We still have positive net flows for the year. And if this holds, we will achieve our fifth consecutive calendar year and eight of the last 10 years with positive net flows. We're awaiting approval from the Irish regulatory officials to open our first European office in Dublin, which will offer us the ability to offer EU clients access to our strategies in whatever form they prefer. I look forward to answering your questions and now turn the call back over to Jessica.
spk01: Thank you, Rich. Looking at our results for the quarter, we reported diluted earnings of $0.27 per share for the third quarter compared to $0.25 last quarter and $0.16 per share for the third quarter of last year. Revenues were $51.6 million for the quarter and operating income was $28.4 million. Our operating margin was 55% this quarter, remaining relatively flat from 54.9% last quarter, and increasing from 44.1% in the third quarter of last year. Taking a closer look at our asset center management, as Rich mentioned, we ended the quarter at $50.8 billion, down 4.3% from last quarter, which ended at $53.1 billion, and up 52.6% from the third quarter of last year, which ended at $33.3 billion. The decrease in assets under management from last quarter was driven by net outflows of $1.4 billion and market depreciation, including the impact of foreign exchange of $0.9 billion. The increase from the third quarter of last year reflects $17.3 billion in market appreciation, including the impact of foreign exchange, and net inflows of $0.2 billion. At September 30, 2021, our assets under management consisted of $18.8 billion in separately managed accounts, $29.3 billion in subadvised accounts, and $2.7 billion in our PISINA funds. Compared to last quarter, assets under management decreased in each channel, with separately managed account assets reflecting $0.9 billion in net outflows and $0.3 billion in market depreciation and foreign exchange impact. sub-advised account assets reflecting $0.5 billion in market depreciation and $0.4 billion in net outflows, and assets in PISINA funds reflecting $0.1 billion in net outflows and $0.1 billion in market depreciation and foreign exchange impact. The decrease in assets under management primarily occurred toward the end of the quarter, resulting in average assets under management of $52.4 billion, an increase of 1.7% from last quarter, and 58.3% from the third quarter of last year. Revenues increased 1.5% from last quarter and 52.1% from the third quarter of last year. These increases from last quarter and the third quarter of last year reflect the average assets under management. Our weighted average fee rate was 39.4 basis points for the quarter compared to 39.5 basis points last quarter and 41 basis points for the third quarter of last year. Asset mix across our strategies and distribution channels, as well as performance-based fees, are generally the primary contributors to changes in our overall weighted average fee rate. However, changes in asset levels may also impact our fee rates, as the majority of our separately managed accounts pay us management fees pursuant to a schedule in which the rate we earn on the AUM declines as the amount of AUM increases. Our weighted average fee rate for separately managed accounts was 53.4 basis points for the quarter compared to 53.3 basis points last quarter and 54.9 basis points for the third quarter of last year. The decrease from the third quarter of 2020 primarily reflects an increase in assets due to market depreciation. as the rates we earn in the majority of our fee schedules decline as the assets increase. Our weighted average fee rate for subadvised accounts was 27.6 basis points for the third quarter of 2021 compared to 27 basis points for both the second quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2020. The increase from the second quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2020 reflects the shift in assets to strategies that typically carry higher fee rates. Certain accounts related to one client relationship have fulcrum fee arrangements. These fee arrangements require a reduction in the base fee if the investment strategy underperforms its relevant benchmark or allow for a performance fee if the strategy outperforms its benchmark. During each of the third and second quarters of 2021 and the third quarter of 2020, we recognize $1 million reductions in base fees related to these accounts. These fees are calculated quarterly and compare relative performance over a three-year measurement period. To the extent a three-year performance record of these accounts fluctuate relative to their relevant benchmarks, the amount of base fees recognized may vary. Our weighted average fee rate for the Pagina funds was 69 basis points for the quarter, increasing from 68.1 basis points last quarter and from 68.7 basis points for the third quarter of last year. The increase from the second quarter of 2021 reflects a shift in mix toward products and strategies that typically carry higher fee rates, and the increase from the third quarter of 2020 primarily reflects a reduction in expense reimbursements paid. Looking at operating expenses, our compensation and benefits expense was $18.9 million for the quarter, compared to 19 million last quarter and increasing from 15.8 million for the third quarter of last year. The increase in compensation and benefits expense from the third quarter of 2020 was primarily driven by an increase in compensation and the market performance of strategies tied to the company's deferred compensation obligations. G&A expenses were 4.3 million for the quarter compared to 3.9 million last quarter and 3.2 million for the third quarter of last year. The increase from the second quarter and third quarter of last year primarily reflects an increase in professional fees and data and systems expenses. Other income was 0.4 million for the quarter, driven primarily by the performance of our investments. Turning to taxes, the effective rate for our unincorporated and other business taxes was negative 5.4% this quarter compared to a positive 3.6% last quarter and negative 6.8% in the third quarter of last year. The negative effective tax rate this quarter and in the third quarter of last year reflects the benefit associated with the reversal of uncertain tax position liabilities and interest due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. we expect the effective rate associated with the unincorporated and other business taxes of our operating company to be between 3% and 5% on an ongoing basis. Our effective tax rate for our corporate income taxes, ex-UVT and other business taxes, was 24.2% this quarter compared to our effective tax rate of 24.8% last quarter and 26.5% for the third quarter of last year. The fluctuation in these effective rates reflects certain permanently non-deductible expenses. We expect this rate, excluding these items, to be between 24 and 26% on an ongoing basis. The allocation to the non-public members of our operating company was approximately 78.8% of the operating company's net income for the third quarter of 2021, compared to 78.4% last quarter, and 78% for the third quarter of last year. The variance in these percentages is the result of changes in our ownership interest in the operating company. During the quarter through our stock buyback program, we repurchased and retired approximately 234,000 shares of Class A common stock for $2.6 million. At September 30th, there was approximately $44.4 million remaining in the repurchase program. At quarter end, our financial position remains strong with $70 million in cash and cash equivalents, as well as $7.3 million in short-term investments. We declared a $0.03 per share quarterly dividend last night. Thank you for joining us. We'd now be happy to take any questions.
spk02: If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, it is start followed by two. We have a question from Sam Sheldon of Punch and Associates. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hey, good morning, Rich and Jessica. Maybe you could start by giving some color on the pipeline. and interest trends that you guys are seeing on the sub-advised and separately managed sides of the business?
spk05: Yeah, I mean, I'll give you a little bit of color, Sam. The pipeline has been relatively stable for maybe up a little bit, but I'll call it mostly stable, over the last 12 months. And it continues to be fast. fairly widely scattered over all of our strategies. There are chunkier searches that come and go. They come and we win some of them. We lose some of them. We're always hopeful that we're going to win them, but the opportunity set should remain reasonably stable, I think is the best way to put it. When we do our own projections of what might happen, we see enough of a pipeline continue to feel comfortable about positive flows, but I would say not enough to see big, big growth rates.
spk04: Okay. That's helpful. And maybe how you are feeling about the mutual fund business today. Do you plan on adding additional resources or funds there? And I guess, would you expect that to be the sort of last account type to benefit from improved sentiment towards value as maybe retail kind of chases returns?
spk05: Yeah, I mean, we did, we did, we did add a fund this year. I don't know if it was in the last, I don't remember when it started. It started in the quarter. So we added an international value mutual fund. Obviously, it's very early. It has a small amount of assets in it. And we have added another salesperson. We're actually still looking to expand our investment a little further. We continue to believe that being very out there and aggressive on the message about value investing will pay dividends when and if, we believe it's when. I hate to use the word if, but it's fair to use it. There's a big flow of funds into value. We've started to see a little bit of it, but we clearly are investing ahead of our belief that this is going to happen.
spk04: Okay. Got it. I've got a question on performance fees. You know, it looks like you haven't recorded significant performance fees year to date, but the performance in your strategies has been pretty strong recently. Based on what you see today, where do you think that is going in the next few quarters?
spk05: Remember, almost all of our performance fees are three-year rolling average performance. And so when you look back three years, you're including the beginning of the pandemic, and you're also including this pretty anti-value environment that existed in the second half of 2018 and into 2019. So mostly those will roll out over time. I don't think it's a quarter away, but I think it's a year away before the negatives in our performance calculations are gone and you'll see some of the more recent performance generate performance fees.
spk04: Okay. It looks like headcount is up around 10% over the last year. Just curious to hear How much of that is the opening of the Dublin office, and what roles you're filling at the firm, and maybe just broadly how retention has trended recently?
spk05: Yeah, the Dublin office will initially have four people in it, and they're already employed, although I don't know that they were in the – not in September, so they wouldn't be in that headcount number yet. And mostly the headcount growth has happened on the distribution side, and it's in the support, the marketing support. So it's in the RFP team, it's in the publication and content and distribution area. We did opportunistically add some research. We had actually had three research analysts that we hired in the quarter. A couple were replacements, but we took advantage of the ability to find some good talent, which you come across that in a lumpy fashion, just like we come across our accounts in a lumpy fashion. So we're pretty strong. I mean, we're completely fully staffed now on the investment side, although we've decided to continue to be more proactive and having a steady pipeline of investment talent rather than hiring in chunks like we've done in the last couple of years. But the biggest growth area for us in headcount over the last five years has been on the client side and the sales and marketing side.
spk04: Okay. The last question for me is around the Dublin office. Can you just talk more about how that launch is going and maybe you could speak to the importance of Pagina having a formal presence in the EU? Thanks.
spk05: Well, we already have a big business in the EU and this is a Brexit reaction, actually. The London registration and ability to passport that into the EU disappeared with Brexit. We had a temporary solution in place while we were figuring out what our options were. We decided that being regulated in Dublin, since we already had funds that were available and regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland, it was an easier process and that we believe that they're fairly reasonable to deal with. So the impact really is so that we can not have a complicated process by which we offer various So we offer separately managed accounts, we offer USITs, and other commingled vehicles, all of which have different kind of regulatory requirements. And we were using third parties to facilitate our ability to operate there. And it's less than optimal. It does add a little bit of cost at the beginning, the startup costs. And it adds a little bit more ongoing expense. But that will be offset if the assets get bigger. And that's what we hope. So again, this is just investing everywhere in the world that we need to invest to get access. to markets, and I don't think there's anything more to say than that, unless you have any other questions.
spk04: Oh, got it. Thanks for taking my questions today.
spk05: Sure, sure.
spk02: Our next question comes from Tom Brunel of Rock Point Advisors. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk06: Great. Thank you, operator, and thanks for taking my question. Good morning, guys. I think I'll pick the first question, I guess we didn't pick up on Sam's first question around the pipeline and the market opportunity. And Rich, what strikes me, as I heard you answering Sam's question, it's interesting over the last, you know, I guess two, three, maybe even four quarterly calls, we've heard you talk about the inflection between growth and value strategies, performance and interest in those strategies. And you had said that there's historically been a pretty solid sort of 12-month lag between the performance of the relative strategies and the interest, especially on the institutional side. And it strikes me that now I realize we didn't have a clean break last fall that has persisted. But if you pick last October as a little bit of a demarcation point, here we are 12 months hence. I was wondering, given your flows in the most recent quarter, whether you would still feel as though there will be a large pickup in interest and activity any time now, or whether this time it feels different to you?
spk05: Well, I'll say that the flows in the quarter were more, the outflows that we had were caused by a couple of things. One, and the biggest, is the fact that we had been up around 50% over the prior year and there was just rebalancing. So this benefits us obviously when we underperform, it hurts us when we outperform. That's the existing account. We also had one reasonably large sub-advisory relationship and this was in Canada and they decided to bring in-house and terminated a lot of managers. So we had kind of two, what, what I'm hoping will be big outliers on the outflow side. Um, the inflow side is where in the long run, the growth will have to come from obviously. Um, and so, so what have we had? We've had kind of a, uh, I'm going to call it normal pattern of new account openings. It has not picked up along the lines that you would say if there was truly a 12-month lag period, are we seeing that? Now, what do I make of that? You know, even as recently as the... If you look at the performance in the third quarter, this was a very unusual quarter where... I would say, and obviously this is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it was almost like every other day we outperformed the market. The market was very much saying, you know, this is a growth market, it's a value market. It's a growth market, it's a value market. So we haven't seen that clear, clear idea that we're in this cycle. And when you get that kind of behavior, the fear of missing out on a value rally or the looking in the rearview mirror and saw that you have missed out, it just hasn't yet materialized. Will it? I hope. October's off to a good start for us from a performance perspective globally. It doesn't feel like it did in the third quarter. It feels more like it did in earlier this year and late last year. But, you know, the, I don't know, the environment, I don't have the good words to explain it. It's obviously not there yet, but we haven't lost the hope or the belief that this is yet to come. It's probably the best way of putting it.
spk06: Right. But so not a material pickup in interest from the institutional sort of gatekeepers yet, I think is what I'm hearing. Correct. Yeah. Got it. Okay. It's super helpful. Thanks. Thanks for going through all that. Um, and then my next question was going to be additional color on the reductions and thanks. So you, um, helpful commentary on that. Next question will be on the buybacks. Jessica, I think I heard you say in your prepared comments, sounded like you did buy back some shares in the third quarter. And I think I heard you say you have $44 million remaining on the authorization. Is that open-ended or is there an end date to that authorization?
spk01: It is open-ended. It is open-ended. There is an end date. There is not an end date for that authorization.
spk06: Okay. What was it originally?
spk01: Originally, when we originally went through the buyback program in 2010, I want to say it was 2000. We started with $10 million in the beginning, and we have added to the buyback program twice since that point in time. In second quarter of last year, excuse me, in second quarter of this year, we added another $40 million to the buyback program.
spk06: Got it. Perfect. And can you talk a little bit about your strategy around the buyback program and the implementation of that and how you think about potential delusion to public shareholders as a result of some of the programs you have as part of your incentive comp plans?
spk05: I can answer that question. We try to buy back as much as we can. when prices are reasonable to offset the dilution. We've always sort of had this view and have been operating pretty much that way, that on average we're going to add one or two percent to the share count because this is a talent business. And aligning the next generation of investment talent and leaders by using equity as a part of the compensation, it's critical to our business plan. So now, obviously, the liquidity of our share base, of our shareholder base, is not enormous. So we can't buy enough back totally offsets. But we do think that the benefits that we receive through modest annual dilution, obviously I get equally diluted. In my opinion, having investment talent that is completely aligned from a business perspective is the best way to implement the investment strategy and the business strategy that we have. It's also been a spectacular retention tool for the senior people in the organization.
spk06: Yep. So to completely understand, totally get it, and that actually is, I'm glad I asked the question because I hadn't really heard, and I'm not suggesting you hadn't said it. You probably had said it. I just missed it. But that's helpful to think about that 1% to 2%. increase in share count sort of as a steady state year in and year out is a is a helpful data point to have in the in the back of our mind so thanks for sharing that i appreciate it that's i'm good no more questions from me thanks a lot as a reminder if you would like to ask a question please press start followed by one on your telephone keypad now
spk02: There are no further questions on the lines at this time, so I'll hand the call back over to the team.
spk01: Thank you everyone for joining us on today's call. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Take care.
spk02: This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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