AGF Management Limited

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q3 2024 AGF Management Limited Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Tseng. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. I'm Ken Tsang, Chief Financial Officer of AGF Management Limited. Today, we will be discussing the financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2024. Slides supporting today's call and webcast can be found in the investor relations section of AGF.com. Also speaking on the call will be Kevin McCready, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer. For the Q&A period following the presentation, Judy Goldring, President and Head of Global Distribution, and Ash Lawrence, head of AGF Capital Partners, will also be available to address questions. Slide 4 provides the agenda for today's call. After the prepared remarks, we will be happy to take questions. With that, I will now turn the call over to Kevin.

Thank you, Ken, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. At the end of Q3, our AUM and fee-earning assets reached $49.7 billion, up 18% from a year ago. Adjusted diluted EPS was 37 cents in the quarter. In addition, we have $332 million in short and long-term investments on our balance sheet. Our financial position remains strong, which provides us with flexibility in our capital allocation strategy. Our investment performance remains strong. One-year performance was at the 51st percentile, while three years remained steady at the 43rd percentile. We saw positive retail mutual fund net sales of $19 million in the quarter. Finally, the board declared an 11.5% share of dividend for Q3 of 2024. Starting on slide six, we will provide an update on our business performance. On this slide, we break down our total AUM and fee earning assets in the categories disclosed in our MD&A and show comparisons to the prior year. Our mutual fund AUM reached $28 billion, up 15% year over year, outpacing the industry, which increased by 13%. Our ETF and SMA AUM increased 60% year-over-year. I'll provide more color on our mutual fund business and ETF and SMA AUM in a moment. Segregated accounts and supervisory AUM decreased by 9% compared to the prior year, as previously disclosed, but the decline was driven mainly by a redemption from one institutional client who was shifting towards passive management. Our private wealth AUM increased by 11% compared to the prior year to $8.2 billion. and our AJF Capital Partners AUM and fee-earning assets were $4.9 billion at the end of the quarter, up $2.7 billion from the prior year due to the closing of the Kensington transaction. As a reminder, New Holland Capital's AUM of approximately $8 billion Canadian is not consolidated into AJF's total AUM and fee-earning assets at this time. Turning to slide seven, I'll provide some details on the mutual fund business. The Canadian mutual fund industry experienced net sales of approximately $3 billion in a quarter, ending nine consecutive quarters of net redemptions, totaling to $140 billion, roughly 7% of its AUM. In contrast, AGF's mutual fund business only had four quarters of net outflows, which resulted in flat retail mutual fund net sales over the equivalent nine quarters. This quarter, we reported retail mutual fund net sales of $19 million. This was driven by both an increase in gross sales and lower redemptions compared to the last quarter. Additionally, our net sales improvement was seen across all of our channels. As rates continue to come down, we expect that the industry and AGF will benefit from money moving back from GICs. Looking forward, we continue to take a long-term approach to increasing our penetration in high-growth distribution channels by diversifying our capabilities and offerings. I want to now give a quick update on our investment performance. AGF measures mutual fund performance by comparing gross returns before fees relative to peers within the same category, with the first percentile being the best possible performance. Our one-year performance was in the 51st percentile. Our long-term fund performance remained solid and strengthened further in the quarter. At the end of Q3, our three-year performance was in the 43rd percentile, and approximately 60% of our strategies are outperforming our peers on a three- and five-year basis. Turning now to slide eight. Slide eight shows our ETF and SMA AUM. The AUM in this category has grown 51% on a compounded basis over the last two years. Included in this number are Canadian and US listed ETFs and SMA platforms globally. We have seen consistent growth and momentum in the SMA business both in the U.S., Canada, and in Asia, where a number of our strategies are available on leading SMA wealth management platforms. We have also recently seen an increase in demand for our market neutral anti-beta strategy, which provides a tactical hedge against the current volatile market. With that, I will turn the call over to Ken.