Yahoo Finance Invesco Ltd. (NYSE:IVZ) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Invesco Ltd. (NYSE:IVZ) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 23, 2024
Invesco Ltd. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Welcome to Invesco’s First Quarter Earnings Call -- Conference Call, excuse me. All participants will be on a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] This call will last one hour. To allow more participants to ask questions, one question and a follow-up can be submitted per participant. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. Now I’d like to turn the call over to Greg Ketron, Invesco’s Head of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.
Greg Ketron: All right. Thanks, Operator, and to everyone joining us on the call today. In addition to our press release, we have provided a presentation that covers the topics we plan to address. The press release and presentation are available on our website, invesco.com. This information can be found by going to the Investor Relations section of the website. Our presentation today will include forward-looking statements and certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please review the disclosures on Slide 2 of the presentation regarding these statements and measures, as well as the appendix for the appropriate reconciliations to GAAP. Finally, Invesco is not responsible for and does not edit nor guarantee the accuracy of our earnings teleconference transcripts provided by third parties.
The only authorized webcasts are located on our website. Andrew Schlossberg, President and CEO; and Allison Dukes, Chief Financial Officer, will present our results this morning and then we’ll open up the call for questions. I’ll now turn the call over to Andrew.
Andrew Schlossberg: Thank you, Greg, and good morning to everyone. I’m pleased to be speaking with you today. Economic conditions remained relatively resilient in the first quarter and even though these diminished expectations for Central Bank cuts this year, equity markets continued to rise. The S&P 500 gained 10% during the quarter, again making it the best-performing major equity index. As the quarter progressed, market breadth began to improve, though gains in large-cap growth and tech stocks continued to significantly lead the U.S. equity market rally. More modest growth was recorded in developed markets outside of the U.S. In China, markets continued to lag, but economic indicators and sentiment are showing some signs of a bottoming.
Fixed income markets were generally weak this quarter, with prices dropping as Fed expectations changed. During the quarter, we continued to see increase in client demand overall. We delivered $6.3 billion in net long-term inflows for an organic growth rate of 2.2%. Organic flow growth and signs of improving sentiment drove markets and assets levels higher again this quarter at Invesco, we ended the period with nearly $1.7 trillion in assets under management. Our resulting net revenue and adjusted operating income growth dropped 1% and 7%, respectively, from Q4 levels, which reflects where we saw growth against our diversified asset mix profile. We remain optimistic that with increasing market clarity, a broadening of market participation will continue to take hold and investor appetite for more duration, risk on and global oriented assets will increase.
We are well positioned to benefit across our business in this type of environment. Now moving on to page three of the presentation and against this market backdrop, we highlight results in each of our investment capabilities. You’ll note that these categories align with those presented in conjunction with our net revenue yield and portfolio migration disclosures, which we’ve been highlighting the last several quarters, and Allison will expand on later in her comments. We are aligning disclosures in the way we speak about our business to present a more holistic and consistent view that encompasses all of our investment capabilities. And though each of these areas of our business is in a different part of its life cycle with different trajectories, these are the capabilities where we have invested resources and had conviction about the market and our position within it.
The objective of our enhanced disclosure is to foster a better understanding of various components of our investment capabilities and their performance and potential in order to drive a clearer view of Invesco as a whole, our advantages in the market and our plans to drive profitable growth. Now turning to a deeper look into Q1 across each of these capabilities. An ongoing key driver of our strong organic flow growth is our ETF and Index platform. During the quarter, we continue to gain market share, recording $11.2 billion in net long-term flows, representing a 12% annual organic growth rate. This was one of our best flow quarters to-date, as we hit a record high of nearly $400 billion in long-term AUM. Growth this quarter was led by our equity innovation suite, notably our fund QQQM.
This innovative product leverages our QQQ popularity, but with this fund we earn a direct fee on this product instead of significant marketing benefits. In a relatively short time, it has become our third largest ETF in our product suite outside the QQQ. Additionally, we continue to expand and leverage our active investment teams into our ETF and Index franchise. Our U.S. listed ETF strategies incorporating our active teams now exceed $25 billion in AUM across over 25 products and multiple asset classes. The advantages of ETFs in both passive and active formats remain a focus for Invesco and our clients. Shifting to fixed income, we continue to believe that as investors gain greater clarity on inflation and Central Bank interest rate policy, they’ll move out of cash and extend their duration profiles of their fixed income allocations into a wider range of strategies.
Though this anticipated shift may be more protracted given the mixed economic signals of late, we’re beginning to see green shoots and we’re well positioned across the risk and duration fixed income asset classes to capture flows. We did see continued momentum into fundamental fixed income with $1.1 billion of net long-term flows in the first quarter or nearly a 2% annual organic growth rate. Leading drivers included investment-grade strategies delivered through our institutional channels, as well as municipal bond strategies delivered through our mutual fund and SMA platforms. Beyond our fundamental fixed income capabilities, an additional $2.1 billion of assets flowed into our fixed income related ETF and Index strategies. Important to our fixed income demand story is our rapidly expanding retail SMA offering, which is one of the fastest growing in the industry with an annual organic growth rate of 24% and nearly $23 billion in AUM.
We’re starting to see extension of duration with our top-selling SMA this quarter being the intermediate tax-exempt strategy and we’re seeing growing interest in our intermediate taxable investment-grade strategies as well. We are well positioned to continue to grow our retail SMA platform to support the client demand for this vehicle delivery structure, especially within the U.S. wealth intermediary market. We have a long-dated and established track record on our SMA platform that represents not only fixed income, but also traditional active equity and custom equity index SMAs. We see a lot of opportunity in this space and we look forward to continuing to share our progress with you. Moving on to Private Markets, we maintain momentum into the first quarter, with net long-term flows of $1 billion, driven by inflows in our credit strategies, notably bank loans.
We also saw modest positive flows into Direct Real Estate, primarily driven by NCREF, which is our non-exchange traded REIT focused on the private real estate debt markets, which has had good momentum in the wealth advisory space since its launch last year. Additionally, it’s important to note that our Real Estate team has $6 billion of dry powder to capitalize on opportunities emerging from the market dislocation of the last several quarters, but greater market clarity is going to be required before we can begin to see significant return of demand and growth. Moving on to our Asia-Pacific Managed Assets, despite overall client sentiment in China remaining relatively weak, we did generate modest positive net long-term flows in our China JV, driven by equities, particularly in our fast-growing ETF lineup.
This was augmented by the launch of four new products and we continue to believe that some early signs of recovery in China could bode well for a more constructive market as 2024 progresses. We maintain our conviction in this market and our leading position within it as the asset management industry matures with the development of local retirement and capital market systems in the world’s second largest economy. Beyond China, we also saw net inflows in our India business. We recently announced a joint venture with a leading Indian company for our funds business in that market. This partnership with the Hinduja Group will enable us to continue to expand our distribution to serve more domestic investors in the Indian market. In our Multi-Asset and Other related capabilities, we also generated net inflows led by our quantitative equity strategies, which were offset by outflows of remaining assets in our GTR capability in the U.K., which we decided to close last year.
Finally, the relative pressure on fundamental equity flows continued. However, as I pointed out previously, we’ve seen some moderation in certain areas of active equity flows, particularly in the global, international and emerging market segments. Our net outflows in these strategies have moderated during the past several quarters to $1 billion to $2 billion per quarter, markedly lower than the 2022 quarterly peak outflows of $6 billion. One notable standout in our fundamental equity flows was in our global equity and income strategy, which is among the top-selling active retail funds in the growing Japanese market. This fund delivered an incremental $1.2 billion of net flows in the first quarter and its AUM has nearly tripled in the past year.
Overall, our asset flows in the first quarter continue to demonstrate the breadth of capabilities that we offer to serve our clients’ diverse needs and perform through various market cycles. We believe that this positions us well in front of the rapid evolution underway in our industry. Our team remains focused on the value drivers that we believe create a competitive advantage to deliver sustained, strong asset flows, notably investment quality, product breadth and differentiation, and exceptional client engagement. So, moving on to Slide 4, investment performance, which is always a top priority of our firm and is displayed on this slide. We’re showing overall results relative to benchmarks and peers, as well as our performance and key capabilities where information is readily comparable and more meaningful to driving company outcomes.
Overall, investment performance was solid in the first quarter. On a one-year, three-year, and five-year basis, 66%, 64% and 75%, respectively, of our AUM is beating its benchmark and around 70% of our AUM is in the top half of peers across all periods. We also have a significant number of funds that are now in the top quartile of performance, with 46% hitting that mark on a five-year basis, which is a considerable improvement over the last several quarters. We continue to have excellent fixed income performance across nearly all capabilities and time horizons, supporting our strong conviction and our ability to attract flows as investors deploy money into these strategies. 92% of our fundamental fixed income capabilities are beating their benchmark, with 68% in the top quartile on a five-year basis.
Fundamental equities, three-year and five-year performance has improved meaningfully over the past year, with 56% in the top half of peers on a three-year basis and 52% over five years. We’ve seen strengthening results across many of our domestic and global equity strategies as well. So hopefully you find this more streamlined approach to discussing our results, our investment capabilities and investment performance more straightforward and useful as you think about Invesco and its potential. As we continue to simplify and focus our business, we are also tightening our financial discipline, which will enable the allocation of resources to drive innovation and growth in our investment capabilities. With that, I’m going to turn the call over to Allison to discuss our financial results for the quarter and I look forward to your questions.
Allison Dukes: Thank you, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. I’m going to begin on Slide 5. Total assets under management at the end of the first quarter were nearly $1.7 trillion or $77 billion higher than last quarter end. Higher markets coupled with net long-term inflows drove the increase in AUM during the first quarter. Of the $68 billion increase driven by higher markets, $46 billion was driven by ETFs, including $20 billion by the QQQ. Fundamental equity AUM was $19 billion higher due to markets. As Andrew noted, we generated $6.3 billion in net long-term inflows for organic growth of 2.2%. Long-term net inflows were largely driven by ETFs, excluding the QQQ. ETF inflows were $11.2 billion in the first quarter, partially offsetting this was $5.6 billion in fundamental equity net outflows during the quarter.
Net revenues, adjusted operating income and adjusted operating margin all improved from the fourth quarter, and I’ll cover the drivers of that improvement shortly. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.33 for the first quarter. We continued to simplify and streamline the organization to better position Invesco for greater scale and improved profitability in the future. We did incur $5 million of organizational change-related expenses in the quarter, we also achieved an incremental $4 million of net savings, more than we had expected previously. These efforts will result in $60 million of annual net savings this year, exceeding our goal of $50 million for 2024. Overall operating expenses remained well-managed. We further strengthened the balance sheet by redeeming the $600 million senior note that matured on January 30th.
As expected, we used $500 million in cash and we drew approximately $100 million on our credit facility to fully redeem the note. We ended the quarter with net debt of $362 million, as we had other seasonal-related cash usage during the quarter and we’re still on track to approach net debt of zero in the second half of this year. Moving to Slide 6, secular shifts and quiet demand across the asset-managed industry, coupled with more recent market dynamics, have had a significant impact on our asset mix since the acquisition of Oppenheimer Funds. Going back to 2019 after the acquisition, ETF and Index AUM, excluding the QQQ, have grown from $171 billion, 14% of our overall $1.2 trillion in average AUM in 2019 to $398 billion or 23% of our average AUM of $1.6 trillion in the first quarter.
The QQQ, a product we are no management fees from, but does provide a substantial marketing benefit, has more than tripled in size over this time, growing from $74 billion to $259 billion or 6% to 15% of total average AUM. We’ve also seen very strong growth in global liquidity, growing from $77 billion or 7% of average AUM to $165 billion or 10% of average AUM in the first quarter. These product areas carry lower net revenue yields compared to our overall net revenue yield. During the same timeframe, we’ve seen weaker demand for fundamental equities and Multi-Asset products, which carry higher net revenue. This has been driven in part by the risk-off sentiment that was sparked in early 2022, coupled with the pressure we experienced in developing markets and global equities, as well as the closure of our GTR capabilities.
Our fundamental equity portfolio in 2019 was $348 billion or 29% of our average AUM. By the first quarter, that portfolio had declined to $274 billion or 16% of our average AUM. Multi-Asset also declined from 9% to 4% of average AUM over this timeframe. Looking at the first quarter of 2024, as compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, we continue to experience similar dynamics with ETFs growing from 22% to 23% and the QQQ growing from 14% to 15% of average AUM, while fundamental equities and Multi-Asset remained flat at 16% and 4%, respectively. The resultant revenue headwinds created by these dynamics has weighed on our results over the last several years. While we’ve experienced excellent organic growth and lower fee capabilities like ETFs and global liquidity, it’s not enough to offset the revenue loss from higher fee fundamental equity and Multi-Asset uplift.
Our overall net revenue yield has declined meaningfully during this timeframe, but that decrease has been driven by the shift in our asset mix, not degradation in the yield in our investment strategies. Net revenue yields by investment strategy have been relatively stable within the ranges provided on the slide. The other point that I want to emphasize is that this multiyear secular shift in client preferences has been increasingly captured in our results. Our portfolio is better diversified today than four years ago, and our concentration risk and higher fee fundamental equities and Multi-Asset products has been reduced. These dynamics, though challenging to manage through as they occur, should portend well for future revenue growth and marginal profitability improvement.
Further, we now have a more diversified business mix, which better positions the firm to navigate various market cycles, events and shifting client demand. Now turning to Slide 7, net revenue of $1.05 billion in the first quarter was $23 million lower than the first quarter of 2023 and $7 million higher than the fourth quarter of 2023. The decline from last year was largely due to a $22 million decline in investment management fees driven by the shift in our asset mix just discussed. Service and Distribution fees increased $43 million due to higher fund-related fees and higher AUM to which the fees apply, but this is largely offset by third-party distribution, service and advisory expenses that are passed through from Service and Distribution fees.
The revenue increase from the prior quarter was primarily due to a $34 million increase in investment management fees due to higher average AUM, partially offset by the incremental asset mix shift, and lower seasonal performance fees. Service and Distribution fees increased $32 million due to higher fund-related fees, but were offset by third-party distribution, service and advisory expenses. Before I cover operating expenses, I did want to note that the first -- for the first quarter, certain operating expenses were reclassified to more accurately portray the nature of the expenses. These expenses were previously classified as either marketing or property, office and technology, and they’ve now been reclassified as G&A expenses. We’ve included in the appendix a two-year look back on the reclassifications to show the impact by expense category.
The reclassification had no impact on our reported operating revenues, total operating expenses, operating income or net income. For comparability, the variances I will be discussing include the reclass expense categories for the first quarter of 2024 and the first quarter and fourth quarters of last year. Total adjusted operating expenses in the first quarter were $770, excuse me, were $757 million, an increase of $8 million from the first quarter of last year. Included in the first quarter of this year’s operating expenses are $5 million related to organizational change expenses and $7 million of Alpha platform-related implementation expenses, which in the first quarter of last year would have been recorded in transaction, integration and restructuring expenses, and not included in our operating expenses.
Adjusting for these items, first quarter expenses were $4 million lower than the first quarter of last year. Total adjusted operating expenses were $14 million lower than fourth quarter, largely driven by lower G&A expenses. Employee compensation was $6 million higher in the first quarter due largely to the seasonal impact of higher payroll tax and other benefit resets in the first quarter, which totaled approximately $20 million. This is partially offset by lower costs related to organizational changes that I’ll touch on shortly. G&A expense was $21 million lower than last quarter as we typically see higher G&A in the fourth quarter. Lower professional services fees in the first quarter were the primary driver of the decline in G&A expense.
We also had $7 million in spending related to our Alpha platform implementation, lower than the $12 million incurred last quarter. Going forward, we continue to expect one-time implementation costs of Alpha to be approximately $10 million per quarter in 2024, with some fluctuation quarter to quarter. We’ll continue to update our progress on the implementation and related costs as we move forward. The effective tax rate was 24.6% in the first quarter. We estimate our non-GAAP effective tax rate to be between 23% and 25% for the second quarter of 2024. The actual effective tax rate can vary due to the impact of non-recurring items on free tax income and discrete tax items. Moving to Slide 8, we achieved an incremental $4 million in net expense savings in the first quarter related to the organizational changes.
On an annualized basis, we have achieved $60 million in net savings, exceeding our $50 million target for 2024. And while we did realize $5 million of organizational change-related expenses in the first quarter, we’re not currently expecting any further significant restructuring costs associated with these efforts. The full benefits from our simplification efforts will be seen over time as we generate revenue growth and margin recovery. As we’ve discussed, we manage variable compensation to a full-year outcome in line with company performance and competitive industry practices. Historically, our compensation to net revenue ratio has been in the 38% to 42% range, trending towards the upper end of the range in periods of lower revenue. At current AUM levels, we would expect the ratio to be slightly above the higher end of this range for 2024.
I’ll finish on Slide 9. We continue to make progress on building balance sheet strength in the first quarter. We redeemed the $600 million senior note that matured on January 30th using the $500 million in cash and drawing $100 million on our credit facility to accomplish this. We ended the quarter with $900 million in cash and $368 million drawn on the facility as the first quarter is a seasonally high cash usage quarter. We ended the quarter with net debt of $362 million, compared to nearly $600 million a year ago, all in line with our expectations. These actions resulted in an improvement in our leverage ratios and we’re now down to a leverage ratio excluding the preferred of 0.54 times. A significant improvement over the past several years.
We expect to pay down the credit facility as we move through the second and third quarters, approaching our goal of zero net debt in the second half of this year. We also hope to begin a more regular stock buyback program as we move towards this goal. We’re pleased to note that our board approved an increase in the quarterly common stock dividend to $0.205 per share effective this quarter. This reflects the strength of our balance sheet, cash position and stable cash flows. To conclude, the resiliency of our firm’s net flows performance is evident again this quarter and we continue to make progress on simplifying the organization and building a stronger balance sheet while also investing in areas of growth. We are committed to driving profitable growth and a high level of financial performance and we have the right strategic positioning to do so.
And with that, I’d like to open it up to Q&A.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Okay. And our first question comes from Dan Fannon with Jefferies. Your line is open.
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