Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this presentation of the results for the year ending 30th of September, 2023. I'm Paul French, Head of Corporate Communications. This presentation is being recorded. Joining us today, we have Impax's Founder and CEO, Ian Simm, and Impax's CFO, Karen Cockburn. There'll be a chance for Q&A at the end, so if you'd like to ask a question at that point, please raise your hand. With that, I'll hand it over to Ian.
Okay. Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everybody. So, diving straight into the next slide, reporting the results for the 30th of September this year, so 12 months. So overall, we believe a creditable performance in challenging market conditions. Assets under management up 4.8%. Good progress with product development, particularly with fixed income. We strengthened our distribution in several corners of the world and invested further, both in operational resilience but also in our scalability and preparing the business for the next phase of growth. And as shown on the right there, a winner of a number of awards over the last 12 months. Several of the charts in this pack are just updates on the charts you've seen in similar formats in recent years, including this one.
This shows the progression between the first half and the second half. Actually, pretty much mirror images of the two in terms of market performance, market contribution on the one hand, outflows and inflows. Net inflows in the first half with rising markets, net outflows in the second half with falling markets. The net result being that, because of the strong investment performance in market movement, we did actually grow assets under management, as I said, but that was with a very slight net outflows of GBP 92 million over the full year. Next slide, please. Karen will go into the numbers in more detail shortly, but the summary on this page in the usual format, revenue up slightly, reflecting the higher AUM.
But because of our investments in resilience and scalability, as well as new products, the costs were slightly higher, and therefore, operating profit was lower than the previous year. That also fed through to a slightly lower operating margin, but we have been able to maintain the dividend at the full year dividend being exactly the same as last year. So, both the interim and the final dividend are the same as in fiscal 2022. Next slide, please.
So background to the year and actually, coming into the new financial year, which starts the first of October for us, this is no surprise to anybody, but of course, equity markets have been quite challenging, with the Magnificent 7 stocks really racing away and everything else being pretty sluggish, reflecting the difficulty in the rest of the economy in coping with rising inflation, uncertainty for a while, and central bank effectiveness and issues around consumer spending and the degree to which pent-up savings were gonna carry on supporting the economy. So the net result of all that, as we'll explain in a moment, is that several of Impax's investment portfolios have been somewhat derated. So the investment performance picture in the last 12 months has been mixed. Some more details to come.
However, looking forward then, we do think that the background to the transition to a more sustainable economy continues to strengthen. So very strong evidence that the clean energy revolution is accelerating in pretty much all corners of the world. China's ability to maintain leadership in that space and transform its own economy, probably faster than anywhere else, is exciting and leading to opportunities not just in Asia, but also for cheaper products and services in the space around the world. And sad for people with property in the wrong place or in the wrong insurance products, but the El Niño effect in the Southern Hemisphere is now compounding global climate change and the bad weather, severe weather we've had this year, which followed on from similarly bad weather in 2022, is likely to be sustained, if not compounded, in 2024, maybe even into 2025.
So that should be good for investments in resilience in general, which is a key theme for our investment portfolios. Next slide. So against that backdrop, we do think that our investment philosophy is well-placed for further alpha generation, but also to continue to attract asset owners around the world who are looking not just for allocations to sectors that are set to outperform, but also for that additional information and partnership that comes from a specialist asset manager that is really well connected into the policy world, the science and technology world, as well as having a deep understanding with global investment footprint of how markets are changing month by month in this space.
So we have spent now 25 years investing in this business, creating a scalable platform, global distribution, and a broad and widening range of products with a nice headroom for capacity. So, continue to have very strong optimism around the medium-term potential for this company. Next slide. So there's also a slide that we've had in the past, so now updated. So you can see from the donut on the top right, that the environmental, thematic, or blue-shaded part of the business is still more than half. It's actually slightly less than it was, relatively speaking, at the start of the year, shown at the top left, because the so-called Sustainability Lens or more core products that Impax has run, Impax runs in equities and fixed income has grown as a percentage.
In terms of regional effects, bottom left, then U.K. was actually slightly higher, U.S. slightly lower, with Asia stepping up and EU slightly back, but nothing dramatic in terms of the sectoral or geographic distribution. Then on the bottom right, you can see that we have slightly more than half of our business in our own label funds and direct mandates, and also that the revenue that we get from BNP Paribas Asset Management has continued to fall moderately as a percentage of the total as we invest further in direct distribution. As I mentioned, net outflows in total, GBP 92 million over the year, which is disappointing. It's below zero, but I think very creditable compared to much of the rest of the market.
We do think that that is reflective of a very attractively diversified client base. We have nearly 90 separate mandates around the world, and probably a couple of 100 institutional investors who are represented in those mandates or pooled funds. Client retention has been very high during the year, and I think that's a critical point at a time when it's quite plausible that asset allocation will come back in favor of growth equities or quality growth over the next year or two. And because we haven't really lost a significant number of clients, then we're well placed to get a reversal of the flows that have been slightly negative in some quarters in some mutual funds as asset allocation becomes more positive.
Meanwhile, we have been winning a significant number of new mandates, including this last 12 months with a big Japanese pension fund, Lombard Odier, and ABN AMRO, just to give you three examples. Some data there from our recent client survey, so 90% reporting a positive view of Impax, which I think is a very solid and sort of top quartile, if not top decile result. We have started the new financial year with an encouraging start, being a bit of a mixed picture over the two months. But when we report on the November AUM number, which should be in the next 10 days or so, then we're hoping that it will be quite materially higher than the October number.
Next slide shows the flows, usual format, slightly different graphics, if you're paying close attention, but.
... mixed picture, and then I hope that it's gonna be all right.
Hi. Sorry, could everyone go on mute, please? Got a bit of sound. Thank you.
So, the dark blue bars show the net inflows in the different dimensions compared to the previous 12 months in the sort of mid-blue color, so pay attention to the dark blue in particular. And if it goes to the right of the central bar, that's positive. So St. James's Place, a big mandate for us in the U.K., still nicely positive, albeit slightly down on the previous 12 months. Everything else a bit flat in the U.K. Notably the top central area, that's the data from the BNP Paribas mandates, where that's essentially across five major funds and reflects, in particular, asset allocation calls from central asset allocators within the company.
Our one of our big Japanese relationships goes through BNP Paribas, and that was a significant contributor to those outflows, which is not atypical for mandates in Japan that are a few years old. The rest of the EMEA region was broadly positive with those two new mandates that I mentioned, Lombard Odier and ABN AMRO, contributing. North America was negative, but actually, that is the area or the part of the world that tends to turn first when it comes to changing sentiment, both positive and negative. So if there is gonna be an uptick in investor sentiment, it's likely to be felt and reflected first in North America as nimble asset allocators there try and get in ahead of the change.
The positive result in Asia Pacific had a major contribution from the Japanese pension funds that I referred to. So in addition to harvesting and building what we already have, then we have been investing further in distribution. So direct distribution was enhanced in that 12-month period by the appointment of our first direct salesperson in Canada. We already have quite a bit of business in Canada, which has been won through indirect channels, but we've now upgraded to a direct sales route.
In the Nordics, we've appointed our first direct salesperson, and in Japan, I think it's been announced at the half year, we have opened an office in Tokyo, in part because of the new mandate, building on 15 years of client service in Japan, but also because we could get a grant from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which has been keen to attract green-oriented financial services companies into Tokyo. Partnerships have also deepened, so we've made further good progress with the so-called wirehouses in the United States, the big private banks that have got national and in some cases global reach. In Latin America, we've teamed up with our first distribution partner, BTG Pactual, based in Brazil, to help with distribution there and also in places like Chile.
In Australia, we've just launched a second fund with our distribution partner, this time into the Global Opportunities or core global equity space, alongside the environmental thematic leaders fund, which has been running for a number of years. Slide. In product development, we have continued to prepare the ground carefully for further expansion, giving ourselves more capacity and more diversified product range. Just over a year ago, we seeded a UCITS fund with a listed infrastructure strategy. We're just about, in the next week, to launch a new thematic fund based on what we're calling Social Leaders, which is a tilt towards high-quality companies in the healthcare financials and similar areas that are providing goods and services in markets with great consumer and welfare benefits.
We are well-placed to launch an emerging markets product over the next six to nine months, which we're leveraging on our 16 years of exposure and team presence in Hong Kong and adding some recently acquired investment expertise in the Latin America region. Other product development includes setting up another thematic fund, this time for the U.S . version of our Leaders Strategy, the main environmental thematic. We've got a number of North American products underway as we set out new investment fund structures for the distribution partners. Collective investment trusts, or CITs, and separately managed accounts are key products to be able to offer alongside the more traditional, but typically more expensive, mutual fund range.
Also worth emphasizing is that we now have over 50 clients and client support people, including marketing, in each of the, on the one hand, North American regions and separately, Europe and Asia, so 100 client and support people, which is a great platform for further expansion. And in private markets, we've continued to work on the fundraising for our fourth fund. That will have a final close at the end of January, and we will provide an update later, probably at the half year result, but we're on course for this to be our largest private equity fund to date, and the investment track record continues to build with some very attractive exits from the third fund, and much of the money raised for the fourth fund already has been deployed or committed.
That should give us a runway for a fifth fund or something similar towards the end of 2024 or going into 2025. Alongside that, we did want to stress that we have been investing quite deliberately in the Fixed Income space. We believe that market conditions now with higher interest rates and prospects of higher for longer in the yield area are very attractive for asset allocators who are now seeing Fixed Income as providing returns that justify higher allocation. There does appear to be quite a significant lack of product globally that is tying the Fixed Income market to the transition to a more sustainable economy.
Because of our acquisition of Pax World Management back in early 2018, so nearly six years ago, we do have a foothold in fixed income, both in U.S. high yield and U.S. investment grade. We've been expanding our team quite significantly, both with analyst and trader hires into those two products, but also a newly created Head of Fixed Income, somebody based in London, who joined us about a month ago, and he is working on mapping out the next phase of product growth. One of the things we are looking at is the possibility of bringing on additional teams, sometimes with asset and management through small acquisitions, and we expect to be able to update everybody over the next 12 months with some news in that dimension. Next slide.
So, as I said at the start, the fundamentals of the transition to a more sustainable economy continue to strengthen, and in that context, Impax remains a global leader. Having said that, though, the headwinds around the economy that I touched on at the start have led to a de-rating of several of our thematic portfolios in particular. So you can see here on the bottom right graph, the premium that our Specialists Strategy, which is the global small and mid-cap strategy, has reflected in terms of P/E, compared to the market, and that falling line in the last couple of years reflects the de-rating that I referred to. So typically, over the cycle, the de-rating is followed by a re-rating.
And so this is generally seen as a start of a good entry point for this type of strategy, which should be appealing to the institutional market. It may be, in the near term, not quite so attractive to the retail market, who's looking for more positive recent historical performance. We are on the front foot in terms of communicating with clients with the thematic fund range, what is going on, the fact that the underlying quality companies remain resilient and generally have low levels of debt, and therefore are well-placed to recover when market sentiment improves. And that client engagement has led to the high levels of client retention that I mentioned at the start. Next slide.
One of the things that we have, of course, been expanding over the years is our expertise in the so-called sustainability space, particularly our work in those four areas and in the boxes. So the analysis of market and company business plans, risk and opportunity, engagement and relationships and sort of governance oversight of the companies that we invest in, on the one hand. The work we do in policy to understand what policy drivers are as they affect investment prospects, but also our influence and our the welcome that we get in many policy fora, including, for example, COP28 discussions next week in Dubai, to provide that investor perspective as to what the optimal trajectory is for policy, for example, in clean energy.
Our reporting to investors around the non-financial outcomes, for example, so-called environmental impact, for example, water conservation or CO2 footprints, is now in its tenth year. And our research that we do with various expert groups, for example, Imperial College in the area of biodiversity, is also well acknowledged and appreciated by our clients. So what we've done in the last six months is pulled together that expertise and the team of around 16 people into a sustainability center. The idea here is to make this a as efficient a service as possible for internal customers as well as external clients, and give us a clear route to scaling it and expanding it.
So the leadership, which has been appointed internally, is now working on the plan for the next phase of growth in the sustainability center. Next slide. So as you'd expect with a business of this geographic reach and complexity, then there's lots that can be done in the area of efficiency improvements. And so we've been investing in a number of technology projects over the last couple of years to try and make the most of that efficiency potential. And at the same time, in the context of market headwinds and generally sort of choppy business conditions, do what we can to minimize cost expansion and try and eke as much as possible out of all our expenditure.
So we have, as shown there, implemented Salesforce this calendar year, which has been really helpful in giving our sales and market-facing teams a better structured database. We are increasingly looking at or working with cloud service providers and considering outsourcing, and we're experimenting carefully with AI in a controlled fashion, principally in the investment area, but also looking at how it might be able to help us with operations. In the risk space, then we have deepened our expertise through the appointment of a chief risk officer, expanded our environmental risk team and processes, and we've also been upgrading our governance with some more process and structure around management decision making, and been looking at the composition of our boards in the light of what's increasingly complex international business.
In the people area we've had, we have expanded our headcount slightly, now just reached 300 staff, but the rate of growth has moderated as the business expansion has also moderated, and we've found that we're now fully staffed in most areas. The staff engagement is still very high, so third year in a row, we've had top decile performance or results in the engagement score. This is the highest ever at 90%, with 97% of staff feeling that they are fully aligned with Impax's purpose. A number of improvements in our HR system, including adoption of ED&I goals for 2027, as we've pretty much reached the ones we'd set most recently. You can see in the chart our geographic footprint now, which covers five countries. Slide.
Then handing over to Karen very soon, but we have announced this morning some planned changes to our board. So Sally Bridgeland, our Chair, will step down, as will Lindsey Brace Martinez in July next year. Both of them will have been on the board for nine years by 31st of July 2024. The vacancy for Chair will be taken by Simon O'Regan, who's been on our board for almost three years, subject to regulatory approval. And Lindsey, who's Chair of Rem Co, will hand over to a new board director, whose appointment we just announced today. So Julia Bond is joining us this morning, and Julia will take over as Chair of the Remuneration Committee from Lindsey on 31st of July next year.
Of course, Karen joined us over a year ago, the firm, and has become the company's Finance Director as of March this year, which is a perfect segue to hand over to her.
Thank you. So thank you, Paul. Good morning, thank you, Ian. So I'll share sort of in more detail some of the numbers that Ian talked about, starting here with revenue. So this morning, reporting actually record revenue for Impax at GBP 178 million, a growth on the year. Small, important, though, given the challenging conditions that asset managers have faced this year. The growth is really coming in two parts. So from net flows, an increase of GBP 5.7 million, roughly GBP 4 million of that is from the private equity. New clients joining, new investors into our private equity funds have driven about GBP 4 million of that upside, with the remainder coming from the annualization of the very healthy flows of about GBP 2.9 billion that we had in FY 2022 that we have held on to.
Then just noting a small impact of the modest outflows that we have seen this year. That is offset by sort of the overall performance, and this is really just the analysis that we do, that the negative reflects the cyclical market performance across the 24 months that this analysis actually looks at. Moving down the page, I've just put out the 2021 figure as well in terms of revenue, where, you know, this is 25% increase in revenue over the two-year challenging period the asset managers have held. And we do like to look at the run rates, GBP 168 million. It's really the September run rate with the normalization of the private equity business therein. And now that represents the asset position of GBP 37.4 billion at the end of September.
Stating the obvious, as that increases, then we expect to see that revenue, the run rate revenue increasing. I would also point out that GBP 37.4 was the lowest point for assets across the whole 12 months that we are reporting on. Important to point out, looking at the fee, that we have, you know, the revenue is underpinned by a very stable margin. It has dropped by a tick down 1 basis point. And we look at that, not seeing pricing pressure in the market, either for new business or to retain existing business, and this really is just shifts in the mix. You know, there will be a bit that we have, like as Ian said, about 90 clients, the mix of that ebbs and flows sort of every on a monthly basis.
But what we're probably on a macro level seeing is less, a contribution from our U.S. business, where on average the pricing can be up to 60 basis points. So it is a mix issue that we are looking or a mix thing that we're looking at there, and we're not looking at any real pricing pressure for us. Moving on to the next slide, it is important to talk about the diversification strength that underpins the revenue, which is a clear matter of differentiation for Impax. That is diversification at all levels across strategy, region, and client type.
Our move towards The Sustainability Lens, away from the environmental lens, continues to gain traction with the increase in The Sustainability Lens from now contributing 25% to our revenue, up from 19% two years ago. I think of importance is this revenue by region, where we have significant diversification. In the year where the U.K. and the U.S., both, in fairly difficult trading conditions, we saw that revenue step back a little, but that was offset by growth in revenue from continental Europe, from Canada, and from Australia. Very well-diversified revenue geography. Also then, we continue to build our own distribution.
The success of that we measure in terms of the contribution, the reducing contribution of BNP to the overall revenue, and that also is making progress, reducing from 32% two years ago to 28% that we see today. That's sort of it on revenue, but if we can move on to cost, please. So what we're looking at is costs growth moderating 11% this year compared to 24% that we saw over the prior year. Costs have been managed well, and GBP 12 million has been added to the cost base this year. And that really, though, reflects the moment where we have built the listed equity business that we have wanted to build at this point.
Looking at the chart, of the GBP 12 million, GBP 8 million came in in non-staff costs, with net GBP 4 million on the people cost, which is a swing on where you saw the growth last year, where the bulk of the growth was in people. Just unpacking that GBP 8 million growth for the first time, we're just sharing sort of some of the detail of our cost on the bottom right-hand side. In terms of the GBP 8 million, what I would call out in terms of sharing where that increase has come from, probably maybe GBP 2 million-GBP 3 million of that is non-repeating, in terms of just the investments that we've talked about into Salesforce, and some of the technology and efficiency that we are building into the business.
Looking at the staff costs, the GBP 9.6 million that you see as the increase in the year, probably half of that was an annualization of the hiring that had been done in 2022. There's some inflation in there, but the point is really that we have moderated the headcount growth that you can see and capped out the year, 10% growth of 300, and significantly reduced that run rate from the half year. We have really been able to manage those costs in the second half because we have reached that point, I wouldn't say quite of completion, but, you know, we're, we're stable in terms of the, the investment into the listed equity business. Being very aligned then, looking at to shareholders on the variable staff cost, that's bonus.
We retain the policy of paying up to 45% of pre-bonus profits into the pot. But reflecting the reduction in overall profitability, that pot has reduced by GBP 5 million this year, which represents just over 40% payout in terms of the overall percentage, similar to where we were in the prior year. So finishing the year out, GBP 120 million is the total cost, which is close to the run rate, actually, what we see in September. What I would say is that in the current conditions, we will continue to manage that cost base very cautiously. And projecting forward into next year, what do we see?
Well, we will have to continue sort of selective investment into the business for efficiency, for Fixed Income, and taking account of inflation, probably see that figure grow mid-single digits is what we would expect. That would be before any acquisitions, but that, or any adds into the business. But I think that's certainly continuing in that moderating of the cost growth. Moving on then to bring the two pieces together, really just looking at the operating performance, the reduced revenue, offset by that additional careful investment into the business, has resulted in a GBP 9 million reduction in the overall operating profit, at GBP 58 million. But the important point is that we now have that stable cost base. I'm actually quite pleased in terms of the current conditions, having the operating margin at 32.6%.
It is down on the prior year, but it's more reflective of the more difficult conditions that we find in the market. We retain the goal of the mid to high 30, 30% , mid to high 30s operating margin. Looking at the graph at the bottom is our gearing story over time, which is broadly upward as markets expand. I expect as market conditions improve, for our operating margin to return into the mid to high 30s over the medium term. What I would say, though, is that in terms of we say we have built that business, we're finishing this year with, you know, the global distribution for the business that we wanted to build. We have a very healthy pipelines. We have introduced exciting new strategies. We have introduced new product. And really, we...
Sorry, and we've got efficient, scalable operations, that the business really is, at this point, poised for, you know, the next phase of what should be very profitable growth when the sentiment returns to equity markets. I can move on then to the balance sheet. So I'm very pleased, I guess, with where we finished on the balance sheet this year. We went into this sort of tougher trading cycle, with a strong balance sheet and with good performance, operational performance from the business, good cash generation. We remain in a very healthy position. The cash at the end of the period finished at GBP 87.7 million, and that was a very healthy position. It started the year at GBP 107 million, so it has reduced, but remains at a very healthy position.
Looking at sort of the movements on cash over the year, there's cash, still a very cash-generative business in terms of the core operation, down on previous years, due to sort of just the operating conditions. Dividends remain the most significant use of the cash that we have in the business. And we have acquired shares. We continue to acquire shares into the EBT to offset the share, the staff awards, the RSS scheme that we have. We have been acquiring more this year than we have in previous years. In 2021, we didn't purchase any shares. 2022, we had a small add. So this was really just a period of acknowledging some value in the share price, where we have deployed more of the cash, in doing so.
We've also seeded GBP 5 million more into taking the total value of seed from about GBP 7 million up to GBP 13 million. And this reflects the new strategies that we have started this year. So finishing the year in a fairly strong cash position, which has enabled us to maintain the dividend despite the reducing profits. Proposing a dividend of 22.9 for the full year, taking the full year dividend to 27.6, which is flat on the year. Our dividend policy remains to pay out between 55%-80% in normal conditions, and you will not be surprised to see that this is towards the top end of that range at 78%.
Finishing off with then just capital, taking a slightly different look at that in terms of on the next page, but really, the message is still the same that we've looked at before. Important to say we have no debt in this business. We have increased the sort of capital surplus, and really just to finish with sort of, always important to sort of say: How do we think about that capital surplus, and how do we use it? So we always will retain a small buffer for the unexpected stresses in any business, just good balance sheet management. We do see future. We want to retain some of that for future growth, more seeding, perhaps, as we move forward. Of course, we want to maintain our dividend policy and seeking to be progressive within that.
We will continue; it will be a continuing feature of the business to have share buybacks into the EBT. We seek to have the staff own 20% of the business, and that will be a continuing feature by which we align the interest of the business to shareholders. And Ian's talked about sort of an approach in fixed income. We do want to retain an element of a war chest for some small acquisitions of teams, et cetera, as we move forward. That really, sort of, to finish up before I hand back to Ian, you know, just if I could just simplify three key messages. You know, we have got a solid, relatively sticky, well-diversified source of revenue in the business now.
In terms of costs, we are where we want to be, and poised for the gearing really to kick in, when sentiment returns. And also pleased just to say that we have been able to maintain that, strong balance sheet and dividend. But with that, I will hand back to Ian to wrap up.
Yes, just to close before Q&A. So after 25 years, and we do feel that this business is well poised for the next phase of growth. Our investment philosophy is well set to generate alpha for investors, but also to appeal to asset owners of all shapes and sizes around the world, because of, in particular, the opportunity for non-financial benefits as well as great alpha generation. So our investments in products with the right legal wrappers are strengthening and our large sales and client service team, our distribution partners, and our ability to move into new areas like fixed income, do give us great potential for capacity headroom, over the next five to 10 years. Well, in excess of $100 billion in total.
As Karen's been saying, we do have a well-oiled machine to turn that potential into profits and over the future, all being well, rising, rising dividend streams. Thank you for listening. We're certainly around till the half hour. I know that this was supposed to be a 45-minute meeting, so we've got 20 minutes for Q&A, if people would like to go to that phase now. I'm not sure who's coordinating that, but-
Yes, I can, I can coordinate that, and I think Paul is up first. Paul Brown from Citibank.
Hi, morning. Thanks, everyone. Ian, question for you on the upcoming global EM strategy. Any geographies or themes you think will feature prominently in that one? And then sort of specific one on that same strategy, with the big dependency on many emerging markets on fossil fuels, one of the big themes there on sustainable finance is this transition finance angle, you know, investing to help brown industries become green. Is that gonna be a theme for Impax?
Well, we've had a team in Hong Kong since 2007, which has been researching and investing in particularly ASEAN and Chinese stocks in the clean energy, water, materials, and sustainable food areas. So those will be themes. However, we are broadening the reach in line with our Global Opportunities strategy to cover financials and healthcare. So the strategy will include China, but it will also have exposure to Latin America, South Africa, and potentially to parts of Eastern Europe, but not to Japan. Transition finance is something that we're thinking about in the fixed income space, particularly for high yield, but not for equity, so that won't feature in the new product.
Thank you.
Great. Next up, we've got Jens Scherenberg from Investec.
Super, thank you. Morning, guys. First of all, congrats on 25 years of Impax. Clearly, a great achievement. I have a couple of questions on my side. First and foremost, and apologies if you've mentioned that before, but can you remind me if you have published the target size of Fund Four, and sort of how the fundraising environment really has been there, given that we've seen sort of really extending fundraising timelines in the private capital space? Secondly, just on the newly launched Sustainable Infrastructure strategy. So if, if that's in listed equities, what's the scope to launch that on the private capital side as well? And finally, I think you mentioned the war chest for M&A. I mean, as those valuations have come down across the board, what sort of targets would you consider?
Would you consider growing inorganically on the private capital side there as well, or what sort of targets would you consider?
Yeah, so, Fund Three for private equity was EUR 330 million. We're not to announce the target fund size, and as you probably know from private markets, fundraising, the last couple of months are highly uncertain as to how many of the target LPs actually make it over the finish line. But we would be hopeful of getting the fund to over EUR 400 million, so bigger than Fund Three. Sustainable infrastructure, so yes, we've launched in the listed space a year ago. We have been investing in this area for many years, but this is the first focused, sort of, narrowly defined infrastructure fund.
I think we're open to investing in infrastructure outside the clean energy space in private markets, but it's just a question of finding the right teams with the right sort of track record. What we are adamant on is the importance of remaining in the development and construction part of the value chain, rather than owning operating assets, which invariably are very heavily influenced by interest rates trajectories. And then in terms of M&A, our focus at the moment is principally on fixed income, where we're looking for teams, ideally with asset under management, that can add capabilities that we can further scale. We continue to talk to managers and teams in the private market space, but have been doing for quite a long time without finding the right fit.
It is a possibility, but we're certainly not signaling that anything's going to happen anytime soon in that private markets area for M&A.
Super. Thank you very much.
Great. Next, we've got Stuart Duncan from Peel Hunt.
Thanks. Morning, all. I've got a couple of questions as well. First of all, Ian, just on the fund four you mentioned, can you just give us a sort of sense on what fees will be charged by that fund? And actually, I think, Karen, you mentioned GBP 4 million of revenue. I'd be interested just when it actually started generating revenue as well. Second question on flows, and obviously a very different picture in H2 compared to H1. Could you give us a sort of sense of what the gross inflows and outflows looked in H2, maybe relative to the prior year, just to sort of see the change?
And then lastly, on the fixed income and the potential sort of new products there, just a sort of sense of what margins attached to some of these more specialist fixed income type funds you might launch?
Yeah. So, fees for the fourth fund, I mean, the headline fee is 1.5% per annum on committed capital. I think given discounts to existing LPs, the blended rate will be a bit less than that, but not dramatically. And what happens is that you charge investors as if they'd come in at the first close, and the amount that Karen referred to is what's called catch-up fees, where those that come in after first close, before final close, pay a sort of additional lump sum, which is the catch-up as if they'd come in from the start, which is why there's a bit of a sort of blip for the total fees at this period.
We're just signaling that that blip doesn't get repeated, but everybody has been paying money as if all fees as if they'd come in at the start.
Yeah, well, and I would just add to that then, the... When we get the fund to the size that it is, for the full year, in 2024, even though we sort of had in this year, the end of the year number flattered by an element of those catch-up fees, what we will have is that much bigger fund generating fees for all of FY 2024, may hold, you know, ironing out that blip, actually. So next year's number will probably have the same level of NEF income or private equity income within it.
On your second question, I think that was answered on slide four, if I heard you correct, Stuart. But, so in the first half, inflows were GBP 4.5 million, outflows were GBP 3.4 million. The second half was sort of reverse, where inflows were GBP 3 million and outflows were GBP 4.2 million.
Okay, sorry, I missed that. Yeah.
Stuart, I could add to that as well, is that when you actually look year-on-year, not just the half-year, we actually had more outflows in FY 2022 than we did in FY 2023. So you know, the net position really is because it was the inflows have sort of in that second half of 2023 pulled back.
Okay.
In terms of fixed income fees, then, I think we're very conscious that in certain parts of fixed income, for example, in government debt, fees can be very low. We don't see our added value being in government debt or interest rates, but rather in credit, where there's a corporate angle and therefore an ability to leverage our understanding of balance sheet risk. So the fees that we're charging are not dissimilar to what we charge in many of the equity products. So kind of north of 30 basis points for most products.
Okay, thank you. Very helpful.
Great. Next, we've got Alexander Bowers from Berenberg.
Thank you. Morning, everyone. Just one from me. On distribution planning looking forward, what regions are you looking to kind of further invest in in terms of your direct distribution capabilities? Thanks.
So, we have direct distribution at the moment in the U.S., Canada, and U.K., obviously, Ireland, and the Nordics. We also have individual salespeople who are covering the Benelux and parts of France that not in the sort of BNP Paribas territory, and a little bit of coverage in Switzerland. So, the two places where we are minded to add distribution capability will be Germany and Iberia. But we're not committing to exactly when we're gonna hire salespeople in those two areas, but those would be the sort of top priorities. But I think the key point is that we do have nicely operating and quite well-established distribution in all those other geographies, including Australia, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
Thank you.
Got James Allen from Liberum.
Hi, morning, everyone. Three questions if I can. First one, outflows in BNP Paribas submanaged funds were due to some Japanese investors, but AUM in Asia was up strongly. So presumably, that means you've seen some strong client wins in Asia Pacific. And if so, could you give us a bit more color on that? Second one, could you just remind me what the Active Share is on some of the larger strategies? And then finally, what was the client retention in percentage terms, and how does that compare to a more normal year?
... Yeah, so with BNP, there is a big Japanese client that goes into the BNP Luxembourg funds that we are actually showing and have always showed as a European client, because the client, from our perspective, is the Luxembourg Fund. The outflows from the BNP area were not just that Japanese mandate, but also the result of asset allocation decisions away from equities into cash and fixed income by central macro strategists and fund managers within BNP. So, the sort of two factors, if you like. Asia was up strongly, particularly because of a big win in Japan, with the pension fund that I mentioned. We have recently secured a so-called Type 1 license in Hong Kong, which allows us to market for the first time to institutional investors in Hong Kong directly.
And with our new Japanese office, we're applying for a client communication license, a sort of basic marketing license, which we're expecting to come through in the next couple of months. So, the numbers in the deck are significantly skewed by that win in Japan. On your second question, then, generally for the environmental thematic funds, the active share versus an all-country world index will be 98%-99%. And for the Global Opportunities Sustainability lens global product, around 90%. It's equity. And then, client retention, so generally we, we don't lose, we haven't been losing clients in terms of mandates being canceled. Can't give you the exact numbers for the previous years.
But we, I think we've lost sort of four or five client contracts over the years, some of which have been tiny, some of which have been canceled because the clients have had a complete change of investment strategy and sort of moved out of dedicated management entirely, rather than they're fed up with Impax and I'm not sure I'm aware of anybody who's fired Impax and hired one of our competitors.
Great. I think-
Thanks.
We've got one from Andy Edmond from Equity Development.
Yeah. Thanks, Paul. Just trying to get a feel for the realistic ambition in developing fixed income, and it's certainly been a feature of recent years, the strong growth in equity has left both private markets and fixed income as at a very low level on a comparative basis. And you were talking more about sort of adding on teams rather than using the war chest for any big strategic acquisition. So just curious, as a board at a strategic level, how you would like to grow fixed income over the next five to 10 years, and whether it will ever become a meaningful part of the total AUM pot?
Well, the starting point is to improve and market what we already have, so U.S. high yield and U.S. core bonds. We also have a so-called core plus product, which is enhanced through some green bond component to the investment grade allocations. So those have been selling in the U.S. and Canada, and the team hires we've made, the full analyst and the trader, have all been in the U.S., and we've got a product specialist in that area now as well, who's helping us to sharpen up the communication. So, starting point is to raise more capital, probably from North America, into those North American-oriented products.
The team head, who joined us a month ago, is based in London, as I said, has Ross Pamplin, who one of the key architects of building up European Credit Management, ECM, to around EUR 20 billion under management. And Ross does have global experience, but a strong sort of European experience around teams and security selection. So I think adding something which complemented the US portfolios to create global portfolios would, would be the natural sort of next step, and sticking probably with core bonds and, and High Yield would also make sense as a, as a sort of second component, if you like. We wouldn't rule out having emerging market debt in there as well. But we do think there's, there's great potential.
Probably a little bit further afield, not ruled out, but nothing likely in the near term. Medium term is private debt, or infrastructure debt, so they could potentially fit, but we don't see that that's the near term move.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. I'm seeing a James hand, but I think that's an old hand, so I think with that, we're good to conclude. Yeah.
Okay. Well, thank you again for staying and for your insightful, thoughtful questions. We're always available if you've got any further questions or want to have a one-to-one chat. So thanks for joining, and see you all very soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, all. Bye.
Bye.