Right, let's go. Let's get going. Just a couple of points of admin for people who might not have used Zoom before. The company will present and then try and deal with your questions, and you can submit those through the question button that you'll see at the bottom of your page. The presentation is being recorded, so if you miss anything, you should be able to see it in a day or two's time, and the materials that Ian and Karen will be speaking to are available, along with a lot of other materials, on the Impax website, which I commend to you. Right, we are delighted to be joined again by CFO Karen Cockburn, and the CEO and founder of Impax, Ian Simm, and I shall now pass over to Ian to start the presentation.
Thanks, Andy, and hello, everybody. Without further ado, just launch into the first slide. One after that one. How about that, so just going to go through an introduction for those who maybe don't know the firm. So Impax is an investment manager serving institutional and wholesale clients around the world. We manage just over GBP 37 billion in equities, fixed income, and private markets, been around since I founded the business in 1998, and we are running offices all around the world, so the U.K., Ireland, Denmark, the U.S., where we have two offices, Hong Kong and Japan, and we have a partnership approach, which has meant that we've had very, very long-term relationships with many very sophisticated clients. Next slide, please, so Impax stands out because of its investment philosophy.
We believe that there's quite a material economic transformation underway, if you like, an industrial revolution, which is driven by technology change, regulatory change, and changing consumer sentiment in the direction of what we call a more sustainable economy, which in simple terms is all about efficiency, low pollution, and better products and services. So this industrial revolution is providing a great amount of growth and also turmoil and opportunities in missed pricing or benefiting from missed pricing in both public markets and in private markets. So that's a great backdrop for our investment management style. Next slide, please, and we started with very modest beginnings, so a GBP 15 million mandate with the World Bank got us going, and today we are GBP 37 billion. So you can see the assets under management at each one of the financial years.
We actually went on to the AIM, the Alternative Investment Market through a reverse in 2001, so we've been a listed company for 23 years. Next slide, so just a summary of the results ending the 30th of September, 2024. We have been operating in quite choppy and challenging markets. I'm sure everybody who's an investor will appreciate that, so it's been a very unusual couple of years with the rise of the Magnificent Seven and mega-cap tech stocks. It's quite significant political uncertainty and the uncertainty around inflation and interest rates, which at the moment are both trending downwards. We've been continuing to invest in the medium-term potential of the firm, adding more investment capabilities, launching more products, and expanding our distribution, and I'm pleased to say that the results have been a flat assets under management.
It's very, very slightly down, but essentially flat over those 12 months, despite active management being an area of quite considerable stretch and stress. The financial numbers Karen will go into, but revenue and operating margin worth noting so operating margin still in the 30s, and I think that's quite a very good result, commendable result, and a dividend, which is the same as last year, GBP 0.276 for the year, which is flat, but very nicely covered and slightly greater cash reserves. Next slide, please, so the backdrop to our investment work is summarized here. We do think that equity market sentiment remains robust. There's, of course, been quite a lot of uncertainty in the last three weeks since the U.S. election.
But with the experience of the first Trump administration and Trump's statements so far, we think that the central scenario for equities for the next 12 months and beyond is positive. And actually, for the stocks that we're investing in, very positive, given the strong likelihood that a delayed mean reversion, i.e., re-rating of quality growth companies will take place. So in that sense, we are expecting that relatively high volatility will persist, but that interest rates will not go higher materially and may well continue to drift downward. And in that context, the Impax investment philosophy around the transition to a more sustainable economy is very well positioned, we believe, given very attractive valuations, strong fundamentals, and our approach to what you might call no-nonsense, common sense investing, rather than getting lost in ideas like ESG or impact investing, which is not what we do.
That impact discipline is very much valued by our clients. Next slide, please. So our investment performance over the, excuse me, the period has remained very strong on an absolute basis. You can see there in the second bullet point, the absolute returns of our major strategies on a relative basis compared to generic indices like the Morgan Stanley All Country World Index or ACWI Index, and we have been behind for second year. That really reflects derating rather than weak earnings. And it's a situation we found ourselves in in which the portfolios we're running are increasingly compelling on an absolute intrinsic value basis, but we're just waiting for the catalyst for re-rating. Going up to the U.S. election, those catalysts appear to be materializing, and I think we're probably on pause at the moment as market digests the policy uncertainty coming out of the U.S. Next slide, please.
What will follow now is the updates on a number of slides that you'll probably have seen in the past if you followed Impax for a few years. So we start on the right-hand side of this chart. You can see the assets under management, GBP 37.2 billion at the end of September. And the journey of getting there over the two preceding six-month periods is shown starting from September 2023 on the far left. So this is self-explanatory, but you can see outflows greater than inflows. So the net outflows have been material, but offset almost exactly by positive investment performance. And we have acquired some assets in the last six months, which I'll mention in a moment. Next slide. A breakdown of our business in a standard Impax format.
So, top left, equities in thematic and core equity categories, showing that core equities have continued to increase as a percentage of the total assets, fixed income. And geographically, the bottom left, we've had a slight increase on a relative basis in the UK and North America at the expense of the EMEA region. The bottom right shows that, once again, the relative revenue from BNP Paribas, one of our largest distribution partners, has continued to fall, which is an objective for us in order to diversify the business. So that's nice progress. And you can see a bit more detail about the breakdown of our funds by different strategy on the top right. Next slide, please. So the flows for the 12-month period are shown in the usual Impax format on this slide.
So the one that stands out, of course, is the one right in the middle, the top, which is the outflows over GBP 3 billion from BNP Paribas Asset Management. These are really dominated by central gatekeeping decisions initially to allocate client money away from equities into money market and fixed income funds. We have seen towards the end of our period and into the new financial year that those allocations out of equities and Impax managed funds have slowed. So that situation is improving. There's a similar but smaller situation with St. James's Place on the left-hand side. That's one of our largest U.K. clients. And then also flows from out of funds in the rest of Europe and North America.
But broadly speaking, the outflow situation has eased, albeit we did announce a few weeks ago that some of our St. James's Place money, about 13% of the total assets, would be leaving in November, which is in addition to those outflows. And that's just less than GBP 800 million. So that's part of the new financial year not shown here, but really very much a one-off, and our relationship with St. James's Place remains very strong. Next slide. So I just want to now touch on the progress against Impax's strategic priorities. So starting with our listed equity plan, which is to grow organically. So here we've been making investments into our team and improving the process and the structure incrementally. We've got quite a large 40-plus investment team in listed equities around the world. So plenty of firepower.
And as the team's grown, then we've been making sure that everything is working optimally. We've also been launching some new products, as shown here. So another thematic product, which we're calling Social Leaders, which is a tilt towards healthcare and financials, a U.S. version of our very well-established and successful Leaders Strategy, and two additional strategies. One, expanding our Asian coverage to emerging markets, and an EFA, i.e., non-U.S. product for U.S. investors. Next slide, please. Secondly, in fixed income, so if you've heard our presentations before, you'll have heard over the last 15, 18 months or so that we've been investing further in our fixed income capabilities from a relatively small base of U.S. AUM. So three things that we've been doing there. Firstly, expanding our team, our research team, which has been largely in the U.S.
Secondly, appointing a very experienced section or division head, which is a first post or first position to this post, first person to this post, rather. And thirdly, making a couple of acquisitions. So the first of those is now closed with assets under management of GBP 0.3 billion included in this data. That's so-called Absalon Corporate Credit, global high yield, and emerging market corporate debt based in Denmark. And the second one is shown there, Sky Harbor, which is actually European assets of a U.S. company called Sky Harbor, which is breaking into two parts. We're buying half of it. And that transaction we announced in the summer, and that should close around the end of the calendar year, bringing in about GBP 1.3 billion of additional assets. So those assets are not shown in our AUM here. So it will be in addition to GBP 37.2 billion.
So this investment team, you can see there, has expanded from 14 and will be 20 by the time the Sky Harbor acquisition closes. Thank you. Next slide. Private equity, we've also made good progress this financial year, so I think this is pretty self-explanatory, but our third fund, investing in renewable energy developers and construction opportunities, has continued to make strong exits and is on course for further exits for the next 12-month period. Our fourth fund had its final close in January this year with the largest fund to date and is now nicely invested, and we are thinking about how to expand this area. For example, a fifth fund, which we're not ready to announce yet, but that would be a logical follow-on. We're also open to other teams and possibly boutiques joining us in private markets. Next slide, please.
In the distribution area, I think we're very proud of the fact that we've now had two-plus decades of global distribution with, as I mentioned, offices in Asia and the U.S.. We've made quite significant strides forward in the last 12 months, including opening office in Denmark, appointing representatives to cover Germany and with Sky Harbor, Switzerland, and then distribution partners in the south of Europe and Middle East and Latin America as well. So the number of awards there, I think, has continued to expand. Examples of the ones we've won recently, including a third King's or Queen's Award for Enterprise. And we've been winning awards in multiple countries. Next slide, please. And then the focus, of course, is on building an efficient and scalable model.
So with more than 300 staff and over 90 individual funds and accounts that we're running, then there's very much a need for top-quality infrastructure, risk, and compliance functions, which we've had in place, but have been further strengthened and expanded over the last 12 months. And we're also paying very close attention to our culture and employee engagement. So employee engagement score from the annual survey was slightly down on the previous year, but remains a top performer relative to the benchmark that our consultants use. And we're also, in the context of a slightly expanding headcount, making very good progress in career development for women, ethnic minorities, and just ensuring that we've got a fully diverse culture and community, which is, I think, benefits the intellectual process and the investment, the quality of the investment work as well. Over to Karen.
And thank you. And good afternoon, everybody.
I hope you can hear me okay. So today, I'll take you through some of those numbers that Ian had mentioned at the start, but try and get through quickly in that we're announcing today, hopefully, there should be no surprises in here, a set of very solid numbers against a well-established, in line with a well-established consensus. And that was in a year, as Ian has said, challenging in terms of net flows, but one in which we've been able to drive the business forward along its strategic priorities. So looking there at the numbers, just to walk through the headlines that we have here, it was an adjusted operating profit of 52.7, the PBT slightly above that, and the adjusted earnings per share at GBP 32.2 pence. Now, all three of those headline measures are lower than they had been in the previous year.
The reason for that really was, despite a flat AUM, that revenue has fallen by about just under 5% from GBP 178 million down to GBP 170 million. We'll get into that in more detail. Offsetting that was very strong focus on the efficiency and cost control across the listed equity business in particular that has seen costs reduced by GBP 3 million. The net result of that is a solid margin still remaining at 31% above the 30% place that we like to be. Then lastly, announcing a final dividend of 22.9 pence, taking the full year dividend to 27.6, the same as last year, well covered and supported by strength in the balance sheet. On the next slide, we just look at revenue in a little more detail.
I could sort of put the headline summary that AUM stayed flat, but the average AUM year on year was sort of less in this year. That was the reason for the shortfall. I've just put a bit more color around that because there are many moving parts of the revenue picture across that book of GBP 37 billion. I'll try and summarize it in three key points if I can. The first one actually is looking at the impact of activity in the prior financial year that we carried into this year. That in total impacted our revenue by GBP 8.7 million. In some ways, in explaining a walk across, actually, that the activity of the FY24 actually was net neutral.
But the second key point, when we look at the activity in FY24, was the much talked about net outflow that we had of over £5 billion, that did have a significant impact on revenue year on year, reducing that by £12 million. But that was more than offset by the less talked about improvement that we had in the overall absolute performance of the book and markets. And on top of that, as Ian mentioned, that we had a record close on our NEF IV fund, and that resulted in a further benefit to the tune of £1.5 million in catch-up fees. And then the overall movement of the margin has sort of pegged things back a little there.
But I would then just to follow through on the margin and looking at the graph on the right-hand side, that whilst you can see that nearly 1 basis point drop in the average fee margin, that is not raising any alarm, or I don't want to cause any alarm with that. Already, the run rate for the book at the end of September was climbing again up to 44.8. And this is comfortably operating within the corridor of plus or minus one basis point around the 45. And the guidance that I give this year again remains the same, that we expect just the margin to drift slowly down over time. And that will include the fixed income over the short term.
Earlier on the call, and a key challenge of these calls and these moments in the year is to try and give guidance in terms of where we think the revenue picture for the business will go. And that's just incredibly difficult just now in terms of whilst we're seeing an improving picture in net flow, there's still a lot of uncertainty. So I'm really looking at, I guess you could say, playing it safe to a degree, looking at the annualized run rate that we're coming out of the year-end with at GBP 166.5. We're very hopeful to close the Sky Harbor deal over the course of the next number of weeks. So that would put a run rate revenue that we would expect to be at about just over GBP 170 million. I see that as a neutral position. It assumes that markets don't grow.
It assumes that flows are neutral. And I get that's sort of the starting position, the most sensible guidance that I can give. And that as the year unfolds and we see how flows and markets move, that we will be adjusting that position up or down. And the one thing I will say is that the revenue base remains very, very well diversified, both through the list of 90 clients over a number of with our global distribution in place. And then we have looking to add fixed income, which sort of gives that further diversification and further opportunity for the revenue base. Looking then on the next slide, if I can, at costs. So overall, the costs for the year reduced by GBP 2.9 million. Again, looking at the chart at the top, there was a small cost increase of GBP 1.5 million, largely into our fixed income business.
But underlying that, what we had was a significant effort on driving efficiencies into the listed equity business that we have built, and they are offsetting inflationary pressure that we have in the business. So we can prove that we can manage the costs of that listed equity business effectively. And then you see the benefit. That small cost increase was offset by a benefit, a cost reduction, variable staff costs, which is the bonus. And that is applying our policy, our long-standing policy of paying up to 45% of pre-bonus profits as the bonus pool. And this year, you can see in the second bullet that we've applied a percentage of 40%, not far off the 40.5%. And that overall reduction comes from applying the 40% to a reduced pre-bonus pool. Again, looking to the right-hand side, 70% of the cost base of this business is people related.
Looking at headcount is a very key feature for us. You can see that 15 heads were added from 300 up to 315, of which eight were into our fixed income business. The rest were really just filling out vacancies. The last data set there at the bottom, just drawing your attention to GBP 82 million, that is the staff share of our cost base. I also wanted to draw attention to the non-staff cost base increased by a very small percentage. That is, we are keeping a lid on cost growth in the business. In terms of guidance that we see on that, we will continue to focus on our efficiency. Again, I draw attention to run rates of about GBP 118 million.
Added to that will be the cost base that will come alongside the acquisition of Sky Harbor and guiding that I expect the outcome for costs next year to be mid to low 120s. And then bringing that together on the next slide, really just looking at the operational gearing that's in the business. This overall shows the operating margin at that very pleasing 31%. But for me, what I think is even more pleasing is this opportunity that we now have to really focus on the efficiency of the model that we've been building in the costs that we've added over the last number of years.
What that's allowing us to do is actually to build in even more operational gearing into the business, adding confidence that with the expected return to attraction for active managers and flows to return that we expect to be moving towards that mid- to high-30s as the operating gearing base. That's certainly the goal that we're working to. Moving on, then, to look at the balance sheet in just some more detail. The cash generation of the business was strong this year, GBP 49 million. That was up from about GBP 37 million last year as we focused actually on cash and fee collections. Then the uses of the cash, similar as we've seen in terms of the dividend that was paid last year, and that will be at the same levels going into next year.
We continue to acquire our own shares, small seeding into some of the new strategies that Ian had mentioned, taking the overall sort of cash on the balance sheet to a very healthy GBP 90.8 million. With that strong cash generation, we have been able to maintain the dividend at 27.6 pence with a payout of 87%. And I should remind you at the half year, we announced an adjustment to our dividend policy that previously had been to pay out between 55%-80%. We effectively removed that top-end cap of 80% to say that the policy will be in normal circumstances to pay out at least 55%. And that enabled us to sort of manage through a cycle and be able to grow and maintain, if not grow, the dividend through a challenging earnings period given the strength of the balance sheet.
That's what you've seen us being able to do in announcing that dividend today. To move on then to the balance sheet, further balance sheet is to say very little change here. I'm pleased to say we maintain a strong capital surplus. The balance sheet still remains in very strong position, and we have no debt in the business. Also to say that there is no change in our how we're thinking about capital in our capital allocation priorities, which lead with maintaining a healthy capital buffer for the business. We then look to where we will continue to buy share buybacks to offset, to put into our EBT to meet share awards.
And we will then balance that off with dividends, balancing as well very much how we think about the growth opportunities that this business has and the spare cash that we do have in the business that we'll seek to deploy that to invest further into the business and also to seek out these acquisitions of which this year we've announced Absalon and hopefully for Sky to follow in short order. So before I just hand back to Ian, I can look back on – actually, when you step back at these points in the year, it's been a challenging three years now for active managers. But I can look back over the last 12 months and feel that Impax is emerging in very good shape. We've maintained the strength on the balance sheet.
We have built our listed equity business, and we're now adding fixed income to that and being able to focus on the efficiencies. So for me, what that's doing is building. We've built a model that puts us on a strong footing where we can manage through, I think, a number of scenarios that we may face as we move into sort of the uncertainty over the short term that we still see, but hopefully come through in very short order. And then it sets us up in the long term, I would say, to be even better placed than I could have said this time last year in terms of being able to take advantage of the mean reversion and the return to positive flows for the business. And with that, I will hand back to Ian.
So just a couple of slides to finish. Firstly, the outlook.
So yes, I think since November the 6th, the world has been in an uncertain place. But if you look through the early announcements from the Trump administration and Mr. Trump himself, then I think the expectation with the central scenario is that the economic situation, particularly for U.S. companies, will be positive over the next 12 plus months. And it's quite likely that, if you like, the U.S. industrials and innovative businesses, particularly in the mid-cap area, will do well in terms of earnings, and investor sentiment should remain strong. Fixed income markets are also likely to be attractive. So provided asset allocation and security selection is good, which is, I think, two of our strengths, then there's no reason why our investment portfolios couldn't perform well in absolute terms. And as we've been talking about, this mean reversion should lead to some relative outperformance as well.
We're not obviously guiding as to when that will happen, but it is long overdue given the derating that's been experienced. It's also worth noting and just reemphasizing the fact that Impax's approach is to look at quality companies focused on markets that are in transition as a result of technology change and consumer sentiment evolution. And therefore, we're not an ESG investor or an impact investor. We're not at risk of any of the sort of anti-woke policies coming out of the Trump administration. In fact, to the contrary, I think we are likely to benefit from an emphasizing of common sense and back to basics and avoiding confusing language. So in the context of Impax's strategy, then, as you've heard, we are positioning the business for further development over the medium to long term.
That means adding another suite of strong investment capabilities, adjusting and expanding our distribution and focusing very much on increasing the financial leverage in the business as we scale revenues in the context of strong control of costs. Just finally with the summary slide, and then I'll hand back to Andy. I think the positioning of the firm continues to be excellent in the context of specialized boutique asset managers who've got to scale, having a very rosy future, provided they've got the right strategy. We think that our investment philosophy does give us a route to alpha generation over the medium to long term. And we've got many years of experience now in operating efficiency and cost control. We have had more than two years of really challenging markets, and it's time for some mean reversion.
So we're looking forward to that, and it's not, of course, clear exactly when it's going to happen. But I think as political uncertainty drops away, then we are expecting a very positive 2025. So thank you for listening and back to Andy and hopefully some questions.
Yes, don't worry. Lots of questions. Thank you both for a very clear presentation. Let's go straight in. Maybe continue the Donald Trump theme, Ian. It's a question submitted earlier in the presentation where you were taking a positive stance, and I think you have expanded on that in the outlook that you've just given.
And the question was going to be, is your optimism based on a more macro top-down view, good for the American economy, good for American corporates versus the fact that you have a number of investee companies that might be well placed in sectors that would benefit, such as infrastructure? I suppose the answer may well be a combination of those two.
Yes, you're showing form as usual, Andy, in knowing what the answers are. So yes, look, that's absolutely right. I think we don't have any special insights as to, of course, as to what the top-down configuration will be of Trump-era policy. But common sense would suggest that a President Trump in his second term will not act to erode the wealth of his core base.
And so it's highly likely, in our view, that inflation will remain under control, that interest rates will remain moderate and will drop. And therefore, it's not really foreseeable in our central scenario that tariffs for trade will be punitive all over the place. There might be some examples made of what could happen if other parties around the world don't negotiate in President Trump's direction. And also, I think immigration needs to be carefully managed, otherwise labor costs could go up, which of course will bring in inflation. So that's the top-down view. And then the bottom-up stock selection view, of course, remains the usual challenge. It's what we get paid for. And our teams are beavering away working out exactly what the optimal selection of securities and portfolio construction is.
Great.
Another bigger theme that's been a headwind for active asset managers is, of course, the conditions of shifting perhaps away from passive that's had a very strong run. The question we have is, is this part of the discussions that you have with current and prospective clients in that they might be seeing active management as a neglected opportunity or perhaps even seeing it as a risk reduction measure against the concentration of exposure in the U.S. Market to the Magnificent Seven?
Yeah, so I think the Magnificent Seven mega cap tech phenomenon has caused major problems for active management over the last 18-24 months as those 5-7 stocks have really torn away in share price terms. It's been very difficult for active managers to maintain market weightings or above market weightings of those stocks from risk management perspective.
This is an extreme version of what we saw in 2007 just before the financial crash. I think we're unlikely to have a similar financial crash for reasons that are well rehearsed. At the same time, it's not really foreseeable that the mega cap tech stocks will continue to expand their multiples without some kind of mean reversion on a relative basis. That's what we've been referring to throughout this conversation. Yes, clients are generally allocating to managers like Impax because they believe in our investment edge and our investment thesis on the one hand, plus our skill in generating alpha within that thesis. Given that we're positioned largely in the institutional market, we do have lots of conversations with clients about how that's going, how our risk parameters are developing.
And those clients are constantly examining what their weighting is of Impax versus other managers, the net result of which is that we've got a pretty stable client base because the outflows that we've been experiencing are being overwhelmingly from the non-institutional, more sort of wholesale markets, which are either driven by one or two gatekeepers allocating to money market funds, as I mentioned, or retail investors who are perhaps fearful of derating turning into long-term sort of structural weakness, which is definitely not the case.
Thank you. Now, I do have some questions for Karen later on, so I hope she's not feeling neglected. But this question does seem to have your name on it, Ian. It's regarding fixed interest. And the question is, how does the growing fixed interest offerings sit with Impax's founding investment thesis, which you must know a great deal about?
Is this expansion, diversification driven by a need to meet the needs of your distribution partners, perhaps?
Well, look, I think it's a sign of strength and progress in this idea of the transition to a more sustainable economy that the companies that are operating within it, for example, companies selling heat pumps or wind turbines or water purification equipment are now large enough and robust enough to be able to attract debt capital, which would then reduce their overall cost of capital. So the strength of our investment idea is leading naturally to more opportunities in fixed income. So that's probably the main reason why this is now emerging as an opportunity. And we've been building this since our Pax acquisition in 2018.
It does mean that to build a more fully diversified and properly sort of risk-managed fixed income portfolio, we are investing in debt securities from perhaps a wider range of companies than, say, our thematic equity products, so that does include companies that are in more traditional sectors, but those companies need to manage their risk around, say, climate exposure or technology disruption and the risk of stranded assets from new industries, so that risk analysis is a key part of the fixed income investment process, and our clients are in that area, of course, cognizant of our edge and our views of markets and are backing us to run fixed income money in a successful fashion, which I'm very pleased to say we continue to do.
Indeed, and an interesting question here. You've expressed a preference to grow in fixed income.
Does that mean you would decline an acquisition opportunity in the equity space at the same time you were considering an opportunity to build the fixed income exposure, even if the equity deal was particularly attractive in the context of your equities business?
Yeah, as you said, that is an interesting question, so the starting point, broadly speaking, is that we are not actively seeking acquisitions in listed equities for two reasons. One is that we would expect that there would be significant overlap between investment products that are run by others on the one hand and our own investment products, so there would be some potential for client confusion. And secondly, that any team that wanted to join Impax would probably have skills that we already had, so if we were to bring in an equity manager or boutique, we would have to navigate some quite significant overlaps.
So, relatively speaking, fixed income is a much more attractive area because, given our relatively small base, the probability of overlap is much lower.
Now, Karen, moving on from acquisitions, we have a question of what financial metrics do you consider when you are assessing a fair price to pay for an outside target?
So we have been busy, as you can see, over the years. So I think we are using the fairly traditional multiples, et cetera, is sort of where we would start. But there's also tests that there's organizations just now in buybacks, especially where we look at where the share price is. So they make sure the deals that we're doing are sort of accretive to shareholder value versus, for example, doing a buyback. So we do sort of consider that.
But generally, if I can look at the specifics of the two deals that we have done, it really has been an element of driving out for the strategy, but ensuring that we're growing that fixed income business by bringing revenue in at the same time as that we're adding cost into the base. So for us, it's about accretive acquisitions.
Thank you. And while we have you here, question here. A viewer says, "Thank you very much for your revenue bridge." And he apologizes for his no doubt stupidities. But could you give a little more explanation about the trail hangover, as he describes it, from 2020 through feeding through into 24? Is that just delays in settlement of divestiture or?
No, no.
I think the biggest factor, when you look back over, we say that the market and active management has been challenged in terms of outflow for the last three years. I think for Impax, that step down from inflow to net outflow happened in the second half of 2023. So what you're saying is the annualization of it was six months impact in FY23, that then a further six months happen as we take that into 2024. That's the science, if you like, behind that calculation.
Yeah, very clear. A couple of questions on distribution, I suppose. Given your strong proposition, why isn't Impax running mandates for some of the other multi-manager investment trusts of scale like Alliance, Witan, or RIT Capital?
Gosh, I don't know the specific answer to that. I mean, frankly, we are knocking on the doors of all sorts of managers around the world.
I have to say that we are, I think, best known and have the strongest profile in consultant-advised institutional markets. So where there's a consultant rating on our strategies, that appeals to pension funds in particular. So that's probably the biggest and actually, frankly, the most scalable segment of our client base. The U.K. multi-managers, they're very good, but they tend to be quite an unusual or esoteric channel, and so we are not particularly targeting them. Having said that, though, I think the St. James's Place mandate that we run is not dissimilar in the sense that St. James's Place does have a very high bar for manager quality, which we've been able to satisfy for the last seven years. Excuse me, and so I think that's a good example of where we have won and maintained a very significant relationship.
But if those two managers in particular would like to talk to us, then we are always happy to chat.
All right, we shall pass that on. Following on from St. James's Place, let's have a look. We have a question here. Do you think there are any other material mandates in the U.K. that might be at risk of a similar outcome as that seen with a small part of the St. James's Place portfolio because of UK Consumer Duty customer value issues?
Well, just to back it up, then the St. James's Place business that we have or we had at the start of this new financial year, so October 1st 2024, was in two mandates. A small one, about 13%, was in a multi-manager mandate. And the much larger one, 87%, was in their Sustainable and Responsible Equity branded bucket.
So the small one that we've lost, and that was not due to Consumer Duty. In fact, I think we're top of the class in terms of St. James's Place's managers with regard to Consumer Duty. But it was rather a decision by the managers at St. James's Place to move to a slightly different risk profile in their equity managers. So that was a reason for that mandate going. We generally don't have much overlap with Consumer Duty in the sense that our products in the U.K., with the exception of our investment trusts, are not really directly available or marketed to the general public. So they are generally intermediated by private wealth managers or other platforms or marketed to institutional investors. So in that sense, we don't see the Consumer Duty as a headwind in any way. And in fact, as I said, the ranking from St.
James's Place in the context of Consumer Duty for Impax was very positive.
Good. And a couple of questions on staffing, maybe for you, Karen. You've clearly made as a group some good hires during the course of this year. Has anybody at the senior management level left the firm? And then a separate but related question is, in terms of the businesses that you have been or in the process of acquiring, do you typically retain all of the staff members that you take on?
Do you want me to take that?
Well, let me take that, and then you can add if there's anything else.
Sure.
So no, we haven't had any senior managers leave the firm. In fact, we have a very low staff turnover. And so yes, I think that's just a key attribute for the company.
In terms of the acquisitions, then when we bought the PAX business in 2018, we picked up 80, sorry, we picked up 50 staff, and with, I think, one exception of a relatively junior person, everybody stayed, and we've now expanded that team to over 100, and then the Absalon acquisition was just four people with one joining at the end of this year. They've all stayed, and the Sky Harbor team will join us shortly, but we're very optimistic that they will be staying as well, so it's a particular strength of Impax that we've got a very successful and healthy culture, pay lots of attention to how we treat staff, career development, a strongly collegial culture, and a sort of fair and equitable way of distributing the financial compensation as well, so yeah, very optimistic about that in particular.
Good. Good to see retention.
And final question, again, slightly bigger picture and recognizing very much that Impax's raison d'être is sustainable investing. We just have a question on COP29 and whether you would agree consensus after the event seems to be that major plans such as phasing out fossil fuels seem to have been rather kicked down the road again. Would you consider that a fair interpretation?
Yes, probably. Yeah, there was an announcement about the $300 billion of climate finance towards the end or at the end of the conference, but there was a real shortage of detail there. So I think, yes, we'd agree that the conference itself was underwhelming. And even before the conference started, I think attention was really focusing on the COP30 conference, which will take place in Brazil around this time next year.
Having said that, though, we certainly don't believe that our investment opportunities are significantly influenced by the Conference of the Parties or COP process, and that's because they don't lead to policy changes that directly impact businesses. They're more sort of high level and longer term in context, and meanwhile, the falling cost of technology and regulatory support around clean energy, for example, the UK's Clean Power by 2030 plan, are much more important in the assessment of investment opportunities.
Great, well, can I thank our audience for their attention and a wide range of questions? One or two of them that we haven't covered are relating to the value of Impax's business, Impax shares, so I would point out that in terms of that analysis and forward-looking materials, there was a detailed note written by Equity Development today, which is well worth reading.
The audience will get feedback forms, which the company is always very keen to see filled out and hear what you think about the business and the presentation, and of course, last but not least, on a very busy day for the company, thank you very much to Ian and Karen for coming back and making the time to talk to investors. It is much appreciated. We look forward to seeing you again, hopefully in six months' time, and wish you good fortune until then.
Yes, thank you for joining, and thank you for hosting, Andy. Much appreciated.