Right. Let's go. We're very pleased to welcome everybody to the webinar today from Impax. The presenters are going to cover their interim results for the 6 months to the 31st of March. Just a few points of admin from me first. The presentation is being recorded. If you do miss anything, you will get a chance to watch it again. We are keen to try and address as many questions that will come in after the presentation. You will see the Zoom submit question button on your screen. Put any questions you have in there. After the formal presentation, Ian and Karen will try and go through that. Also, the presentation deck that they are talking to is in slightly different form, but is also on the Impax AM website with quite a lot of other very useful material. We'd recommend that, too.
We're delighted to be joined again by CFO Karen Cockburn and the CEO and founder, Ian Simm. I shall now pass over to Ian to start proceedings.
Okay. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the interim results for Impax Asset Management Group PLC for the six months to 31st of March 2026. If you've been to or attended one of these events before, you'll remember the agenda, which is basically an overview, highlights, and business update, and then Karen will give the financial update before I round off. There won't be any presentation appendices. I think just in summary, it's fair to say that the world of asset management is changing and changing quite rapidly. There is definitely a move to very large firms with $1 trillion or more under management at one end.
Also, be like a splitting or bifurcation of the market in which boutiques are of increasing interest to the major asset owners of the world if those boutiques bring something that's different, that's specialist and that can offer products and services that are not easy to find elsewhere. In that context, Impax finds itself in a very strong position with a medium to long-term outlook because we are really the global leader in this area of what we would call the transition to a more sustainable economy. We do use the word sustainability as a shorthand. Essentially, this is the idea that the world is moving inexorably towards the need for more resource efficiency, for less pollution, for smarter materials, and those factors and similar factors are producing opportunities to make money because frankly, they're quite complicated.
They require detailed understanding of technology change and regulatory change. It's those areas that provide us as a specialist investment group with an opportunity to uncover hidden gems, if you like, both in equities and in fixed income. In addition, what we can do with our client relationships is expand beyond just the pursuit of great risk-adjusted returns and offer them information around where policy is heading, where difficult and complex scientific debates like extreme weather projections are going and also compare and contrast for them what's going on in different parts of the world in these topics. This is where Impax Asset Management sits in the global asset management universe, which I hope you've now understood or probably knew already is a very strong resonance or has a very strong resonance with where the whole of the asset management sector is going.
The additional point, which is on this slide, is that we've very deliberately set up our business to be scalable. We focused on areas of the market that have a very long or high degree of liquidity. We've positioned our products to be able to generate outperformance relative to global benchmarks over the medium to long term in those areas. We've set up our business model to be scalable, should underpin the delivery of growth over that timeframe. Moving to the period that we're just reporting, clearly as a publicly listed company, then we have various obligations to report data and give outlooks. Of course, there is a bit of a constraint around the rest of this presentation. Essentially just summarizing what our key messages are as set out on this page.
We do think that the fundamentals around this transition to a more sustainable economy are strengthening. That's illustrated quite nicely with the concerns around energy security, particularly heightened by the Iran situation, which, in May 2026, is a major topic. There's also real interest and concern around where the patterns are going, the opportunity to cope with new types of threats and business growth in the food sector, water supply, et cetera. Very pleased to be able to report that our investment performance has turned the corner.
At the end of April this year, for a calendar year to date perspective, 70% of our assets under management had beaten their benchmarks, which is quite a significant improvement on what's happened in the last two or three years when, frankly, the AI-dominated revolution has really skewed markets and, as I'm sure you all appreciate, active managers like ourselves have struggled to keep up with those generic benchmarks. Notwithstanding the improved investment performance, then the flows in and out of our funds and products have yet to turn positive. This is not unusual in the context of a period in which investment performance is moving from relatively poor compared to generic benchmarks to relatively good or stronger. We can't yet forecast when the flows are going to turn around, but the lag effect, if you like, is quite common.
In that context, we are focusing very much on positioning the business for the recovery, so diversifying and launching new products, building out our client partnerships, working very assiduously on cost reduction and efficiency, and of course, making sure that our clients and everyone else realize that our balance sheet remains very strong and that the largest investor group is actually management owning 18% of the business. On the next slide, Karen Cockburn is going to take you through the numbers, so I think it's probably a good idea for me to move on from this, but if you want to refer to those later, please do so. Karen will cover them in a bit more detail. Next slide. There now follows a set of slides that if you've followed us for a while, you'll have seen before, so we're trying to provide continuity.
The green bar in the middle is the assets under management that we reported at the start of our financial year, which was the 1st of October 2025. Everything to the right of that green bar to the blue bar is what's happened during the reporting period. To the left of the green bar is the previous six months. As you can see from comparing the heights of the bars, yellow, green, and blue, we were able to grow very slightly assets under management in the previous six months, but they've dropped in this six months. Flows on a net basis, negative in both periods. Market movement in the period we're reporting was substantially lower than it was pre-September or October 1st, 2025. Next slide.
2 slides coming here, which look quite busy, but essentially, the first of those 2 slides here is listed equities. How has our performance been? The next one is going to be fixed income. This is the listed equity slide. We're looking at or showing you 4 of our largest or the 4 largest strategies or funds that we run in listed equities. Water, Leaders, Specialists, Global Opportunities. Those are certainly in the case of 3 of them are Impax jargon, but essentially Leaders and Specialists are thematic funds, whereas Global Opportunities is best seen as a core equity fund with a moderate thematic tilt. Each of the pairs of bars, blue and orange, are, in the case of blue, the performance in the calendar years to date of our funds or strategies, and the case of orange, the benchmark.
If you take Leaders, for example, in the top right, you can see in the highlighted box, which is calendar year to date, that the blue bar is bigger than the orange bar, so we've been outperforming the benchmark, whereas in the previous four years, we were underperforming the benchmark. That's the same story for Water and Specialists. That's illustrating the point that I was making before that we've now been able to return to investment outperformance in significant percentage, 70% of our assets under management. By contrast, Global Opportunities hasn't quite kept up with the benchmark. That is the one which is behind calendar year to date. Next slide. I feel like I'm a bit of a school teacher, but I hope you'll bear with me as I try to explain these complicated slides.
Anyway, this is fixed income and same format. Our four largest fixed income strategies. It's exactly the same arrangement. If you look at the red boxes, then you can see the calendar year-to-date. Moderate, but still measurable outperformance compared to benchmarks. Actually, in the previous four years, generally speaking, these strategies have, more often than not, outperformed their benchmarks, which of course means that the track record from a communication perspective when we talk to prospective investors is stronger. Although this funds under management are still relatively modest, there's quite a powerful story to tell. I'll come back to that in a moment. Next slide. The breakdown of our assets under management and revenue by various criteria are shown here.
On the left, again, blue bar is what we were reporting at the end of March this year compared to the period 12 months earlier. I think the key points without getting lost in the detail are on the left, active thematic equities, which will be that Leaders, Specialists, Water, and a couple of other strategies from two slides ago, is still nearly two-thirds of the assets under management. Noticeably or notably, systematic equities and fixed income are larger percentages. If you add those two together with private markets, I think we like to note or draw your attention to the fact that nearly a quarter of the assets under management are outside listed equities. The objective is to grow those.
By region in the middle, not much change, but notably, we have North America as over a third of our client base and the EMEA region, so outside the U.K., as the majority. Revenue by product type. Probably the thing to point to there is the BNP Paribas mutual funds, which are around 1/4 of our revenue, and they've been our largest external shareholder, if you like, for nearly 20 years actually, and remain our, if you like, most important client from a revenue perspective. Next slide. Just focusing in on where we are in May 2026, I think it's just important to look at what's going on in energy markets, in the AI revolution or the trends for AI in wider environmental factors.
These new snippets essentially point to what I was saying at the start, which is that energy security and clean energy issues are really very prominent at the moment. Prospects for many of the companies in the space have improved quite considerably. Meanwhile, the AI stocks are not dominant in markets in the way that they've been in the last two years, and that means that areas of the market that are not in the AI space have had an opportunity to bounce back on a relative basis. There's plenty of evidence that the risk around extreme weather and other environmental factors is starting to really impact on corporate decisions and investor risk about long-term prospects for earnings in some areas. Next slide.
In that context, we do believe that with our thematic tilt or our investment thesis, that we've got quite a strong position. The chart here on the left shows the breakdown of our Leaders strategy by sub-sector. This is a definition that we've created over 20 years ago. The bar charts show that this broad spread of exposure that this strategy offers to energy efficiency, digital infrastructure, resource efficiency, and several other groups or sectors. On the right, you can see the mapping of the energy security and AI infrastructure build-out to those sub-sectors, illustrating that this Leaders strategy does have broad exposure to these pretty prominent themes. Next slide. A couple of slides now just showing how the net flows broke down.
Remember the number from the bar chart stack from 5 or 6 slides ago. This is the breakdown of how that's changed, both by distribution channel. Again, the blue bars are the period that we've just reported on, and the orange bars are 12 months previously. Anything to the left of the line is negative, and unfortunately on this chart, we don't have anything to the right of the line, which would be positive. The outflows basically are where the bars are longest. I think the positive point from this slide is that with BNP Paribas, the outflows have been materially less negative. Not out of the woods yet, but there's a set of indicators which we think over time will lead to better results from a flows perspective from our wholesale channels, including this one. The next slide is just rounding off the channel breakdown.
The left, the distributors from the rest of the EMEA region, on the right, the Asia-Pacific region. Next slide. The next one, please. Our strategy really breaks down into six components. Reading across the top, we are looking to organically grow our listed equities offerings and then build scale in both fixed income and private equity. On the bottom, we already have a nicely diversified global distribution network, but there's still some work to do to expand and deepen those. That will include, in the middle on the bottom, our work with client partnerships and brand differentiation, which, as I was saying right at the start, is a big opportunity as many of our competitors drop away from this area, given the relative underperformance of the whole space. Of course, we are committed to running an efficient, agile, scalable operating model.
A little bit more color on those six factors over three charts, first of which is this one. Going from left and listed equities, then we are further enhancing our investment process, team structure, and launching some new products, including our first ETF product in the U.S., which will probably be the first of several. In fixed income, we've now integrated the SKY Harbor and Absalon teams and client groups into a cohesive investment team with a strong connection to our sustainability center, which does provide for quite a differentiated offering for the market where that fixed income sustainability link is not very well provided for by competitors. In private markets, ongoing progress with the commitment and exit of our third and fourth funds, and then a plan to raise additional capital. Next slide, please. Our client work continues to build.
This idea of a specialist manager in the transition to a more sustainable economy is increasingly differentiated and popular, supported by the work of our sustainability center around thought leadership. We are extending our work to build relationships with major institutional asset owners, where we have hired a senior executive with a very strong background in that area, who joined us in January. We are working with several new potential partners on co-developing investment solutions. Meanwhile, as I've just mentioned, many of the larger branded asset managers are pulling out of this space because they are unable to justify continuing to market the funds that have got weak historical, let's say, 2, 3-year track records against generic indices, even though, in many cases, they've also seen a turnaround in performance. The third slide in the series is this one.
Our operating model really depends, of course, in part on our talent and with a brand in this area, we are continuing to find that we're a very attractive target for external talent. We've also got a very high staff retention rate and a very good track record in succession planning, which has been implemented in the context of a number of senior individuals retiring in the last couple of years. Efficiency and technology. We have, as we've seen, a reduction in the assets under management. We've had a couple of rounds of reducing the number of people who work at Impax. If you can see the footnote, we ended the period at 269 individuals, down from a peak of about 315, and there will be another 30 redundancies, most of which are already announced, in the second half of our financial year.
That's underway at the moment. We've made those adjustments with a very explicit focus on not reducing our capabilities or growth potential. As I said at the start, there is a very strong focus on efficiency and with the adoption of technology, including AI, we do believe that we can contribute to margin preservation through that initiative as well. I'm now handing over to Karen Cockburn, I think.
Thank you, Ian, and good afternoon, all. I would like to take you through the financials in some more detail. To start with sort of saying that for those that are following sort of guidance closely, there's no surprises relative to the recent market updates that we have had. As Ian has articulated, that challenging environment for net flows has continued. With that backdrop, the results that Ian recently summarized in revenue headwinds countered by our continued cost discipline, but supported by a strong balance sheet. Just running through the numbers very quickly. Broad underlying operating profit for the first six months of GBP 11.3 corresponding as of GBP 7.4. The reduced AUM has seen revenue decline to GBP 58.8 from half 1 in 2025.
With costs continuing to reduce to GBP 47.5 million, which is more than GBP 8 million below where we were this time last year. That's as our efficiency programs continue to deliver, as Ian has pointed out, without compromising our capability for growth. Finally, reflecting confidence in our cash position, the board has announced an interim dividend of GBP 0.02 per share. Unpacking that in a little more detail, on the next slide, we talk about revenue. Really looking at the group revenue in half 1, that GBP 58.8 million compared to GBP 65.4 million in the previous 6 months. Given on page 6 on the bar chart that Ian had walked across, there was GBP 3.8 million of net outflow, that has resulted in the largest impact, really negative impact, on that profit or the revenue we have there.
The improving performance that we have articulated, that's helping uplifting the revenue line by that GBP 2.8, and then it's pegged back just slightly by just some timing on our private equity fee to come in in the second half. To the right-hand side, you can see the average fee margin, a very key measure for the business, has held up well over the 12-month period, slightly below where we were at half two, and that was really just because there was some favorable benefit in that period. Now, normally in these charts that we do show sort of run rates, but we haven't done that this year really for two reasons. The first really was that the March point, actually, we reported AUM-
Hi, Karen. It's Andy here. Your microphone or your audio has gone a little bit-
Oh
in and out in the last minute or so.
Can I maybe Oh, no. Hang on. Can you hear me now?
That sounds better.
Okay. Well, maybe, sorry, I had just nudged it slightly.
Yeah, that sounds good.
Will I pick up again there just from the fee margin?
Absolutely. Thank you.
Okay. Yeah. I was just saying that the fee margin had held up well at that 47, above 47 basis points, but was pegged back slightly from the September year-end position, which had benefited from just favorable mix. A check you can still hear me? Yes. Okay, thanks, Ian. Okay, now what I was saying was that we normally do talk about the run rates at the end of this period, but we have not included them just now for really 2 reasons, in that there was sort of a bit of distortion perhaps in the run rates for the end of March. 2 reasons for that. 1 was really that the 31st of March, that last week of March, markets just really dipped and then recovered very quickly when we went into April. It would be somewhat misleading.
Most importantly for me is that the run rate would've included the impact of the Impax Environmental Markets plc, which we know that we've had that tender. It has been announced in the market that just about GBP 740 million has tendered. We are working very hard in the background to redirect as much of that as we possibly can into the existing strat, the same strategy that we have for that fund. The run rates in themselves would just be a bit misleading. In terms of where we think the revenue will outturn for the year, taking account of IEM, that is still factored into the range that we quoted to the market back in April of revenue outturn for the full year of between GBP 109 million and GBP 113 million. We remain committed to that.
Across the course of the year, we do expect the operating fee margin, excuse me, to remain in the region 47-48 basis points. In terms of 2027, we normally try and give some guidance. Whilst we see the performance improving, whilst we do see a bit of stabilization in the level of net outflow, we're in net outflow all the same, and we're being incredibly cautious about calling when we see that net outflow turn into positive flow. We're going to just update on that as the year progresses when we speak to the market. Looking in, if I could move on to the next slide, in terms of looking at an area of costs where we continue to make meaningful progress with the cost, completing the period, GBP 47.5 million.
Looking back across that bridge that we have there, we're active across all areas of the cost base. We were able to remove about just over GBP 1 million from really being very disciplined, looking at fund expenses, fund subsidies, et cetera. The largest part of the cost saving, both in fixed and variable, come from staff costs. That correlates from the numbers Ian Simm mentioned earlier of the headcount reducing 9%, a further 9% from 296 to the end of the period at 269. That helps the run. That sort of drives a very favorable improvement in the run rate on the cost. We will see further savings in half two. As Ian Simm has mentioned, we had the 30 headcount that we will reduce, as Ian Simm says, has already been announced and will leave the business across the second half of the year.
Combined with the changes we made last year, for 70 that have been, on a group basis, have been removed from the business. That is quite significant, and we have been very disciplined in our approach to costs. We will see that full program complete over the course of the 12 months. We retain guidance for 2026. I think we're saying in the region of about GBP 95 million, just below GBP 95 million is where we think that will outturn. In terms of bringing that together in the operating margin of 19.2%, just slightly down, but given the impact of the IEM PLC, we will see a squeeze on that operating margin in the second half, and for the full year it will be in the mid-teens.
A key message that I do have to give, because we have been so disciplined in the cost base, we have retained our ability to grow. That that cost base is so well positioned for margin recovery when revenue stabilizes. If I could then move on to just talk very quickly about the balance sheet. The cash finished at its low point, its off point at the half year. Looking back over the last 6 months in terms of the cash decrease from operations, that's when we paid the 12-month bonus from the prior year. The dividends, we paid the full year dividend in March. Of course, we finished our first ever share buyback in December, with a line of GBP 10 million, with the bulk of that, the majority of that, taking place in the first half of our financial year.
While that is our lowest point for the year, we do expect that to grow over the course of the next six months back closer towards that opening position. With that strong cash position and forecast, and just to remind that this time last year, we signaled that the Board had increased the dividend to a more sustainable level. With that in mind, we have, and taking into account the lower earnings, we are announcing GBP 0.02 interim dividend for the period. Now, that remains in line with our policy of 55% of adjusted profit after tax. Really what that has done is really put the dividend on a footing that it's fully covered, that it's a through-cycle position and of course, with room to increase as earnings recover.
On the last page, that we continue to manage a very strong debt-free balance sheet, with shareholder equity of GBP 106 million sitting alongside that unchanged capital requirement, maintaining that healthy surplus. In terms of seed, currently sat at GBP 16.8 million. That's sort of a big part of our balance sheet and how we invest for the future. As part of our cost efficiency program, we have been able to identify just some low potential funds that we had seeded in the past. Expect to see those merged, closed for the coming months, with that seed returning, just improving the quality of the capital. In terms of our capital allocation priorities, they really haven't changed.
In short, the key message for me really is we have a strong, liquid, debt-free balance sheet that really just gives flexibility to keep managing that dividend, to continue to invest in the strategy, the growth and diversification of the business. I think most importantly, enables us to act from a position of strength in challenging times. With that, I'll hand back to Ian.
Just one slide to close. There we go. I think just recapping on what I said at the start, there's a massive opportunity for Impax in this bifurcated asset management market. There's very little in the way of institutional quality, sustainability-focused asset management service, and therefore, we've got a real calling card with our current clients and prospects all over the globe. The business is still skewed in terms of assets under management and revenue to listed equities, and we have been trying to diversify that over the last five years with the two fixed income acquisitions and further investment in private markets. There's still some work to be done to diversify the business. Meanwhile, the switch from a very narrow equity market to a much broader market has been very helpful for us, hence the strongly improved performance calendar year to date.
That, however, in terms of 4 months, is not enough to persuade clients that the areas that we're investing in have recovered strongly, and so a lot of prospective clients still sitting on the sidelines, and therefore, we still have a net outflows position. The exit tender from IEM PLC, as Karen's mentioned, has kicked in in the last few days. That will be an initial exit of about GBP 740 million to be offset over the next few months with, hopefully, a material switch of that money coming back into our UCITS vehicle. In the medium term, we are really doubling down on our marketing and outreach, more client partnership-type structures and new products.
Of course, as we've been saying, we've got a very ruthless focus with the board on both cost management, but also talent retention, and are very pleased to continue to report a strong balance sheet and financial health. I'm going to pause there, and Karen and I are very happy to take any questions.
Great. Thank you very much. If you just keep an eye on that microphone, Karen. We're just moving a little bit in and out. Lots of questions submitted, let's go straight in. Ian, you mentioned the launch of your first ETF. How exciting do you see the growth potential for ETFs in the American market?
The first objective with this ETF project is defense, actually, or defense, as Americans would say, which is that the mutual fund market in the U.S. has some quite specific tax disadvantages. I won't go into the details. Therefore, there is an opportunity to ensure that our mutual fund clients stay with us by offering them a more tax-efficient ETF. The first ETF we've launched is actually a conversion of one of the sub-funds within the mutual fund range into an ETF, and there's another 9 or 10 of those that could potentially be switched. That's the focus at the moment. Once we've done that, in fact, we're starting to see that to some small degree already, then the package of those funds will be much more appealing to new investors. That's the project at the moment.
That'll keep us busy for the next two to three years or so in that area.
We get a lot of talk about the success you've had in using technology and automation to cut costs. Can you give the audience some specific examples of how you've been able to save money there?
Karen, did you want to? Yeah, go for it.
I think, look, at this stage, we've not had the AI revolution in the business yet. That's removing costs, but we're very active in our AI program. Really, it has been a function, really, of over small technology packages, new payroll systems, a new boarding system for a client group. It really has been that. The business has a very, from somebody fairly new to the business, a very neat operating model. It has looked after its data incredibly well. I'm actually quite excited about the opportunity that we will have from AI yet to be explored.
Just to add to that, we do have, across the investment teams in listed securities, a number of technology platforms that are not only making the research and trading processes smoother, but also reducing operational risk. In the sales and marketing area, there's a new package around the sales lead monitoring, which is proving to be very helpful.
A follow-on question. How can you be so confident that the headcount reductions, past and ongoing, will not impact the core of your operation?
I think in two senses. The first of those is just around the number of clients that we've got. As we've dropped down to that GBP 22 billion or so.
Yeah, sorry.
GBP 22 billion or so, then we've lost a number of clients, so therefore, there's a need for fewer people who are doing client-facing work. In the other area, we've actually reduced the number of investment strategies and made some adjustments in our teams to make the whole process more efficient. That's taken us about 15 months to both plan for that and execute. Yes, time will tell how quickly we'll be adding back as the recovery kicks in. With close oversight by the board, then we're very happy with the efficiency and effectiveness of that adjustment.
Okay, perhaps a later question, what level of AUM capacity do you see Impax currently positioned for?
If you look mathematically at the liquidity of the underlying equity strategies that we are running, then it's well north of GBP 50 billion, compared to just shy of GBP 20 billion today. In the fixed income strategies, at the moment, we have a relatively small investment-grade offering. That, of course, has enormous capacity. In high yield, it's probably more like GBP 10 billion-GBP 15 billion. Then in private markets, we're in the sort of GBP 1 billion-GBP 5 billion. If you add all that together, then comfortably north of, say, GBP 70 billion, GBP 80 billion and potentially over GBP 100 billion in theory.
Yep. That sounds consistent. Question of drivers on sustainability reporting. Sustainability has been driven by voluntary commitments and actions in the past. In the last few years, there's been a flurry of legislation on sustainability reporting, and consequently, compliance is now one of the main drivers of progress. It is leveling up reporting and performance on sustainability. It's quite a long question. Could you please comment on how you see this new trend, a focus on compliance and less interest in voluntary commitments impacting active asset management and indeed your business model?
Okay. Well, look, I think it's very important to stress that we are an organization that's trying to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns, financial returns for clients, rather than fulfill any sort of ethical or political objectives around saving the planet or anything along those lines. In that context, because of our thematic tilt towards the sort of sectors that I was referring to earlier, then our efforts are really looking at growth of new markets, the risk around how companies will behave and thrive or otherwise in those markets. That's the core of the service. Now, I think the question implies that there's a broader pressure on corporates in all sorts of sectors to provide, or has been pressure to provide reporting across a range of environmental and social and some degree, governance elements. For example, the CSRD directive from the European Union.
That reporting requirement remains in place. However, it's quite likely that with the rise of populist governments, there will be a watering down of those requirements over time or continued watering down of those requirements. As you can imagine, many of Impax's clients are very keen to see high quality reporting in those areas, and we have a sustainability center of 17 people, which is really focused in part on making sure that we're fulfilling those expectations. Over time, I think the growth of the firm is going to come from being able to successfully demonstrate that we've got a great investment idea rather than in our strength or competitive advantage in reporting.
Amen to that. Back to IA. Karen, you said that a lot of the benefits are still to come on the administrative cost side. We have a question, how widespread is your team using AI as part of the investment process and investment selection?
Maybe that's one for me, actually, in terms of.
I think so, more on the investment side. Yeah.
I think the answer is, at the moment, it's bottom-up and very much dependent on individual initiatives and enthusiasm, which is strongly encouraged as opposed to being coordinated centrally top-down. We have had about 12 months of experimentation around bottom-up initiatives, and we're now putting in place, for the next phase, more of a top-down structure. I'm sure as everybody appreciates, this is a fast changing landscape and we're trying not to be too prescriptive. Work in progress, I would say, but some quite interesting efficiency progress already achieved, particularly, for example, around researching new sectors or even, to some degree, new stocks more rapidly than we were hitherto able to do.
Question on M&A. Your acquisitions in recent years have not been too large in scale, but seem to have worked out very well. Do you think the current geopolitical turbulence and market headwinds might enable Impax to accelerate the non-organic element of its diversification away from listed equities?
Yes. I think we are very pleased with the success of the three acquisitions so far, and that's given us confidence to think about doing more of that in the future. However, there's, I think from our experience and how the rest of the market sees M&A, one needs to be measured and incredibly selective about the targets and the pace of M&A growth. I think the objective remains to look for attractive acquisition targets. Probably not too big because we don't want a indigestion or a threat to our culture. We're not in a hurry, but the market does have quite a lot of distressed players out there who have been suffering from the same sort of Magnificent Seven dominated investment issues that we've just reported.
Okay. A general question on fixed interest. "As a narrow-minded equity investor," that is the question that's come in, it's not me. "Can you summarize for me which fixed income segments you focus on and whether they are largely immune to the quite severe headwinds currently faced by sovereign debt products at the moment?
If we were to go back to the slide with the fixed income products, you would see there we have high yield in particular and then small exposure to emerging markets, corporate debt, and to investment-grade debt. At the moment we're just in those 3 areas. We don't have a plan to expand and I would have to agree that at the moment with very tight spreads, the opportunity for alpha generation is quite limited. That does appear to be a particular point in the market. We're being patient and trying to make sure that we've got outreach to prospective clients so they know what we do, such that when spreads start to improve, that we're well-placed to bring in some more clients, more money.
Good to hear. A couple of questions about IEM. What have we got here? It would be unrealistic at this stage to ask you how much of the IEM AUM you think that you can retain using the equivalent UCITS product. First of all, can you give us a feel for early IEM shareholder appetite to possibly make that switch? Has there been much interest, little interest, or something like that?
Well, I think the best way of looking at this is that the tender has produced GBP 740 million of exits, leaving just over GBP 200 million remaining in the trust for us to carry on managing until further notice. That GBP 740 million is particularly held by U.K.-based private wealth managers with whom we've got relationships. I think the core point is that in that pool of capital, we've got very good connection to decision-makers. What we're offering essentially is a financially attractive switch or reinvestment of those monies into our Irish UCITS vehicle, which has got the same underlying portfolio to all intents and purposes. We were not able, for a variety of reasons, to have a sort of tick-in-the-box switch so the money has come out first and therefore needs to be reinvested.
Therefore it's almost certainly going to take 1 or 2 months to know how much money moves across. At the moment, I'm afraid I can't give a steer because frankly don't know how much is likely to move across. What I can say is that this trust has been around for nearly 25 years. It had and still does actually have a pretty liquid share base and therefore, anyone who wanted to get out has had an opportunity to get out. There's been strong buybacks in recent years and therefore I think it's reasonable to assume that a high percentage of that money would like to remain in the underlying strategy, which crucially is not available for anyone else. This is a unique investment product and we're offering an attractive route to give the clients of that trust access to that investment idea through the UCITS fund.
Yeah. A follow-on question, presumably from an IEM shareholder thinking about the switch is, do you happen to know the communication strategy for the manager of the environmental UCITS? Are they likely to meet with private investors on an annual basis and indulge in regular communications?
Well, that's very much our intention. We, Impax Asset Management, are the manager of the UCITS fund, just to clarify, if that needs to be clarified.
Yeah.
We are expecting that fund to grow with the switch and therefore are very much committed to high-quality investor relations. I will double-check after this meeting that we've got a detailed plan to do that and if anybody's dissatisfied with the client service that they see going forward, please drop me a line and I'd be very happy to address any concerns anyone has.
Thank you very much for that. Other investments. You have helpfully reminded us of your existing exposure to the genuinely massive spending on AI infrastructure. Have you been actively increasing your fund's exposure to areas like power generation storage or digital solutions in the course of this year?
Well, I think it's fair to say that we have been encouraged by the trend of earnings expectations in both the energy security related areas and in the, if you like, derivative parts of the AI space. For example, power generation or water supply. I think it's fair to say that across the fund management team, that we have been increasing in those areas, but it's very much on a stock-by-stock basis because business models, of course, vary considerably, and there is a lot of hype and overvaluation in our view, in many parts of the AI space in particular.
A very specific question on energy generation. If you happen to know, has fusion energy been something that your fund managers have been looking at or indeed might have invested in?
Well, I think fusion sadly is pre-earnings and almost certainly pre-revenue to any significant degree. Because we don't invest in really early-stage businesses, and also, if you look at, say, a company like Rolls-Royce, which is pioneering the small modular reactor market with a number of international players, then SMR is a tiny part of their business. The SMR, small modular reactor trend, which is likely to produce some real assets in the ground in 10 to 20 years from now, is not really a driver of stock prices. Very interested in fusion from a sort of theoretical perspective, but it's not really a feature of our investment work at the moment.
Okay. Couple back on ETFs. First one, would you consider launching them in partnership with other bodies? Do you have any plans to launch ETFs in Europe?
We're definitely open to commercially attractive ideas to launch more ETFs, and that would definitely be part of our consideration as we expand the ETF thinking outside that U.S. mutual fund range that I referred to before. Nothing concrete to signal at the moment. In terms of Europe then, we certainly wouldn't rule it out, and I do know that notices, I'm sure you've all appreciated that a number of other managers are launching European ETFs. At the moment, there's no material tax advantage that I'm aware of for European ETFs in the way that there is a tax advantage for U.S. ETFs or investors in U.S. ETFs. Given our relatively modest resources for this particular type of work, then we're at the moment just focused on the U.S. for this part of business development.
Understood, perhaps a good general question to finish on. As CEO and CFO of a business in transition, which KPIs do you personally look at most closely to think about the underlying health of Impax's?
Let me start. I'm sure Karen will add her own. I think the reason for emphasizing this turnaround in investment performance is that what we found over many, many years, as our peers and fellow travelers in this space also find, is that if the investment performance is good, then the flows follow. The investment performance and risk the fund manager is taking is, for me, the absolute crucial starting point. The second derivative, or the second area, which is a derivative of that, of course, is the pipeline and the health of the client relationships is the second area to look at.
Look, I would just add then is the flow, for the equity business, the day-to-day flows, particularly for BNP, that's where we can see a turnaround. Can you hear me? No?
Just fading a little bit in and out there. Go again.
I'm sorry about this technology. Normally, this is incredibly reliable. Can you hear now?
That's better, yeah.
Okay. Sorry.
A little bit better.
The microphone's just let me down badly today. I was going to say is that, I follow very closely then, the flows for the equity business, particularly for BNP. When we see a turnaround in flow, that's where we expect it to come from in the first instance. As Ian says, following the pipeline, but specifically for fixed income, now that we've had the global high yield business for 2 years, we expect to see that pipeline now begin to monetize.
Great. Well, thank you both very much. We'll just get a final summary from Ian in a minute, just to thank our audience for the questions, and you will receive a questionnaire at the end of this broadcast, so don't switch off. Won't take you more than a minute to complete, which the company would be very interested in. Perhaps, Ian, you can just summarize what you're looking forward to in coming months.
Yes, look, I think it is for those of you that have known us for a long time, it is important to point out that we were about £7 billion in the management in early 2018, and we are now 3 times the size of that, having been obviously much, much bigger. The firm's had a very interesting journey over that 8-year period. We do find ourselves as a global leader in a particularly appealing area of the market. Because of that area of the market's lagged generic indices, as we've said, then we are definitely, or we have been, out of favor. Asset management in the active equity space has been under a lot of pressure.
We're not being immune, but I think there are signs of recovery, and with our strategy focused on a compelling market niche, I do think we're really well-placed for growth over the medium to long term.
Great. Best of luck as well. Always a useful commodity, thank you both very much.
Thank you.