Please feel free to submit questions as we proceed through the presentation. For now, I will hand over to Paul Hogarth, CEO.
Thank you, Hannah, and good morning. Yes, if I could just run you through slide eight, if we could start off there. I'll take you through the sort of the operational highlights and some of the financial highlights as well. Absolutely tremendous six months. Could not be happier with what we've achieved over that period. In particular, obviously, you're seeing the funds under management increase. We had GBP 1.7 billion of new flows over that six-month period. I'm happy to say that that flow rate has continued post that half-year end. October's been good. November's been good so far. We are at GBP 27.1 billion in total. So GBP 2.1 billion year-to-date on flows. What we put that down to is the growing momentum in MPS. MPS is absolutely omnipresent in the IFA world.
You cannot pick up any press from CityWire or FT Advisor, whatever, and not see MPS being front and central. Also, on the website as well. On all websites, wherever you go, MPS is everywhere. Growing momentum. We're doing incredibly well, I think, in our share of that. I'll come back to that later. Really good solid flows, good pipeline moving forward, all organic and beautifully adding to the FUM. Actually, when we look at it, those sort of positions on flows we think would have been even better if we didn't have the kind of macro position that we've got on in the world today. Obviously, there's a lot of waiting for Wednesday with the budget. There are discussions around, obviously, the toppiness of the markets as well.
We're seeing IFA has been very, very busy, and a lot of it has been moving tax-free cash out of the pension scheme just in case that was played within the budget. Pleasingly, that money's not been spent. It's just sitting there, probably waiting in the wings to see what happens with ISAs on Wednesday. We would expect that if there's nothing, if that kind of decision-making on ISAs is benign, those assets will obviously can't make their way back into the pension scheme again, but will find its way into the ISA world. A couple of just sort of standout numbers, really. The number of supporting IFA firms up to 1,170. Again, post the interim six-month point, we've again done well in recruiting more and more firms. Just a quick bit of arithmetic.
Now, if you look at our average account size with 167,000 plus account holders, we have now got an average of GBP 154,000 per account holder. That is up probably over the last few years. It was GBP 130,000-GBP 140,000, now GBP 154,000, which again is a good sign, but it also sort of franks the point that we said that we brought discretionary fund management to the mass affluent market via the IFA community. Just on that, the IFA community remains very, very strong. They are very, very busy dealing with existing clients and struggling to cope with all of the new ones that have got coming through. The IFA community and Route Health. Just on financials, I will not pick on everything in there, but obviously an improvement in the profit margin.
That is the group margin rather than the TIML margin, but we will come back to that later. The interim dividend going up to GBP 0.12 for the first half. Obviously, you know that we are 50/50, so that GBP 0.12 should reflect in a further GBP 0.12 later on. That is it for slide eight. We move to slide nine, just our bragging slide, really showing where we have gone with the funds under management and AUI. Despite all of the events, we have climbed nicely. Just a point of note that that AUI at GBP 27.1 billion includes Perspective, which, as we all know, we lose in January 2026. We will track back on the back of that loss.
Interesting, the next slide, slide 10, shows us, and I think this is of interest more than anything else, as to how our share price has performed compared to our Tatton Corp Global Equity portfolio and comparing that against ARC Equity and the FTSE AM as well. Been a really good, strong performance of the share performance over that period. More of the same again on slide 11, which shows you how we've maximized shareholder value over the period, both with the improvements in the market cap and the EPS side and also the dividend payments that we've made over that period. Strong proposition. Without further ado, I'll pass you over to Paul, who'll take you through the financials.
Thanks, Paul. Yeah. So yeah, overall, been a really positive start to the year. We've kind of touched on some of these numbers in the highlights, but revenue and operating profit both increased by 19% and 20% respectively, with margins increasing to 51%. There are no exceptional items in this period, albeit we do adjust for share-based payments and amortization of intangibles. The financing that we see there, the GBP 500,000, is all related to cash that's on the group balance sheet. Overall, adjusting fully to earnings per share increased 70%, pretty much in line with the key KPIs within the growth. As Paul said, that's interim dividend. Our policy remains to pay 70% of adjusted earnings on a 50/50 basis.
You will see that in the first half, it ticks up to a deferred 70% and will balance out as we pay the other 50% in the second half of the year. Overall, super positive start to the year. Just delving into the detail on the next page, another standout performance from Tatton. Both revenue and operating profit increased by 21% and 22%, respectively, with an increase in the margin again of 64%. As Paul was mentioning earlier, the group revenue around 51% and Tatton at 64%. Clearly, that has been driven by the increase in AUI. That is GBP 4 billion over the period. The key components of that are strong organic net flows of GBP 1.7 billion. Obviously, we have had very good investment performance in the first six months, so GBP 2.1 billion from investment performance alone.
That plays out that on average, our net flows are GBP 281 million. I think last year, they averaged around GBP 307 million. When we exclude Perspective, that nets down to GBP 225 million, which is pretty much in the middle of the guidance that we gave at the end of last year. Just to sort of highlight the Perspective that we've been talking about now for the last 12-18 months, Perspective will leave us in January of 2026. The AUM currently sits at GBP 3.5 billion. The flows in this period were GBP 333 million, and it contributed revenue of GBP 800,000. Moving on to Paradigm, it just remains pretty steady and consistent, actually. Paradigm revenue increased 6%, and the operating profit also increased 6%, with the margin staying stable at around 29%.
The mortgage number of firms increased to 1,960, and that's been a consistent metric that we've been posting now for a few years. Overall, that drove actually quite a material increase in the overall lending to GBP 8.6 billion year on year, albeit that's been driven by record applications. Obviously, the increase in members have helped contribute to that. Overall, very positive contribution from Paradigm. It is a nice little segue into the next slide, really, when we just looked at the evolution of the two businesses. We're kind of highlighting this really to show how effectively Tatton has scaled over the last eight years since IPO. Now Paradigm has gone from sort of 32% of the income to just 13%. I think it's more pronounced on the operating profit, actually, where Paradigm now only counts for 7% of overall profitability.
We are going to continue to separate these two businesses out, but it is just to sort of highlight the fact that at some point, Paradigm is becoming a little subscale, and there may be a need to either divest of perhaps part of the business, but more importantly, actually just potentially consolidate the reporting into just a group performance. Jumping back into the detail, we have had this slide on overheads now for the last few years. It really just gives you the progress that we are making here. Overall, when we annualize the six months to September 2025, you will see that total increase in overhead has been 12%, but the underlying increase has been 8%. The employee cost remains 60%, and that has again been a very consistent KPI.
The point I always like to make is that of that 16% or GBP 15.5 million, GBP 4.3 million of that is actually variable cost and is related to targets and performance that helps us to manage the business and underpin the earnings. Overall, we're still giving that guidance of 10%-12% going forward. One question we always get, is there any sort of one-off significant cost that Tatton will need to invest in at some point in the future? The answer to that is no, as long as we continue to do exactly what we've been doing since IPO and we keep the same operating model. The trajectory of cost increases over that period has been very, very smooth. The last couple of slides on the obligatory balance sheet and cash flow. Look, we're in excellent shape. We've got net assets now of GBP 55.9 million.
Total qualifying capital resource of GBP 27.9 million when you excluded the foreseeable dividend non-qualifying assets. That gives us circa GBP 22 million of headroom above our GBP 5.5 million capital out of script requirement. We have GBP 34 million cash on the balance sheet. We are net debt free. I think we are in excellent position. That strong balance sheet gives us flexibility going forward. On the cash flow, the war between GBP 23 million-GBP 34 million. There is nothing on this cash flow which is unusual. Interest received, dividends paid, corporation tax, and a relatively small amount of CapEx gives a war between GBP 32 million- GBP 34 million. Finally, on the final slide on page 19, we will just give you a little bit of guidance here from an outlook perspective for H2.
The board is making the statement we're on track to deliver our forecast in line with the board's expectations, but obviously on this as well. The revenue margin will be between 20-21 basis points, and Paradigm revenue will continue on that sort of mid-single digit level. Net flows, 200-250, excluding Paradigm, sorry, Perspective. The annual cost increase, as I said earlier, 12%. The only thing that's a little unusual, we'll start the moving of our ACD from Wasted and Value Track to Apex in the final quarter, should I say. That may shift into the first quarter of next year. It will be annual cost savings of GBP 500,000. The projected cost of doing that will be about GBP 500,000 as well.
Thank you, Paul. Moving forward to the strategic update, going back to our usual slide, slide 21, you can see where we are currently. I think we're a little bit flattered from the percentage or our market percentage, which is the top number at 14% because we're working off historic data there. The data from the platforms and from the amount that's actually in MPS, we think that is a fair bit behind. It's fairly historic. Unfortunately, it's the only current one we can quote, but I think it's making our market share look a little bit higher than it really is. I would expect us to be around about the 12% level rather than the 14% that's highlighted in that. You've got, as I said before, a really strong IFA community. The IFA still love platforms, so assets are still going onto platforms.
We must be there or thereabouts for GBP 1 trillion being in these advisor platforms now. And the 183 that's shown in MPS, i.e., 21% of that, is obviously historic. It will be a higher number. It must be more than GBP 200 billion now. But the question that we've been asked many, many times is, what do you think is the true percentage ultimately of what will be in MPS for the total amounts that's sitting on platforms? And we think it will be double where it is currently, heading to 40% and then 50% in due course. So plenty of demand for MPS. Moving on to slide 22. That's our roadmap for growth. And obviously, making great inroads at 27.1 rather than the 25.8. But obviously, that's before the Perspective relationship finishing in January.
We are very confident that we will hit that GBP 30 billion mark with or without Perspective. We will get there. We have plenty of really good stuff in the pipeline. We are sure that we will get to that GBP 30 billion with just pure organic growth, not with any M&A activity. We are very quiet on M&A. We have not got anything that we can discuss of note this morning. We literally would do M&A activity if there was anything that we thought was good. This GBP 30 billion, as I say, is just organic targets. If we did have any M&A stuff in between now and 2029, that would only enhance that 30 billion to a higher number. On slide 23, we give you an update on how we have evolved that MPS offering. We really like this slide.
It shows how we've improved the number of arrangements we have from 50- 61 and the assets over that period up GBP 840 million, although some of that obviously is down to the market movement. We really like these co-branded and white-labeled and AIA propositions. We get the asset much quicker. It is all done at 15 basis points with no payaway. We have full margin. There is very little cost involved in topping them up. As you can see, we have not even moved the number of AIAs up from four. We start off the conversation with the firms who are looking to join the AIA and have at least a part of the decision-making process on the portfolios. Nine times out of ten, the firm comes back and says, "Do you know what? You know exactly what you're doing.
I'm not really going to help in any shape or form. Why don't we go white-labeling or co-branded instead? Really good proposition. I'd love to see 100 of these in time and be again so incentivized to get as many of these as possible. They're on double the rate of commission terms for that. Just moving on to slide 24. I mentioned that MPS has got huge momentum. It's everywhere when you look at all of the different market papers that IFAs read. Not so much papers now, obviously more on website and digital. We've done incredibly well from now of late. De facto, they do a table of the 10 most recommended MPS portfolios. Last time we reported, we had five in the top 10. Now we've got six, as you can see on the left-hand side.
Tatton Core Balance and Tatton Core Attractive taking one of two slots. We are seeing lots of momentum towards these core portfolios, which are 50% active and 50% passive. It is really what IFAs want to see for their clients. Slide 25 further enhances the position on performance. Slide 25. On slide 25, you can see that basically CityWire have delved into all of the performance from all of the top MPS providers and have looked at the average outperformance against the peers. It is lovely to see that Tatton over one year came up top, over three years we were top, over five we were second, and over ten we were third. Really, really good consistent performance. Consistency is the watchword of everything we do there. We do not sell on performance. We sell on consistency.
It is nice to see us right up on that one. The final one on slide 26, again on performance, just looking at the classic core portfolio against its benchmarks. You can see over one, three, and five, it has done well, both against the sector average and the actual benchmark that is utilized. That just follows through from that sort of headline really in CityWire, which is Tatton's MPS assets are surging. Does it deliver performance to match? On Paradigm Consulting on slide 27, really just showing you the fact that actually the mortgage side has done rather well. Protection has increased in number of member firms as well and consulting nice and steady. We have had a couple of really big wins in mortgage advisor groupings that have decided to join Paradigm Mortgages.
Hopefully that's the beginning of a few more coming on the back of this as well. This is where firms are deciding not to be appointed representatives, but actually to go directly authorized in their own right. Yeah, really good momentum. Happy with both consulting and mortgages. As Paul says, obviously becomes a smaller part of the overall group in terms of revenue and profitability. I now hand you over to Lothar to take you through the investment piece.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Paul. Yes, it has been a year again where it was more about avoiding potholes than making any major big calls. It has also been the year where the myth was dispelled that you could only lead the peer group if you had an overweight position on the U.S. and the Mag 7 stocks. Clearly not. We would not have been leading had we had an overweight there. We have had a few smaller positions, but they are never particularly big. Our overweight to Japan has been there for a while. Our fund selection, particularly in Europe and Japan, really, really added. We had a small underweight to the U.S. and an underweight to equity going into Liberation Day and immediately thereafter.
We closed that relatively quickly once it became clear that Trump was going to go back somewhat on his most outrageous tariff policy. At the moment, the outlook is relatively positive. It's quite interesting how the scene has changed since the beginning of the year. At the beginning of the year, the institutional investor world was a bit more skeptical about this year with everything that was going to happen under Trump, whereas the retail investors were all very happy to pile in. Now it seems to be exactly the other way around. The massive decline in cryptocurrencies, over $1 trillion lost there in value over the last couple of weeks, tells us that it's the retail investors, particularly in the U.S., who are getting slightly cold feet.
It is a liquidity-driven decline in the markets, whereas institutional investors are looking slightly more relaxed into the future because we've got significant investments pledged by all the big companies around the world. If you count them all up, it goes into the trillions, which has got to be a good thing for the broader economy. Fiscally, it's still relatively loose, particularly in the U.S., where they even have got the discussion now of another edition of consumer checks here, Trump's idea of perhaps a tariff dividend check. The monetary policy is fairly easy as well with rate cuts still on the horizon, the Federal Reserve just having paused to stop QT.
All these things are actually looking fairly constructive for the next year, for the next 12 months, although it also almost goes to fears of an overheating and perhaps the central banks then having to rein in growth again in order to not let inflation let rip once again. Therefore, it is going to be an interesting time going forward with volatility quite clearly on the horizon, but hopefully at the moment expected to be a pretty good underpinning from earnings. If we turn to the next slide then, that is what our portfolios look like or looked like year to date. They have come back a little bit, obviously, over November so far. Market performance has not been particularly positive, but as we can see, they are doing what they are meant to do.
This is just representative for the portfolio range that we have, our Tatton Core portfolio, 50% tracker based and 50% active based. On the next slide, we can see how that looks relative to the ARC PCI Wealth Management peer group in the U.K., all very nicely green there, the numbers that represent the outperformance over our peers. Now, you could obviously argue, maybe we just took more risk than the competition, and that is the whole reason for that outperformance. If we go to the next slide, 32, we have the one-year horizon against our PCI competitors together with the risk, our dots are the green ones. We can see that we have outperformed there with a strong risk-adjusted performance. That is also true for the three years. If you go to the next slide, 33, that is the three-year picture, very similar.
The five-year is on the next page. Even the 10-year, which we have because we're one of the pioneers in this sector. One of the MPS categories that has been going up and down in popularity is the ethical MPS, which we have on slide 36, where we can see it's a slightly steeper curve, but nevertheless, we are doing well. This is against a peer group that is obviously not investment-restricted by the ethical parameters. If we have it against other ethical MPS and funds, it looks even stronger. With our own sales force out there, the next slide seems to be the most popular one, which shows us our performance in quarters. Slide 37, our quarter ranking as de facto compared against MPS peers. The only area we seemingly be lagging a bit is defensive.
That's in the process of being remedied. We were instructed almost by the risk profiles that we were not allowed to go over 25% equity content in those portfolios, where it turned out that most of our competitors were 30-35%. We have now been able to persuade the risk profiles that we should equally have 30%, and therefore I expect that to become more broadly green in the future as well. Slide 38 compares our 10-year annualized returns against the competition, and this goes back to the consistency of returns that we want to produce. We have been consistently there, thereabouts with our performance. Those who are closest on our heels, that seems to change from report to report. If you compare this slide to where we were after the half year, you will see that that has changed. Our position has not really.
On the next slide, 39 is the usual matrix of how our assets under management are spread across the 45 multi-asset portfolio choices that we have. The passive-based portfolios are still growing. That probably has quite a bit to do with just the very strong performance that that momentum-based investment universe has enjoyed over the last couple of years, but that might well change over the forthcoming period when perhaps the momentum trade is not going to be quite as strong anymore. The slide shift upwards seemingly towards higher risk portfolios is not really what it seems. That is not because of flows. That is because of drift. Obviously, the higher equity portfolios have performed, have generated higher returns, and therefore those assets have grown faster, whereas the inflows have been fairly much the same compared to previous periods. Now, my last slide is 40, the regulatory environment that we are in.
The FCA have announced an MPS review, which we very much welcome. We feel very well prepared for that against their headline of the scope, which is to provide confidence that investors are receiving good outcomes from MPS and share good practice on how firms are doing this. We have got over 12 years of experience and all the systems, processes, and controls that come with it. We can say hand on heart, we know what our investors are receiving in end outcomes, and therefore we very much look forward to contributing there to whatever they come to ask us. That is my last slide. With that, back to Hannah.
Back to me, actually, Lothar, if you do not mind. Yeah, just before we go to Hannah for questions, obviously, Lothar is talking about the MPS review there. I failed to mention about competition and pricing in my first part, so I just wanted to complete that. It is a very competitive landscape. There are over 220 MPS providers out there. Probably the question is, who is not an MPS provider these days rather than who is? We have seen very little change to who we are competing against. It is the same sort of cohort, same sort of faces. We are very, very happy with the 15 basis points it is. As we have said before, it has become the industry norm if it is not already.
There are one or two who've gone lower, but you, in my mind, get what you pay for, and we're not seeing any real change in who we're competing with. Yeah, in really good shape, both from where we are, from our market stance, the consistency of investment returns, and happy with the price. Without further ado, I'd now pass back to Hannah.
Thank you all. Okay, since you've just touched on the consumer duty, let's pick up there. Could you discuss the challenges of integrating other MPS providers onto your platform, and can you elaborate on what additional aspects the duty review might cover?
I think that might be a question actually to me and then a bit of a misunderstanding there. We are not a platform. We are a pure DFM MPS provider, and therefore we would not be having to incorporate anybody else because it is not a platform. We operate on 19 different platforms. As to other things, it is very unknown at the moment what else they might, but usually in the recent past, the regulator has very much focused on just fairness of pricing or discrepancies of pricing for what essentially might be exactly the same service that firms provide. Since we have the same pricing for everything that we provide, it is not really something that we are particularly concerned about.
Thank you. Perhaps another reiteration of the underlying model, but there is someone asking here why you are not on Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell.
Yeah, I mean, we're IFA only, so we are single channel. If we sat on AJ Bell for their direct-to-consumer point or Hargreaves, we would be taking consumer money in, and we don't want to do that. We can only receive business directly from the IFA community. We are, however, on AJ Bell's platform for B2B, so we can receive assets from AJ Bell if it's coming from an IFA, but not the consumer site.
Okay, thank you. Let's move on to Perspective. Can you provide more detail regarding the—thank you, pardon, I picked up on the wrong question there. Here we go. You mentioned you could reach the AUM target with or without Perspective. Does that mean that there is still a chance to renew the contract with them?
No, sorry, I probably shouldn't have put it just like that. The contract is definitely coming to an end, and we've heard nothing from them to say that it's not. What I meant to say really was that we will hit the GBP 30 billion with them gone. What will happen is we'll lose that number to start off with. I feel confident that we might get some of those assets back in time as well, but we'll have to see. We know we're losing it because of effectively price. We've got a good idea of the price that the new incumbent is going to do it at, and we weren't in a position to compete on that price. Yeah, we were very happy to get to the GBP 30 billion on organic growth.
Thanks. In terms of achieving that run rate then, given the declining number of smaller IFA firms in the U.K., as indicated by recent FCA data, do you anticipate that Tatton will need to focus on targeting larger IFA firms to achieve growth? If so, how does this influence your service offering and overall economics?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I actually don't think there is that big a demise. Also, from some of the latest data we've had from some of the consulting firms showing that there are a lot of new firms that have started. I think from 2019- 2023, there were 470 brand new firms that were started with actually an average age, which is obviously younger than those people that are leaving. No, I don't think we should necessarily focus with the higher firms. I'm very happy with our focus on the small and medium-sized. There is a little bit of consolidation going on, but we quite like that. We think consolidation is good for the community and for the industry. No, we're happy with our position and where we're focusing our attention.
I guess a different way of phrasing a similar-ish question, but you've played obviously a significant role in directing assets towards the MPS space. Do you see momentum continuing at the same pace and maintaining your market share? What are the factors, if any, that might slow this progress?
Good question. Yes, no, we're happy with the momentum. We're happy with our market share. We think we will maintain our market share. As I said on the slide, it's slightly inflating what our real number is. I think we're still around about 12%, and we are winning what we should be winning. Obviously, we'll always try to drive more and increase that number if we could. We have a strategy day coming up next week where we'll be looking to see how we can optimize the actual model, if you like, to get as much as we can because this is still very much a land grab. We're happy with where we are, but always looking to extend out. MPS will continue to thrive because we are in there from the start.
As Lothar says, one of the pioneers, I think we're very well placed to be the recipient of further flows, both because we believe we've got the price right and the consistency of the investment returns.
Okay, and perhaps a question for our analyst, Paul Bryant, as much as for yourself. In our report, we mentioned that DFM has grown at 28% and that your market share is 12%-14%. Are the board concerned that Tatton's market share will fall?
No, no, we're not. No, we think we're fighting a good fight. We know from the number of tenders that we get and the fact that we are seen as the leader. We're getting in front of as many IFAs as possible. We're always very welcome. If you look back at when we first started this, this was a crusade and an educational process. Now, MPS, everybody knows if you want to run a very scalable IFA practice, you need to embrace MPS and not do it yourself. It's just a question of who you choose, and we're always on people's minds and lists for doing that. That's not to say that we are getting complacent or arrogant.
We've always got to find a way to extend what we do, but we're very cognizant of the performance of the business to date, and we see no reason whatsoever why it won't continue in the same vein.
Okay, thank you. Can you provide more detail regarding the benefits of the car loss investment? How will the board decide how much of up to GBP 10 million is invested and when? Will the AUM from Absolute be expected to replace the loss from—that was a supplementary question on Perspective.
The supplementary question is spot on. Absolute will be a help to replace the Perspective piece. I would imagine that when Absolute is making purchases, some of them will be from Tatton firms and some of them will not be. It will not be mandated for them to utilize Tatton, but obviously, we will make them aware that it is available. Looking at the equity investment of GBP 10 million, we think that is a real good use of deploying capital off our balance sheet. We, as I say, will have a really good investment in the equity position alongside Inflection there. Anyway, we will be the beneficiary of the coupon, which is 12%, and we will obviously have the equity uptake too, and we have the rights to follow on as and when further cash or capital is required by Absolute.
Absolute often gets up and running from next Monday with the completion of the first purchase of Absolute Financial Management, and there will be others in the pipeline to come through. I think there is a really strong pipeline which looks roughly 50/50 between Tatton utilizers or firms and non-Tatton firms. It is there because in consolidation, we have a number of firms, and this happens every single week, who come on to us to say, "Look, we are thinking about selling, but we do not want to be going to somebody who is going to encourage us to leave Tatton or move to their platform. We want somewhere where it is independent, and this will fulfill that requirement.
Okay, thank you.
I was going to say in terms of drawdown as well, I think part of the question was, how does the board control that investment in GBP 10 million? GBP 4 million of that GBP 10 million will be drawn down actually at the end of this month, actually by the end of this week. It is in the plan to draw down over a three-year period, so the remaining six.
Different take then for now. Thank you. What are Tatton's plans for management succession when Paul and Lothar retire? Could say Paul, Paul, and Lothar.
Yeah, I'm glad you included Paul in there as well. No, we're obviously very happy doing what we're doing. We're all enjoying such a tremendous journey. There are no thoughts of any of us leaving. We're very, as I say, we've got a lot of work to do. We have got some really good individuals coming through within the business, so we're strong. We have a nice management team running through, and we have obviously got an eye to succession at some point in time, but it's not in the distant future.
Is in the distant future?
Yeah, sorry, it is in the distant future, yeah.
Good. That's what I thought. Aim versus full list. There's plenty of others who are making a journey, plenty who are staying. What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, our ambition would be to go to the main market. We feel that at this moment in time, we're a little bit too small. Maybe in 18 months, two years' time, when our market cap is circa GBP 700 million or whatever, then that would be the perfect time to do that. We are already building with regards to governance, etc. We run this like a main listed business anyway, but we are strengthening that in readiness for it. I think, as I say, it would be 18 months to two years away.
Okay. You've mentioned acquisitions, but we know it's competitive out there. Have you considered other uses of capital like share buybacks?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, share buybacks, special divvies, and deployment of the capital is all on our mind. In 2027, we will be coming up for 10 years of age. It might be nice to do something around that time. For the meantime, we are happy with where the cash is. We are deploying that into Absolute, as we said. We have obviously got that lovely strong dividend. As a business, obviously, you always want to make sure that you deploy your capital correctly. At this moment in time, we are happy. As and when, if it continues to grow as it is growing, which we would expect it to, then that sort of buying share back or special divvy is one of the very strong options.
Yeah, thanks. Perhaps one for you, Lothar. Someone here is concerned about.
Cockroaches.
Yeah. I was going to rephrase that. U.S.A. private credit lending leading to another crisis. Do you have any views, and how are you prepared to respond?
What concerns us at the moment is that it has already led to a tightening of the credit markets, tightening of liquidity, which is part of what we're currently experiencing in terms of the market downturn. This is probably, though, alluding to the global financial crisis when there was a lot of not very clever lending done and had a quite structural threat to our financial world. With private credit, we have to remember this is not geared, this is not leveraged. It is quite limited to who holds these things. It was also well known that the lowest end of the credit spectrum had migrated more and more into the private credit world. We are not totally surprised. The impact would be more in credit tightness, which does not help when the economy is overall wanting to expand.
We are seeing enough counteraction from the central bank to loosen liquidity again, and the banks still have the ability to lend because it's not the banks who are holding it here. It is the private credit side.
Okay, thank you. I think as a sort of nice round-off, you have already mentioned the budget. What possible policy or tax changes concern you most?
I'm not sure there are, to be honest. I think obviously it affects us all individually. I think when we look at the IFA community and what's going on, then I don't think there's anything that would knock us away from what we're doing, both from an IFA world or from a Tatton world. As I mentioned earlier, there's some movement in tax-free cash, people just taking that just in case, but it's not being spent. It'll find its way back into ISAs, as I would imagine, once we know what's happening there. It's more the uncertainty of all that's maybe holding things back. We can't wait to get Wednesday out of the way and see what it holds. No, nothing that we expect would derail what we're doing or what the IFA community is doing.
Lovely. That is it today. Thank you to the three of you. Thank you to our audience for attending and for their many questions. We will look forward to an update in another six months and continued AUM fantastic growth.
Thank you very much. Thank you for that.
Thank s Hannah.
The very best . [audio distortion] everybody.
Thank you.