Good morning and welcome to Allfunds' financial results presentation for the first half of 2024. Thank you for joining us today. I'm here with Juan Alcaraz, Allfunds Chief Executive Officer, and Álvaro Perera, Chief Financial Officer. Juan and Álvaro will take you through the presentation for an overview on our performance and outlook. After our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. This call is being broadcast live, and a replay will also be available on our website during the day. Juan, over to you.
Thank you very much, Silvia, and good morning to everyone. I'll give you a brief summary of our key highlights and share with you the significant strategic progress that we are making. Then I will hand over to Álvaro to go through the financials in more detail. Today, I'm excited to share with you our first half performance with two main messages: growth acceleration and record financial performance. We have delivered another half of record financial performance as we continue to accelerate assets, revenue, and profitability growth. We have a strong business outlook. First, as we see flows from existing clients finally recovering with a sustained positive momentum. Our engines are back on track to contribute positively to assets growth. Migrations are also expected to accelerate in the second part of the year.
Our subscription-based business grew by 18% in this semester, as the investments we have been making in order to enhance our value proposition are now really starting to bear fruit. We made progress in our private markets platform, and we deliver outstanding growth of 27% year to date, as we once again demonstrate the critical role we play in helping clients distribute these new products in the European private wealth segment. On top of this outstanding performance, I'm glad to announce our new key strategic priority for 2025: our new ETP platform. We will be rolling out the first features of this new platform in the Q1 of 2025. We had a strong and consistent delivery on our strategic growth pillars, a strong accelerating core business geared to an improving macroeconomic cycle. We are building a high-quality growth-accretive subscription business, and finally, our private markets platform positioned for growth.
Let's first discuss our core business growth, starting with a glimpse on what we are seeing in the market context in slide number 6. Active funds have now experienced a Q1 of inflows in a sign of rebound for the product. This implies that the European industry is already only 2% away from recovering the EUR 12 trillion highs seen before the start of the war in Ukraine, similar to what's happening in Allfunds. Fixed income has dominated the active fund inflows. We have achieved consistent market share gains throughout the last 11 years, and again, this year was no exception. Following the temporary reduction in the penetration of open architecture that we saw since mid-2022 until June 2023, we are seeing open architecture recovering market share, given that long-term structural trends are intact and the need for more diversified investment products increases.
Let me give you an update, as we did back in February, on the captive flow opportunity of Allfunds in two of our core markets, like Spain and Italy. If you remember year 2023, last year, we saw a significant growth in captive flows due to a strong commercial push by large distributors for mutual funds with fixed term duration, the famous guarantee funds. As you can see on slide 8, Allfunds are already enjoying net flows, while the organic flow opportunity within short-term maturity products continues to increase. In Spain, Allfunds' organic flows show a strong recovery in contrast to a significant decline of net flows into conservative products. In Italy, net flows in these conservative products have slowed down, helped by the lower success of the BTP Valore replacement in Q1 versus Q1.
As a result of this improved market context, we have achieved AUAs of €1.47 trillion, 6% above December 2023, and a strong growth of 9% year-on-year. Thanks to the turnaround of flows from existing clients, we have achieved strong positive net flows of €14.3 billion. Together with market performance, our three engines of growth are contributing positively to the growth of our business. Moving into more details of these positive net flows, the next slide, slide 10, you see that Allfunds has experienced inflows from existing clients during Q2 of 2024, the first time since 2021. In line with what we have been witnessing since Q4 of 2023, we have been experiencing a continuous improvement in monthly trends. If you see at the bottom chart of the page, Allfunds has experienced flows from existing clients every single year since inception until 2022.
This growth has been supported by structural trends towards best-of-breed and open architecture, and our flywheel network effect with flows directed to Allfunds as the leading European platform. Exceptional macro environment in 2022 and 2023 with rapid rate increases led to exceptional years of outflows, which seem now behind. As a result, Allfunds is poised for inflows from existing customers again in the near term with expected rate cuts from ECB and Fed. Moving now to our next engine of growth, migrations. Migrations from new clients have continued to contribute positively, which underpins the strength of our franchise. We onboarded 42 new clients in this first semester, a 35% growth year-over-year, and we brought EUR 2 billion of new assets into a platform. We win clients from all around the world.
As you see, more than 50% of our new clients are coming from Asia, Central Europe, and also Northern Europe. We keep our focus on the sweet spot of mid-size clients from EUR 100 million up to EUR 5 billion, which are more attractive to us from a business perspective. In this first half, we have attracted this type of clients while capturing significant share from competitors, helping us to diversify our distributors' base. But more importantly, we have a strong new distributor pipeline activity supported by the EUR 40 billion of secure migrations for the second half. This is not the first time that we share with you this metric. Given that we do not fully control the process of migrations, we wanted to reassure you about the strong new business activity and momentum that we are seeing.
Just want to remind you that when we talk about secure migrations, this means that we have an agreement closed with the distributor, and we have an estimation of the date of when those assets are going to be migrated to Allfunds. Our flow effect remains as strong as ever. We keep on winning new distributors and onboard new fund houses, which in turn make our asset base grow and turn them into even a stickier customer, as proven by our extraordinary retention rates. Since IPO, Allfunds has continued expanding its platform business. All of this would be incomplete if we didn't make our proposition to our clients more compelling. Since we are talking about a stronger proposition, let's have a quick look at our high-quality growth-accretive subscription-based business. The subscription business is instrumental for our enhanced value proposition.
To ensure we accelerate the penetration and serve the wallet of our client base, we will keep on investing while we reinforce our existing capabilities, both organically and inorganically. We have delivered high-teens growth and keep on improving our commercial metrics. As you can see in the bottom right-hand side chart, we are growing faster than the last 2 years, proving that our acquired businesses are delivering on the strategy. As we reflect on the first half of 2024, I'm thrilled to share the remarkable progress we have made on our product roadmap. We have achieved not one, but 2 successful product launches. These new offerings have already begun to make a significant impact, and we are just getting started. In the spirit of continuous innovation and in collaboration with Google's team, I'm excited to announce that we have an AI-powered feature in the pipeline.
This feature, set to launch in Q3, promises to revolutionize how our users gain insights and interact with our platform. It will be the backbone of future products and services at Allfunds. We are also leveraging AI technology also for internal use to use and to power efficiency internally. We have launched a document processing platform that represents the first use case with AI. It will help us to reduce costs by processing a significant amount of documents. I would like now to spend some time in our successful alternative platform. European private wealth remains a top segment to capitalize on the alternative strength. Most of the key players have already highlighted the special momentum and activity they have experienced, and wealth managers are allocating more client capital to private assets. In that line, we expect private markets to witness a significant increase in demand over the coming years.
As a result, our Allfunds Alternative Platform is building a strong momentum. This is a high growth and margin accretion potential opportunity for us, and it perfectly fits with Allfunds' strategy to be a one-stop shop for distributors and fund houses. We have seen a solid growth of 27% year to date of the AUA we distribute, with a strong demand from Asian and Swiss clients. We remain very optimistic about the prospects of this segment of the business, given that the fund launched 12-18 months ago will become more attractive as they grow in AUM and track record. Therefore, the flows into these funds will increase. Lastly, I'm particularly enthusiastic about an initiative that has been in development for several months.
I'm talking about the launch and the success of the long-only fund distribution platform launched in 2000, and following the introduction of our fully operational private market platforms, we are excited to announce the creation of our new ETP platform. This solution will provide an open architecture model for exchange-traded products, further enhancing our proposition by integrating three platforms into one. We are working on expanding the possibilities of distribution for our clients in the ETP space. This means expanding Allfunds' one-stop shop solution and penetrating the open architecture of ETPs. As a result, our existing distributor channels will grow its share of wallet by increasing the usage of ETP. There is significant runway based on a large addressable market that we estimate to be around EUR 2 trillion today and that grows at more than 20% rate.
Our goal is to offer access to a wide variety of ETPs, improve the liquidity delivery of these products, and optimize the distribution for both new and existing fund houses. We're in an exciting phase and keenly anticipating the development and progress of this initiative. Allfunds' leading full-service offering on its traditional and alternative platform can be extended at a scale across the ETP platform. As a result, our proposition will be stronger than ever, a comprehensive integrated suite of best-in-class solutions. With that, let me now turn the call over to Álvaro, who will take you through our financial results. Thank you.
Thank you, Juan, and good morning, everyone. I will now run you through the key financial figures and explain the main underlying drivers of this outstanding performance. Let me start with a few key performance indicators on slide 24.
As you can see, we have delivered strong financial performance in H124, combining growth, high profitability, and cash generation, three pillars of our financial profile. The company delivered record half-year revenues of EUR 310 million, a 16.4% growth versus the first half of 2023, an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 210 million, implying a margin of 68%, a 20% growth in adjusted earnings per share, and finally, a 19% free cash flow growth in line with our historical pre-tax cash conversion rates. Let's pause on slide 25 to take a quick look at our revenues. The company has been able to grow across both platform and subscription services at high teens. In H124, net platform revenues increased by 16% compared to H123, benefiting from the sustainable contribution of net treasury income thanks to higher average balances, as well as to the higher transaction revenues following a recovery to normalized levels of activity.
At the same time, subscription revenues increased year-on-year by 18% to EUR 31 million, driven by an improved level of commercial activity and successful integration of recent acquisitions, with like-for-like growth in the mid-teens versus H1 2023, in line with our 2024 guidance. Shifting our attention to margins, I would like to highlight that our business has demonstrated margin resilience, increasing our total net platform revenue margin from 3.7 basis points to 3.9 basis points. Platform service margin increased 0.3 basis points from 5.1 in the second half of 2023 to 5.4 basis points, while dealing and execution margin remained stable. As you've noticed in previous slides, revenue growth materially outpaced costs, generating positive jaws demonstrating our operating leverage. Costs were driven by higher inflation, mainly fixed cost, currency impact, and increased investment, in line with our strategic ambition to develop our digital capabilities and IT infrastructure.
We also managed to offset some of these key hires in strategic initiatives and new senior appointments in the operations team, with efficiency programs launched last year. With regards to SG&A expenses, the incremental transactional activity and growth in our subscription business resulted in a slight variable cost increase. So, as a result, adjusted personal expenses and SG&A expenses stood at EUR 62 million and EUR 43 million, respectively. Thanks to our operating leverage, we were able to deliver record-adjusted EBITDA of EUR 210 million in the first half of 2024, representing a 22% growth versus the first half of 2023. Furthermore, adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 68%, slightly ahead of our guidance of mid-sixties, as you might recall. So, as stated last year, sorry, earlier this year, we expect adjusted EBITDA margin to remain stable in 2024 and progressively improve over time. Allfunds has a strong cash flow and capital generation capacity.
We have consistently delivered on our capital allocation, and we are committed to continue doing so through funding our innovation investments and reinvesting in the platform, value-accretive M&A, and finally, shareholder remuneration. Before we turn to Q&A, we wanted to share our views on the potential outlook for the remaining of 2024. Thank you. Today, we confirmed the guidance we provided in February for the full year and our higher conviction to reach the upper end of the range on the basis of our year-to-date performance. For the rest of the year, we keep the same assumption of flat market performance from current levels. In terms of migrations, we maintain the range of €40 billion-€60 billion, given the high visibility on secured migrations.
Regarding flows from existing clients, we have experienced a gradual recovery, as Juan mentioned, ahead of what we were anticipating in February, and we continue to see upside potential based on year-to-date dynamics. So, as a result, we anticipate to end 2024 slightly above the EUR 1.5 trillion mark of AUA and net revenue growth in the upper end of the range provided in February, i.e., low double-digit growth. Finally, the adjusted EBITDA margin for 2024 is expected to remain stable and trending towards 70% in the midterm. Thank you all very much for your attention, and let's now open the Q&A.
Thank you, Juan. Thank you, Álvaro. Let's move on to questions next. As it is customary during the Q&A, please limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up. You may get back in the queue if you have additional questions.
For any question that may remain unanswered, the IR team will be at your disposal after the event. Operator, can you please proceed with the first question, including name and company of the caller?
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, please press star followed by one. Our first question today comes from the line of Arnaud Gebler from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yeah, good morning. I've got a question on your alternative platform. I was just wondering, given the ELTIF 2.0 regulation update, should we expect an acceleration in flows to alternatives? Is that something you're seeing?
And also, if you could give us a bit of an update as to how the flows are shaping up. Is it concentrated to a given number of players, or are there more big-scale, big-name, big brands to come still on the platform to underpin that growth? And my follow-up question is on the ETP. Sorry if I didn't catch this, but I was just wondering if, with the launch of this platform, there's a plan to address the B2B2C market. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much for your questions. Regarding the first question about the, yeah, I mean, I think regulation is also going to help the growth of the alternatives products across Europe. So yes, definitely, the quick answer is we are expecting, and we expect an acceleration of alternatives investment in Europe without any doubt.
So we are expecting to see more products and more appetite for these types of products across all our distribution network. I think the second question was regarding migrations, no? And precisely. Also alternatives, if it's concentrated in a number of players or it's more? Well, I think that we are seeing appetite, especially from the private banks. So we have a pretty important market share in private banks and wealth managers in Europe. And these are the first ones that are showing significant appetite for this asset class. Remember that until now, the appetite for this asset class was mainly coming from institutional investors. Now we are seeing this new segment, wealth managers entering into this space. And we have, I think the beauty of Allfunds' platform is that we have this type of clients, wealth managers, private banks all around Europe, all around the world.
So we are seeing big distributors with appetite for these products, but also mid-size and small distributors, again, private banks, okay, wanting to access this asset class. And finally, on ETP, are we going to address the B2C channel? Well, I think it's a very good point. I think we have always remained for the last 24 years or since inception as a B2B platform. And with ETP, we are not planning to change anything. I think the only opportunity or option for Allfunds to enter into or to be closer to the end customer is going to be, or it could be, okay, not so much regarding products, but regarding countries. So of course, there are some countries where we are not so strong in B2B or where we could decide to become B2B2C. But again, our ETP value proposition is definitely going to be 100% focused on B2B.
So it's the same as what we have done with Long-only and the same as what we did last year when we launched our alternative platform.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question today comes from the line of Haley Tam from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. If I could ask one about migrations, please. The EUR 12 billion of migrations you saw in H1 was obviously a big improvement. And you did highlight the 42 new distributors, which I think was up 35% year-over-year. I think for H1 last year, you actually had a much higher migration figure in H1 of EUR 20 billion. So I just wondered, is there any comment on the average value you're getting from each new distributor, if there's a trend that we should be identifying?
And then the follow-up question, please. You talked about 36% of those migrations coming from other platforms. Could you remind us, please, is that other large platforms or smaller ones? And we think about this as a pricing-led success or something specific about your service proposition that is particularly successful right now. And sorry, also, I didn't see the retention rate mentioned in the slides today. Is that still 99.9% for distributors? Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for your question. I mean, I don't see any trend on the migrations. I think the beauty of Allfunds is that we are in the countries and regions where we want to be. So we don't have to do any homework in necessarily opening or open new countries, new regions. No. I mean, we have been opening regions and countries for the last 25 years.
The beauty is that now we already have the teams, the platforms, the local platforms supported by our global team. So migrations come and new clients come from every single country in the world. So that's the first thing. The fact that we grew, I mean, that migrations last year were a little bit higher, or 20 versus 12, to me, it's not really important, because this can change in a week. We have signed big migrations, already signed for the second half of the year. Some clients are about EUR 15 billion, for instance. So imagine you migrate those EUR 15 billion next week, and suddenly the migrations of that quarter look super good compared to last year.
But again, I think what for us is important is that we're capable to keep on gaining market share, to keep on gaining clients from everywhere, as I said, and that on an ongoing basis, we have this €50 billion mark every year of new assets coming to Allfunds. To me, that is the most important, let's say, takeaway. I think the other question was regarding that if we are gaining, I mean, what type of platforms are we gaining clients from? There are not so many small platforms or competitors in Europe. I think that today the platform market is very concentrated, really. So when we say that we are gaining market share and we are gaining clients from other platforms, it's mainly from the top 3-4 platforms that operate today in the world. And you mentioned if it is a price issue.
Well, since I launched the company more than two decades ago, I always told my people, my team, that we should never try to win clients based on price. We always try to focus our value proposition and the way we sell Allfunds as a solution, and therefore not really focusing on price. So I really hope that the new clients that join Allfunds are not because we are able to pay them more or less, but because of the one-stop concept. So this added value and enhanced value proposition of Allfunds compared to other players.
And Hayley, on your comment with regards to retention rate, yes, it is above 99%. We've not included it in the presentation. I think we're getting used to it, but yes.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question today comes from the line of Andrew Lowe from Citi. Please go ahead.
Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. First one is on page 14. You mentioned the retention rate being above 90% for your subscription business. I'm just curious how that compares to your prior expectations, given that subscription revenues have disappointed consensus over recent results. And then if you've got an idea of how that compares to peers, what are the expectations for that retention rate going forward? Should that increase meaningfully as product improves? And then a quick follow-up on the ETP platform. Could you just clarify what the margins are versus the mutual fund margins? That would be great. Thanks.
`Well, it's difficult to talk about our peers in this, let's say, business line, because here you compete with so many companies, wealth techs, fintechs, not with the traditional platforms, fund platforms. So we are boosting our sales activity regarding subscription revenues.
We have made some changes. So now we have all the sales force of the company promoting these services and not just, okay, the sales people from the subsidiaries. So I mean, I think that we should expect a significant acceleration and growth of this type of revenues. But at the same time, we are competing against very, very strong fintechs and wealth techs coming from all around the world. And therefore, we will see how the above 90% retention rate evolves. To me, it's definitely a much more, let's say, difficult environment than the fund platform. That, as we said before, we have been selling our value proposition for decades. This is pretty new for us. We are expecting to win many, many clients. But of course, as I said, many players are also competing.
Sometimes the product or the solution, the tool that we are selling is a €20,000 tool. So it's not so difficult that suddenly you lose that contract with that distributor because they prefer another tool or another product. So I'm not so, let's say, obsessed with the retention rate in subscription. I'm much more focused on the retention rate on the, let's say, platform business. What else?
The margin expected on the ETP platform.
Oh, well, the margin, the only thing that I can disclose at this point, because this is a new initiative, and we want to keep it as confidential as possible until it's already live. The only thing that I can tell you is that it's, without any doubt, it's going to be accretive. So we are expecting to make more money in this platform than the money that we are currently making, the margin.
I'm talking about the margin, okay, the margin that we currently make with the Long-only Platform, without any doubt. That's what I can disclose at this point.
Thank you. That's really helpful.
Thank you.
The next question today comes from the line of Julian Deliberovsky from ABN AMRO. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hello, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I have also a follow-up on the ETP business. Can you please remind us what proportion of your AUA is now ETP/ETF-driven and kind of also an expansion of this question? I'm just wondering how is the new platform, which obviously you're trying to isolate as a kind of separate brand now, different than the current way of you distributing ETPs? And then another one is on the capital allocation. You're generating solid free cash flow.
Margins are quite solid, and probably this will stay at this level. Can you please update us on your capital allocation policy, i.e., maybe some more buybacks coming up in the horizon?
Okay. So regarding the proportion, well, the first question, Julian, so thanks for your questions. I mean, the first one is the proportion. I mean, for us, it's a new business. So we know that we have around 9% of the current assets in our platform, around 9% are indexed or passive. But that's the only, let's say, number that I can give you, because I mean, this is a new platform. We currently have a very, very small amount of ETFs traded through Allfunds, so a significant amount. So all you can expect is new money and new business, really.
I'm not thinking about converting part of the passive or indexed products that we have into this platform. I'm expecting to see the growth coming from scratch, really. This is regarding ETPs. Separate brand? Separate brand. No, I don't think so that we are going to, I mean, there is just one Allfunds. The only thing is that it's true that I think that for our clients and distributors and fund houses, I think it's easier for them to see in Allfunds these three platforms in one rather than saying that we do everything. So probably at the beginning, we will keep on in all our communication strategy, we will keep on talking about these three platforms, but everything is going to be integrated.
It is true that, of course, we have specialized teams in each of the platforms because in the case of ETFs, the team, the operational team, and also on the IT side, we are hiring new people, new experts. But Allfunds is just one company, and everything has to be definitely integrated. Capital allocation?
Hi, Julian. And with regards to capital allocation policy, no changes versus what you have been seeing since we IPO'd. So all cash that we continue generating on a yearly basis goes to reinvesting in the business, funding our own initiatives, doing accretive M&A, and of course, giving it back, remunerating shareholders, whether it's through ordinary dividends or buybacks as we've done recently. That's still part of the policy. So answering your question, should we expect more buybacks in the future? I think that's definitely why not. That's part of the policy.
All right.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
You're welcome.
The next question today comes from the line of Ian White from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi there. Thanks for doing the call. A couple of questions from my side, please. Firstly, I'm just looking at the year-over-year progression in the asset-based revenue margin in the platform service specifically. On my maths, the margin there has declined maybe 8%, 9% year-over-year in the Q1. And I wondered if you could just help me understand what's happening there and whether we should expect to see sort of continued pressure in that sort of underlying margin over the next few quarters, notwithstanding the points you've made about alternatives and the ETP platform. So that's question one.
And secondly, I wondered if you could just comment a little bit on the recent senior appointments that you've announced, the Group COO and Chief Data Officer. What prompted those hires during the Q1? And is there an eye on the potential for further efficiency savings or a view that the commercialization of the data offering could be improved or something along those lines, please? Thank you.
Hi, Ian. Let me take the first question, and Juan will cover the senior appointments. On margin, I think you're looking at first half of 2023 and comparing it to the first half of 2024. You're right, there is an attrition there in the, I'm going to call it, pure asset-based revenue, which I think we addressed in February during our full year presentation.
So actually, when you compare the second half of 2023 with the first half of 2024, which is what we're doing today, you see that there is a stable margin on the asset-based revenue front. When we compare it to last year, you have, let's say, the impact of this shift, progressive shift of rebate-bearing AUA into non-rebate-bearing AUA, which has progressively gone down over time. And we've openly said that we expect that to continue progressively reducing over time. We've also seen the impact of a weaker asset class mix, in particular in the first half or the second half of last year. But we're now seeing those flows normalizing and actually improving into more riskier assets. So we feel, I'd say, very comfortable with the margin stability that we are describing today.
Yeah. And just a comment on what you have just said, Álvaro.
The truth is that the first inflows coming into equity products, and therefore this improvement in product mix started one month ago. We are seeing appetite for riskier assets, but the truth is that we are talking about still fixed income. This improvement of product mix has not yet happened, which is, I think, in some ways good news because, well, whenever that happens and that appetite towards equity really becomes significant, I believe that we will also see a positive impact in the margin. Okay. Regarding the senior appointments, yes, I think that, well, already last year, we appointed a new head of IT, so a new responsible for our IT platform. That happened in 2023, and it came with also a big transformation of the IT team.
And this year, what we have done at the beginning of the year, we hired Chief Operating Officer Antonio Varela to take care of the IT platform plus all the operational teams of the company. So putting together for the first time in many years IT and operations and having just one single voice when we talk about Allfunds, a technological platform. And Antonio is bringing and transforming the team, so bringing new people with a lot of experience, basically with international background. So yes, a lot of focus on the platform itself, apart from bringing other products, other solutions, other services. That is very good. But we need to really pay attention to the platform because it's absolutely critical that it remains being a solid and resilient platform. Yeah.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question today comes from the line of Bruce Hamilton from Morgan Stanley.
Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi there. Morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, just on the alternatives business, I think you said that the flows were pretty concentrated in Switzerland, which would make sense, but I just wanted to check whether I heard correctly or whether the demand from distributors was coming more broadly. And then linked to that, in terms of the breadth of product providers on the platform, is that something that you could substantially expand from where you are today, or is that fairly stable? And then the second question, just to get an update on where we are on the sort of discussions with Santander and Intesa regarding sort of ongoing exclusive relationships. When should we hear clarity on that? And final one, just on the rebates, what percentage in our rebate versus non-rebate?
I thought that was largely done, but obviously, it continues to be a headwind. So it'd be good to just get where we are in percentage terms. Thank you.
Okay. So there were like three.
Yeah, four. Four questions. Four questions. On alternatives, where are the flows concentrated?
Yeah. Well, and the number of fund houses. Well, I think flows are coming mainly from Italy and Switzerland, also Latin America, Asia, Spain progressively. Those are the key countries today. Regarding the products, I think we have around 125-126 agreements with alternative fund houses. And we have 7 agreements with our 7 core partners, which were the components, the core of this, what we call APP program, so alternative program that we launched last year.
So answering to your question, that number of the program, so the members of the program, is going to increase, yes, as we said at the beginning. So last year, we want to have 10 partners, so there is still room for 3 newcomers. And regarding the rest of the alternative managers, yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I think we should expect in the coming probably 2 years to double the size of those managers, alternative managers, with a distribution agreement with Allfunds. So probably moving up from these 125 up to 250 managers. So that's what we are expecting to do.
On Santander and Intesa?
Santander and Intesa, well, we renewed and extended, as you know, the agreement. And we are not planning to announce anything because in any case, before announcing anything, we would have to also obtain the permission and the okay from these two players.
But everything remains as always. So fantastic distributors, fantastic clients, fantastic partners of Allfunds.
And finally.
Yeah, on rebate. Hi, Bruce. So the percentage of AUA or rebate-earning AUA stands at around 12%. And if I may, I don't see it as a headwind. I mean, it's something that we're progressively pushing. The impact on margin, if that's what you mean on margin attrition, is, I think, very marginal as it is today. And we're seeing, in fact, platform service fees or platform service margins actually converging to rebate margins. So yeah, I think we should expect that 12% to continue reducing over time, but not a headwind.
No. No, I think it's difficult because suddenly you capture, I mean, you gather a client where the assets are concentrated in retail share class. And what are you going to do?
I mean, of course, you want that client, that distributor joins the platform, and it suddenly brings you EUR 2 billion in retail share class. So you are not going to say no. So in the end, it's not so easy to keep on reducing that 12%. But I think we feel comfortable with something around 10%. Our goal, as you know, is to keep on extending our platform fee on top of every single share class, independently of if it is retail or institutional or clean. And I think that's the most important, let's say, strategy that we have, and that depends on us, making it even less important if the percentage of rebate or retail class goes up or down. Our goal is to try to minimize completely the volatility that is true that rebate brings to the platform.
But again, as Álvaro said, for us, it's not really a headwind. It would be a headwind if the rebates or the prices that Allfunds has with the fund house were not good. But we know that we have probably the best prices on the rebate side with fund houses, so it's not a problem. It's not a headwind. It's just what it is. Not a big issue.
Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question today comes from the line of Carlos Peixoto from CaixaBank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Just a quick question from my side, actually. The first one would be on treasury income evolution. Basically, what's your expectation throughout the year?
Should we think that your style figure can be repeated in the second half, or as interest rates go down, we should expect this to come lower? And then secondly, on subscription revenues, and actually more focused on seasonality and looking at slide 14, my thoughts here are basically the following ones. If we look at the subscription revenues in the first year and in the second year, they were pretty much alike. I was wondering if you expect here to see a big step up in the second half of the year driven by seasonality issues to get to the mid to high single-digit growth, double-digit growth that you mentioned. Is that the expectation? That has to do with the concentration of contracts in the second half of the year. What are the drivers for that? Thank you very much.
I'll take the second one.
Sure. So hola, Carlos.
In terms of NTI, yes, the second half of the year will be probably weaker when it comes to NTI contribution for two main reasons. One is the likely rate cuts, which should have some impact, not huge, but some impact on the NTI figure, given we keep on increasing average cash balances throughout the year from clients. And the second and more important reason is the seasonality of Q3. Q3 is a weak quarter traditionally for transactional revenue and NTI because the number of trades or the transactional activity is much more subdued due to the summer break or summer season.
This activity.
Yeah. So we should see a weaker Q3 in line with previous years compared to other quarters, and then stronger Q4 absent any other changes.
And subscription.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And regarding subscription, well, I mean, when I talked to the team and with them, and they showed me the pipeline for the second half of the year, it looks like it's very, very strong and very, very positive. I think the fact that we have made this change that I mentioned before, so now we have almost 100 people promoting. I want to say now is, I mean, last week we started with this new model sales approach. And now we are going to have 100 people promoting all these subscription revenues. As I said before, in the past, the sales activity of digital, of ESG, of data was really in the hands of the specialists of the subsidiaries that we acquired or that we developed internally.
Now all that sales activity is also done by the sales team of the platform, and plus and reinforced by the proud specialists of the subsidiaries. We believe that this is going to have a very positive impact in our revenues. But so I'm very positive, yes, but we will have to wait and we will see. I will tell you in Q1 of next year how we did with the second half of the year on subscription.
Yeah. So Carlos, just for your awareness of that, we're not changing the guidance that we provided in February. That's already embedded in those numbers for 2024.
The next question today comes from the line of Alex Medhurst from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple of quick ones from me.
Firstly, on costs, you're clearly ahead of your EBITDA margin target in the first half. We're now looking at the top end of the revenue target range, but we've kept the margin target constant. Can you comment a little bit on the like-for-like cost growth in H2 and whether there are any specific large factors which we're bearing in mind relative to what we've seen in the first half of the year? And then just to follow up on alternatives assets, can you give a bit more color on the asset class mix that makes up the EUR 7 billion or the EUR 16 billion, however you want to define it, in AUA you've disclosed today? And also how much of the flow has come from the APP program so far? Thanks.
Yeah. So should I take the first one? Alex, hi.
With regards to costs, as you heard from me earlier, we maintain the guidance with regards to EBITDA margin for the full year. We expect that stability. We will still see in the second half the impact of inflation and FX and hopefully variable costs, which would mean that transactional activity keeps being strong. We will also have the full year effect of the net hires and exit. Net net, we don't expect any meaningful changes with one caveat, which is we might see a higher variable compensation component than in previous years if we overachieve, which would be fantastic news from a top and bottom line perspective. But just for the sake of transparency, we might see some increase there. Hence my comment with regards to stability of EBITDA margin with a prospect to keep on increasing it towards 70% over time.
Regarding the alternatives platform, I think you asked about the growth. Well, I think on the APP, so these 7 partners, we are close to the EUR 1 billion mark. Another close to less than EUR 1 billion, but close to EUR 1 billion is coming from the iCapital partnership. And the rest is coming from these 126 managers, alternative managers that today are with us and that we distribute around all the world.
Thanks very much.
Those are the questions just quickly about the asset class mix within that remainder then, so outside of the EUR 1 billion from APP and iCapital respectively.
The asset class mix? I mean, this is real estate, if it's infrastructure.
Yeah, yeah. It's all the new products that they are registering and launching in Europe. So mainly, yeah, private equity, credit, well, the traditional alternative products that these companies are launching.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
The next question today comes from the line of Tom Mills from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning, guys. I just wanted to ask a clarification on the commission fee margin. I think you're saying that you expect to see some catch-up as we get more of a cyclical upswing in flow dynamics and asset mix, perhaps as we move through the second half and into next year. I just wanted to check that that's correct. And then I guess on the transaction component of revenues, that's back at kind of 20% of the total, which I guess is more like the average. I mean, is it fair to say that we could also see that moving up beyond 20% if we see net flows from existing clients shift higher in a cyclical upswing as well? Thanks very much.
Hi, Tom.
So on commission income margin, the message is we expect stability. There is indeed some upside potential as we see the average mix going more into riskier asset classes, which doesn't happen from one day to another. Remember that you need to move EUR 1.5 trillion of assets. So that impact would be seen probably not just in 2024 or not in 2024, but in subsequent years. But at the same time, we will see a progressive reduction in the rebate-bearing AUA, as you heard earlier from Juan, and improvement in margins coming from the alternatives platform or even the ETPs platform. So all in all, bottom line, we expect margin stability on that front.
And with regards to transaction-based revenues, yes, with the exception of the seasonality that needs to be taken into consideration in Q3, I would say we're now seeing a more normalized level of transactional activity, which for sure will increase if we see flows coming strongly back to the platform.
Thanks, Álvaro.
You're welcome.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question today comes from the line of Antonin Baudry from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes, good morning, Juan and Álvaro. Thank you for taking my question. Most of them have been answered. I have a quick follow-up on M&A pipeline. You target 30% of your revenues in the midterm on subscription, which necessitates an active M&A strategy.
Should we expect something in the short term on where is your pipeline in terms of M&A currently? Thank you.
Well, yes, you are absolutely right. I think that we all believe that Allfunds would be a much more powerful company with that 30% of revenues coming from subscription and therefore not being correlated to market volatility. And as you perfectly said, now that the platform is growing, it's back to growth after two difficult years, 2022 and 2023. The only way to achieve that 30% is through M&A. Absolutely, yes. And therefore, yes, we are very, very active in looking and searching for opportunities, especially in Europe.
If it is going to be short term or midterm, I mean, I think the sooner the better because I think the opportunity that we have, taking into account our huge client base to promote these digital services and added value services is really, really big. And therefore, the sooner we enhance with new people, new services, new tools, the current Allfunds Digital value proposition, the better. Okay? So we are working on that. Yeah, we are working on that. But I cannot commit to do any inorganic deal before the end of the year.
Yeah. A quick follow-up, if I may. Is it could we say that because the platform, we come back to growth now, M&A on subscription becomes less important for you or it's not true?
No.
No.
Absolutely not.
Because in the end, our goal and our obsession is to keep on enhancing Allfunds value proposition. So that's why now you are going to see in Allfunds these three platforms in one. So long-only alternative and ETPs because we believe that by doing this, our distributors and our providers, fund houses and clients in general are going to have a better service from Allfunds, completely one-stop shop regarding dealing and execution. But on the other hand, this means that both fund houses and distributors are also going to need more added value services for these three platforms, three platforms in one. So more data, more analytics, probably more blockchain initiatives to make the dealing more efficient, definitely more digital services. So developing new front-end solutions, more ESG, absolutely yes. So no, no.
I mean, again, what we have to do is that whenever we sit down in front of a client, a distributor, a fund house, is to be able to provide both of them a really outstanding and unique value proposition. And in order to do that, we need to keep on improving what we do and do what we do much better. So no, the fact that today it looks like the platform business is finally recovering doesn't mean that we are going to be more relaxed regarding subscription business. Absolutely not.
Thank you.
There are no additional questions on the phone line, so I'd like to pass it back over to the management team.
Almost out of the clock. So thank you very much. It has been a pleasure to hear you on this first half results presentation and see you next quarter with a Q3 trading update. Goodbye.
Thank you.