Hello everyone and thank you for joining the Allfunds Group Plc First Falf 2025 Interim Results. My name is Lucy and I will be coordinating your call today. On the call today are Annabel Spring, CEO, Álvaro Perera, CFO, and Carlos Berastain, Head of Investor Relations. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing Star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press Star followed by two. If you have joined us via the webcast, you can submit your questions using the Questions tab above the slides. It is now my pleasure to hand over to your host, Carlos Berastain, Head of Investor Relations, to begin. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Lucy. Good morning everyone and welcome to Allfunds financial results presentation for the first half of 2025. Thank you for joining us today. This session is being broadcast live, and a replay will be available on our website later today. The presentation materials are already accessible for download on our corporate website. Without any further delay, I will now hand it over to our CEO Annabel Spring.
Thank you, Carlos. Welcome, everyone. I'm very pleased to be hosting my first interim results presentation as CEO of Allfunds. I believe these results demonstrate the strength of our positioning at the heart of a growing global wealth management industry with a unique scale platform powered by an experienced team with strong relationships. As you can tell, I'm excited to be here and by the opportunities. Let's start with a broader context. The global wealth management industry is underpinned by long-term structural growth. We're seeing continued economic expansion, favorable demographics, increasing financialization of wealth, with greater accessibility to investment opportunities, driven in large part by technology. We're seeing end investors are becoming more sophisticated and digitally engaged. That sophistication has driven a growing preference for open architecture products, rising demand for access to alternatives, and more digital experiences, also even in advisory relationships.
Of course, this rising complexity presents challenges for distributors, particularly as product sets expand and data and operational requirements grow. Increasingly, we're seeing firms look to outsource elements of their operations. On the other side of the equation, fund managers are needing to access an increasing multiplicity of distributors globally, even more so with the growth of alternatives. It's at this intersection where Allfunds plays such a critical role. We sit at the center of this evolving global wealth management ecosystem and benefit from these trends. As a market-leading B2B wealthtech platform, we connect fund houses to distributors. Our scale and technology provide a strong foundation. Our absolutely unique buy free model helps our distributor clients efficiently scale, modernize, and globalize their offerings. The range of our offerings, including alternatives and value-added digital and data services, allows distributors to meet those increasing needs of their end clients.
Over the past month, I've had the privilege of meeting many of our colleagues across Europe, the Americas, and Asia and spending some time with numbers of our clients and our partners. In addition to the strategic positioning, I would add what also really differentiates us is the deep expertise and the client focus of our people, the quality of our relationships, and the spirit of innovation that runs through everything we do now. Of course, there are some areas that we will refine and improve, and my priority in these first few months is to listen, to learn, and to gain a deeper understanding of our clients, our partners, our people, and our opportunities throughout that wealth ecosystem. Together with the leadership team, we'll focus on sharpening our execution and sharpening our strategy, and importantly, of course, accelerating our execution.
Looking ahead, our Investor Day in first quarter 2026 will be a key moment to share with the market our refreshed strategic direction and updated medium term business and financial plans. Now to the results. In terms of starting momentum, it's particularly pleasing to be able to announce strong first half results with record net revenues underpinned by 17% year -on- year growth in assets under administration. However, having just passed the one month mark in the role, it's appropriate maybe to slightly adjust the format for today's call. Our CFO, Álvaro Perera, will take you through the financials in detail, and we'll both be available to answer your questions at the end. With that, I'll now hand over to you, Álvaro.
Thank you very much Annabel and good morning to everyone. I will now provide you a brief summary of key business highlights. To begin, we have made strong progress in the first half of the year. We maintained a strong focus on client onboarding with 24 new distributors and 51 fund houses onboarded, bringing our market share to 29.6%, a 2.9% point increase. Year- on- year, our assets under administration continue to show strong momentum, growing 17% year -on -year to EUR 1.6 trillion, reflecting solid underlying performance from both existing and new clients. Approximately 60% of flows came from existing client base, demonstrating strong appetite for our products and the remainder of flows came from new distributors, well diversified across regions, customer segments, and size. We continue to be the preferred platform and take market share.
Turning to financial performance, for the first six months of the year, revenue grew by 6% to EUR 317 million supported by strong continued growth of our core platform business. While net treasury income declined by 27% year-on-year due to lower interest rate environment. Revenues excluding net treasury income rose 14% year-on-year to EUR 277 million. Within this, commission revenue grew 16%, transaction revenue 10%, and subscription revenue 8% year-on-year. We did observe a moderation in subscription revenue growth during the second quarter of the year, with momentum gradually easing over the period while underlying contracted recurrent revenue grew 10% year- over- year driven by ramp up from last year's bookings. New customer acquisitions activity showed some signs of softening. In Q2, adjusted EBITDA increased 4% year-on-year, reflecting continued business strength and investments into the long term growth of our platform.
The adjusted profit after tax rose by 10% year-on-year to EUR 124 million. We also continued to generate strong cash flows totaling EUR 126 million for the period. Our share buyback program remains on track. As of July 21st, we have completed almost 26% of the initial EUR 80 million tranche with around EUR 229 million remaining under the single EUR 250 million program currently scheduled for execution. Now let's take a closer look at our core business growth starting with the market context on slide number seven. Thank you Carlos. Following a strong start of the year, we've seen a swift rebound in UCIT flows recovering quickly from the market volatility experienced in April after Liberation Day, supported by lower interest rates that are encouraging a shift from cash holdings into financial investments.
European UCITS recorded net inflows of approximately EUR 250 billion in the first half of the year, supported by a particularly strong Q1, while Q2 was slightly softer due to April weakness. Momentum has clearly returned in recent months. The structural growth trend in open architecture penetration remains robust, now standing nearly 58% across Europe. While this marks a significant milestone, there is still substantial room for further expansion and we are well positioned to capitalize on these tailwinds. Let's now turn to the growth trajectory of our core business. As of the end of June 2025, our assets under administration reached EUR 1.6 trillion, representing a 7% increase since December 2024. This growth was driven by strong net inflows of EUR 54 billion in Platform Service AuA, which more than doubled the same period last year. Approximately 60% originating from existing clients and 40% from new client migrations.
This was achieved despite a negative market impact of around EUR 11 billion, primarily due to foreign exchange movements. In Q2 2025, we recorded a significant quarter on quarter increase in AuA within our dealing execution business, totaling EUR 55 billion. This was fueled by both organic and market growth, which tends to accelerate during periods of volatility and the onboarding of a new client who contributed EUR 35 billion in Dealing Execution AuA along with additional Platform AuA. Building on that context, let's take a closer look at our net flows. We continue to see strong flows from existing clients in the first half of the year, totaling EUR 32.2 billion, our highest level since 2021. This marked the third consecutive semester of positive flows, reinforcing the sustained upward trend that began in late 2023.
With market conditions stabilizing and structural trends such as open architecture adoption accelerating, we are clearly entering a new phase of sustained growth. The most recent trend, observed in July, further reinforced this trajectory. Let's now turn to the next key contributor of our performance, client migrations. As shown on this slide, platform service migrations remained a stable and reliable contributor to our growth, keeping us firmly on track to meet our 2025 guidance. In the first half of the year, we onboarded 24 new distributors across a broad range of regions. Notably, over 70% of these new distributors fell within the EUR 100 million to EUR 500 million AuA range, further reinforcing our well-diversified client base. We also continued to increase our market share.
50% of new clients transitioned from in-house models to our platform, 25% migrated from competitor platforms, and the remaining 25% represent clients new to the open architecture model. On the fund house side, we welcomed 51 new fund managers, with approximately half coming from the alternative space, highlighting the growing importance of diversification in portfolios. More importantly, our new distributor pipeline remains strong. These results reflect the strength of our value proposition and the continued trust placed in Allfunds as a leading global platform. Now I would like to take a moment to focus on the success of our alternative solutions. Our alternative solutions continue to grow at a remarkable pace, reaching EUR 26.8 billion in AuA by the end of June 2025, a 38% increase year-on-year driven by increasing retail customer appetite.
Notably, half of this volume came from distribution AuA, which grew 87% year-on-year and 32% since the beginning of the year. Within this, we were seeing particularly strong momentum in our Allfunds Private Partners program, which has more than doubled in size. This reflects robust demand for top-tier managers. As you know, alternative solutions is one of our most important growth opportunities, and Allfunds is exceptionally positioned to become a leading platform for private market fund distribution outside the U.S. As you can see on Slide 12, we continue expanding our platform. In the first half of 2025, we reached a total of 919 distributors. To better understand how the regional distribution has evolved, we considered 2022 as a useful reference point. Over the past three years, our distributor base has grown by more than 8%, with particularly strong growth in Asia.
The region now represents 12% of our total distributors, up from 8% back in 2022. We've also continued to enrich our fund offering, reaching 1,437 fund houses, a 4.4% increase compared to the same period of last year. This expanding network of distributors and fund houses continues to reinforce our leadership in the European cross-border market where we are consistently gaining share. I will now walk you through the key financial figures and explain the main drivers behind our performance in the first six months of the year. Let's begin with a few performance indicators which you can see on Slide 14. In the first half of 2025, we continued delivering solid growth across key financial metrics. We reported net revenues of EUR 316.8 million, up 6% year-on-year and 14% excluding net treasury income.
Reflecting the strength and consistency of our core business, adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 205.9 million, a 4% growth compared to the same period of last year. The adjusted EBITDA margin declined by 1.7 percentage points to 65%, primarily due to the reduction in net treasury income. Adjusted profit after tax rose by 10%, reaching EUR 124.1 million, and our adjusted earnings per share increased by 11%, reflecting our continued ability to convert operational strength into shareholder value. We also generated EUR 125.6 million in free cash flow, up 15% year-on-year, demonstrating the strong cash generation, capacity, and resilience of our platform. Let's now pause on Slide 15 to take a closer look at our revenue performance. We continued to deliver consistent and structural revenue growth in the first half of the year.
Both commission and transaction revenues delivered double-digit growth, reflecting strong commercial activity and helping offset the expected normalization of net treasury income. Subscription revenue grew 8% year-on-year, reaching nearly EUR 34 million. Let's take a closer look at the composition and drivers of our revenue performance on Slide 16. Thank you. Shifting our focus to margins, I would like to highlight that our platform margin remained broadly stable in the first half of 2025 at 3.2 basis points when excluding the impact of the declining net treasury income. Transaction activity in Q2 moderated following the tariff announcements, easing from the elevated levels seen in the first quarter of the year. It is also worth noting that our commission revenue margin has shown resilience as it remained steady year-on-year at 2.4 basis points.
While our growth trajectory remains strong, we acknowledge that the current asset class mix may exert some pressure on revenue margins in the quarters ahead. Moving on to cost. Our adjusted cost base grew by 9% year-on-year. However, when compared to the second half of 2024, the increase was more modest, just 2%, reflecting a more balanced cost trajectory. This growth reflects the combined impact of inflation and our continued investment in the platform aligned with our strategic ambition to enhance our digital capabilities. Breaking it down, almost half of this cost increase is linked to our new initiatives including ETPs and subscription businesses, and around 25% is attributed to tech enhancements. Thanks to our operating leverage, we delivered solid profitability.
In the first half of 2025, adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 205.9 million, up from EUR 198.8 million in the same period last year, and our reported EBITDA increased to EUR 182.4 million. Our adjusted cash flow generation also remains strong, increasing to EUR 125.6 million, representing a 50% year-on-year growth. These results highlight the efficiency and scalability of our business model. Allfunds continued to demonstrate strong capital generation capacity. In the first half of 2025, we reduced our risk weighted assets by 8%, primarily driven by a decline in operational risk. Despite continued top line growth, our CET1 ratio improved to 36% with EUR 267 million in excess capital, maintaining a robust capital buffer. At the same time, we reduced our net financial debt by 24%, bringing it down to EUR 107 million and lowering our leverage ratio to 0.3 times.
Before we move to the Q & A, I would like to take a few minutes to share our updated outlook for the second half of the year and what it means for the full year 2025 targets. We expect platform AuA to grow by around 10% in 2025, maintaining the positive trend of the first half of the year, assuming a flat market contribution for the remainder of the year. Net flows remain the primary driver of our growth and on this front our outlook remains strong. We forecast platform service net flows in the range of EUR 100 billion- EUR 120 billion, representing 9% to 11% of opening AuA. Following the initial disruption in early Q2, client flows have normalized. Assuming no further dislocation, we expect the positive trend observed in recent months and weeks to continue. We are forecasting flows from existing clients at around 5% of opening AuA.
Migration activity also remains solid with full year volumes expected in the EUR 50 billion- EUR 60 billion range, representing around 5% of opening AuA, with a notable skew towards the latter part of the year. Turning to the income statement and as I mentioned earlier, our main business continues to show strong momentum with double-digit growth in both flows and structural revenue. While Q2 brought some moderation, particularly in transaction activity, net treasury income expected and our subscription business, our guidance reflects a measured outlook, though we remain open to upside potential. Some of our subscription services, such as Connect, have performed strongly, even exceeded our expectations.
Others, however, are showing a lighter performance driven by a global change in emphasis around ESG, which impacted the segment that we had identified as a growth driver, challenging market conditions that have extended sales cycles, and finally delays in the delivery of certain projects. As a result, we now anticipate subscription revenue growth to be in the mid-single digits year-on-year growth. Overall, we forecast total revenue growth of 3%-4% for the full year, with underlying structural revenue, that is excluding net treasury income, expected to grow by approximately 10%, reflecting the continued strength and resilience of our operations. Finally, looking at profitability, assuming a stable cost base in the second half, consistent with the first half of the year, we expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to remain at approximately 65% in the second half, flat versus the first half.
Before we open the floor to Q&A, we are pleased to announce that we will be hosting our first Investors Day in Q1 2026, which will provide a refresh of our strategic priorities. Further details will be provided to the market in due course. Once again, thank you. With that, let's open the Q&A session. Carlos.
Thank you, Annabel. Thank you, Álvaro. We will now open the floor to Q & A, but before that, let me remind and ask everyone to please stick to a maximum of two questions on this call. Lucy, can you please proceed with the first question, including the name and company name of the caller? Thank you.
Of course. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. If you've joined us via the webcast, you can submit your questions using the Questions tab above the slides. The first question comes from Tom Mills from Jefferies. Tom, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks very much for the presentation and for taking my question. Annabel, I was listening carefully to your opening remarks, which gave us a useful sense of how you see things. Of course, we need to put into context that you've only been in your seat for less than a month. I'm curious how you're finding the profound switch from running a division in Europe's largest listed financial institution to taking over as CEO from a founder who'd been in place for 25 years. How are you finding the difference in institutional depth versus potential for operational dynamism? Perhaps during your time running the wealth management business at HSBC, what was your impression of Allfunds as a distributor? Did you use them as a platform? If not, maybe why not? Great to hear your thoughts on those. Thank you.
I'll take the question in three parts. The first is, how am I finding Allfunds versus where I came from? What I will say is Allfunds sits in exactly the middle of the same world. At HSBC, we dealt with all of the fund houses and all of the fund managers. That's a very, very familiar world. Obviously, we were a distributor, so that's a very, very familiar world. In my previous career, I was also responsible for both distribution and being a fund manager. This feels like home. It also feels like home because it's a tech platform, and that's a lot of what I've spent my last five years doing. From that perspective, it absolutely feels completely comfortable and the same world. What I will say is it's a much more exciting world.
When I said in my opening remarks that innovation runs through everything that we do and the strength of our relationships and the expertise of our people, this is such an interesting company that really does sit and have that entrepreneurial edge, that founder-led edge. I'm hoping to continue that culture and that momentum. It's a warm and open place to join. That innovation edge is fantastic to see and really exciting. I think the second question is, did I use or did we use Allfunds at my previous employer? That's not something I can comment on, but what I can say was that was where I first became familiar with Allfunds, and I was extremely impressed by the platform. Understanding its position in the ecosystem is certainly one of the reasons that I joined, and I think I did. Did I answer every element?
I think I got your question. Thank you so much.
That was perfect. Thank you.
The next question comes from Carlos Peixoto from CaixaBank. Carlos, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning.
Carlos Peixoto from CaixaBank here.
A couple of questions from my side as well.
The first one is on cost. We saw here roughly a 9% increase year-on-year in the first half. I was wondering how do you see that evolving into the second half of the year? Also, if you could give us some color on the drivers behind the costs growth that we saw in the first half, the second question would be on the platform margin evolution. I believe you mentioned before during the presentation that you expect to see some.
Pressure, some additional pressure given your asset mix.
If you could elaborate a bit further on that. What levels do you think platform margins should be at towards the full year?
Thank you very much.
Let me take one. Hi Carlos. On cost, we're a wealthtech, which means a substantial part of our cost growth is and will be linked to investing in our technology, which won't surprise you. year-on-year, approximately 50% of the cost increase was linked to our new initiatives including the ETP platform and the subscription business, and 25% linked to tech enhancements. We do see the second half of the year stable cost wise compared to the first half. I think the next question, Carlos, was on platform margin and here you're correct. I mentioned some slight pressure on the average margins driven primarily by factors like a continuation in the shift from rebate applicable business to non-rebate, a change in mix with more fixed income and money market, and finally recent migrations coming in with a slightly lower average margin.
These are the three components that are affecting our margin in the short term. While our revenue trajectory remains very strong, this asset class mix may exert, as I mentioned earlier, some pressure on revenue margins in the quarters ahead.
Next question, please.
The next question comes from Haley Tam of UBS. Haley, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. If I could add one for Annabel, please, and another one for Álvaro. First of all, welcome as well from me. I listened carefully as well to your comments at the beginning, and I just wondered if there's anything you can add in terms of the most interesting avenues for growth where you want to sharpen and accelerate execution. Obviously, you've only been in place for one month, but if you can give me any color there, that'd be great. The second question, just on, I suppose, longer term EBITDA margin progression. I think you've been very clear in the new guidance for this year.
I think we understand a lot of the cost growth has been due to technology and investment for future growth. Conceptually, into 2026 and beyond, if we don't have the headwind from a lower net treasury income, even given your comments about platform margin evolution, is there any reason why EBITDA margin should not expand into the future? Thank you.
As I said, it's very early days and I'd be reluctant to definitively call out anything on the growth opportunities other than to say the challenge at Allfunds is that there are so many of them. The reason that I don't want to call out anyone specifically is we need to do some work to prioritize them to make sure that as we expend our effort, we're really focusing our execution on that growth and the best and most value accretive paths forward. You can imagine, and I've seen actually everything you've written and most of which I look at it and I think yes, yes, yes, yes. What we need to do is prioritize though. I think we'll be waiting for that. We'll give you some sort of checkpoint in October so you can get a feel for our direction.
We will do that full strategy day and full capital markets and investment presentation in first quarter. Suffice to say I wouldn't be here if I didn't see many opportunities.
Hi Haley. On EBITDA margin, and without providing long-term guidance, you're right. In this year we've felt the headwinds from margins in the net treasury income affecting our EBITDA margin, which we will not see hopefully in the future. At the same time, on the subscription business front, what we intend to do is to focus on products with strong value contribution and a clear path to profitability. Taking that into consideration, and as you know well, the fact that this business is about scale, I wouldn't see a reason why we wouldn't be in a position to improve our profitability in the future.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Lucy.
Next question.
The next question comes from Andrew Lowe of Citi. Andrew, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I've got two. The first is on the subscription revenue guidance. You've guided that to the mid- single digits, which was quite a considerable downgrade. Could you just put a little bit more meat on the bones as to what the drivers are there? Álvaro, I know you mentioned things like ESG being a drag, but can we just get some more numbers on this to work out exactly what's going on and is this a temporary thing for 2025, and should we return to a more normalized growth level in 2026? You mentioned about focusing within this business on products with better value creation. What examples can you give about what the focus is going to be on? The second set of questions is on the ETP platform.
I note that in your release you said that you've got live transactions and pilot testing plans for H2. Do you have clients already signed up to use this business once it's launched? My understanding is that you're working with or seeking to work with a third party to do the execution. Has that agreement been finalized? I know that you mentioned in the past that you think that the margins in this business should be comparable to the mutual fund platform, but does this involve clients holding lower cash balances, and therefore are we likely to see an associated drag on net treasury income as this business grows? Thank you very much.
Hi Andrew. On subscription, we've seen some subscription services, as I mentioned earlier, like Connect, that have performed strongly, even exceeding our initial expectations. Others are showing lighter performance, and the change in emphasis around ESG, these challenging market conditions that have in many cases extended our sales cycles, and finally some delays in the delivery of certain projects have impacted our first half and will impact our full year revenue number.
I think one of the things that we'll do here is we will refine and refresh our subscription offering. I think Álvaro said some things have done better than we expected, which has been great. Some things have had some natural challenges, particularly ESG and some of the longer sales cycle product. As we refine and refocus that execution, we'll be looking at the subscription portfolio and again focusing on those things with stronger value contribution and a clear path to profitability. As I look at the portfolio, there are other synergistic options that we may also add to it, which is why I think we're thinking carefully through the strategy and what we should add to that portfolio as well.
Exactly. Thank you, Annabel. In terms of ETPs, what I can tell you is we are mindful of the growth that these products and the launches that are taking place in the market. That's why we are working on our ETP platform. While we targeted our Q4 2025 launch, we're taking a prudent approach to ensure a high-quality and scalable rollout. We are in pilot phase in the second half of 2025. Once we feel comfortable, we will disclose more details around the status of the platform, the initiatives, and in the future, of course, the margins. As of today, I would wait a little bit before sharing more details around contracts being signed with third parties. I'm afraid I cannot comment at this stage.
I think one of the things that is really important for real time market products is to be very confident that as we launch we're getting it right, because taking market risk with end client money is a very, very important responsibility, and we'll be prudent and conservative in making sure that the product absolutely works before we launch.
Okay, thanks Ren.
Next question comes from David McCann of Deutsche Bank. David, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning team and welcome Annabel. A couple from my side as well. Looks like client allocations are actually slightly more cautious as the period ended here versus as you came into the year, which obviously may have dragged on performance. Also note that within that, alternative allocations only stayed at 4%. I'm just curious as to what's driving the flat outlook for market growth in the second half of the year. Is it sort of further caution here? Obviously, markets are up, you know, second half to date, equity markets at least. I guess just what's driving that given that. That's the first question. Second one, on a more technical nature, you mentioned that at the full year stage, the effective tax rate we should be thinking about is in the neighborhood of 28% to 29%. It's coming at 26.5% in the first half.
Why was that and is 28% to 29% still the outlook? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, David. On client allocations, we have seen as a result of the volatility experienced at the beginning of Q2, a more cautious approach, more risk-averse approach by many of our customers or clients. Underneath those customers investing in fixed income, short-term fixed income, even money market funds. Hence my comment around asset class mix and margin. In terms of outlook, we've always approached this in a, let's say, cautious way. We don't have a view, a market view, and hence what we're seeing in our forecast for the full year 2025 is that absent any market impact, we would be delivering a 3%- 4% total revenue growth, around 10% for the structural, excluding net treasury income.
Of course, if we look backwards in time, we've seen markets contributing on average 3% - 4% per annum over the last four or five years, including periods of poor market performance and better performance. For purposes of this guidance, we wanted to remain the measured noise, as I said, and assume zero market contribution.
I think that's an important theme. I'll probably pick up the alternatives part of your question. Before I say anything on alternatives, we just want to express our sympathy to everyone involved in the incident in New York, Blackstone, an obviously important partner, but to everyone affected, including the family of the police officer who was also killed. These events are unimaginable and horrific, but unfortunately all too common. With that, I would like to turn to the alternatives consideration because it is a focus for us, and Haley, this would certainly be one of the things that I would see as a growth opportunity. It's a growth opportunity for everyone. It's stickier, higher margin, higher growth product if you look at alternatives. As Álvaro said, our AuA is up 38% with 26.8. We do focus on that 13.3 that's under distribution.
We're seeing real appetite from fund houses for this product. We've got 191 alternative asset managers on our platform, and we work already with the most prominent names worldwide in the alternatives space, in particular just calling out our Allfunds Private Partners. That's grown by around 2.5 times since December, and that's now at about 3.37 in AuA. We're working with many of the fund houses, guiding them with their launch of their products globally through our platform, and that's a real advantage of our platform. We're working with them on the launch of new funds on the one hand. On the other hand, as I said, we're seeing demand grow for private market funds and alternatives amongst distributors. Some of our existing clients are increasing their share in terms of this type of product.
That does take time, and speaking as a distributor, you really have to make sure that you're educating your sales force, educating your client, making sure that it's working well and serviced well, etc. That process takes a little while. I'm not expecting to see allocations tilt up very quickly, but we are seeing that demand, and you can see the outcome on the other side of the distributors. The other thing that I would add is we're seeing some first-time distributors on our platform joining us just for alternatives, and that's quite a pivot in our story and one that we're going to take a little look at in the strategic refreshment, and I think.
David, your last question was around tax rate. The reason behind the decline in effective tax rates is a lower contribution to profit before tax of countries that have a higher average tax rate, in particular Southern European countries. This is also connected to the decline in net treasury income versus previous years.
Next question comes from Christina Holstein of Bank of America. Christina, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. I also just first want to say a welcome and congratulations to Annabel. Just two questions for me. Firstly, on pipeline of new clients. I know at the FY 2024 result it was flagged that there was a new client pipeline of about EUR 250 billion over 24 months. I know you slightly upgraded migration guidance to the upper range at EUR 50 billion- EUR 60 billion for the year, but I just wanted to see if there was any upside to this number or when do you expect to realize this additional pipeline opportunity? My second question was just around potential M&A opportunities or any additional capital management initiatives.
It seems that despite the share buyback, you still have additional excess capital and an incredibly low leverage. Thank you.
Do you want to take the pipeline? I'll take M&A.
Hi Christine. On pipeline, I think we disclosed around $250 billion last year. The number is pretty much the same as of today. As you know, it's a living organism where we keep converting part of that pipeline into actual migrations, and at the same time we keep adding new prospects, new clients. As of today, and taking into consideration all migrations that we've seen coming to the platform and the ones we expect before the end of the year, I would say no meaningful changes to that pipeline. It still remains strong, pretty well diversified, and looking forward to continue converting it over the next 24 months.
In terms of our capital position, obviously we'll continue with our buyback. We can't comment on M&A ahead of the strategic refresh. What I will say is we have a strong financial foundation, which makes this a very comfortable company to join.
The next question comes from Gregory Simpson of BNP Paribas Exane. Gregory, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning and welcome. Annabel, first question is on the topic of the Savings and Investment Union where the EU essentially wants households to move out of deposits and into risk assets. I was wondering how you see Allfunds sitting in this debate and whether you're having any discussions with your distributor clients or regulators around things like savings and investment accounts, elementary plans that become the first topic. The second one is can you provide any update on the competitive environment? We had Euroclear, one of your Spanish competitors, and Deutsche Börse looks like they're doing well on the platform side. Just any kind of changes around the competition when you're pitching for new clients. Thank you.
I think on savings and investments, it should be a positive tailwind for Allfunds and I think we're uniquely positioned as a funnel to channel those savings into investments. It's always hard to comment on European regulatory initiatives or indeed any regulatory initiatives. They take time and we need to make sure that we're able to implement and work well with those. A little bit early to tell, but yes, an opportunity with respect to the competitive environment. We don't really comment on our competitors. The one thing that I would say is that the comment that Álvaro made was particularly important with respect to market share. Is there anything you want to add?
No, nothing to add. Thank you.
The next question comes from Ian White of Autonomous Research. Ian, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Morning and thank you for taking my questions. I also had two, please. First up, just a follow up on the subscriptions. I don't think we quite bottomed out in response to a previous question. Is the mid- single digit growth kind of a new normal for that business or basically a level of growth you think you can deliver in 2025 while you take a closer look at the portfolio of products there and determine an achievable target over the coming years? I'm conscious there was a 30% of net revenue aspiration for subscriptions previously. A cut now to mid single digit growth is quite a big change. Within the subscriptions, are all the products that you have within the subscriptions offering definitely still relevant to the group looking ahead, or could some aspects be discontinued potentially where you're not getting the right returns?
That's question one, please. Just on the commentary around margin, can you help me at all with the sort of front book margin that you're earning based on the distribution of inflows you report on slide 25? If I look at the composition there, I'm thinking that the average margin across that basket of inflows might be something in the two to two and a half basis points range. Is that the right sort of range for those existing client net inflows on the front book, please. Thank you.
Thanks. Maybe I'll take the first one if you take the second one. With respect to subscription revenues, the guidance we've given is for 2025 and that's the guidance that we'll give at this stage. We talked about the strategic refresh and the chance to look carefully at the focus of the profitability of each of those. That's work we need to do. We will do that work and we will come back when we have a stronger view. With respect to the margin.
With respect to the margin, Ian, I think your intuition is in the right place. The vast majority of flows that we've experienced, especially in the second quarter of the year, have arrived at a lower than average margin. The underlying products in which they have been invested are, as I said, lower risk, lower margin, average margin products.
Good stuff. Thank you.
Welcome.
We currently have no further phone line questions, so I will hand back to Carlos for webcasting questions.
Thank you, Lucy. We had three questions coming through the web. Two of them are related to subscription, which I think we've covered extensively. There is another one on the Spanish bank levy. If we can confirm that that no longer applies to Allfunds?
No.
Okay. Someone asks if we can be more specific as to when we will be launching the ETP platform. I think you have already said that we need to test it and see how things go, and then we will update the market. I think that seemed to be the final question. Back to you, Annabel.
Thank you very much everyone for your participation. It's been a pleasure to host you on this first half result presentation, and thank you also. Carlos and the rest of the investor team remain at your disposal for any follow up questions you may have. I hope to see you soon and have a very happy summer break. For those of you who are in the Northern Hemisphere, thanks again.