This call will contain forward-looking statements, including statements of current intention, opinion, and predictions regarding the company's present and future operations, possible future events, and future financial prospects. While these statements reflect expectations at the date of this call, they are, by their nature, not certain and are susceptible to change.
The company makes no representation, assurance, or guarantee as to the accuracy of or likelihood of fulfilling any such forward-looking statements, whether express or implied, and, except as required by applicable law or the ASX Listing Rules, disclaims any obligation or undertaking to publicly update such forward-looking statements. Participants recording this call may use such recordings for their internal business purposes only and are prohibited from making any part of such recordings available to the public without the prior written permission of the company. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Tim Carver, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our 2024 Full-Year Result conference call. I'm joined, as always, by our CFO, Melodie Zakaluk; our Global Head of Distribution, Steve Ford; our Chief Operating Officer, Charles Falck; and our CIO and Chairman, Rajiv Jain. If you go to slide number two, our financial highlights, I'm thrilled to present the result for the year.
We had very strong net flows of over $20 billion over the course of the year that brought us to $153 billion as at the end of the year for 2024. Underpinning that were net revenues of $760 million, which represented roughly an increase of 47% over the prior year, and net operating income of $578 million, an increase of roughly 50% from prior year. The board has declared a fourth-quarter dividend of $3.78 per share, a 90% payout ratio of our distributable earnings.
That's up from $3.48 per share in the third quarter, which also was a 90% payout ratio. The board has also approved expanding the dividend payout ratio in the future to 50%-95% of distributable earnings. If we go to the next slide, you'll see the fundamentals of the business and what we drove during the year. As you know, I believe this business begins and ends with performance, and that's where we'll start. All four of our primary strategies continue to have very strong long-term outperformance on a three, five, and ten-year basis relative to our peers and relative to our benchmark.
We have top quintile, five-year alpha, and Sharpe ratios for those strategies, and our funds now carry 12 Morningstar Gold or Silver medal ratings. That very strong investment performance has driven strong distribution results as well. Again, we drove over $20 billion in net new flows.
We are now a top 10 U.S. mutual fund family. In Australia, our Australian global equity net FUM flows were tops in the market, and our U.S. platform now has surpassed $8 billion in funds under management. Our team is now 236 people strong, and while the bulk of our hiring remains behind us, we will continue to invest in key roles and key areas of infrastructure and client-facing roles where we believe that we can continue to drive new opportunities and new growth.
Strategically, as many know, we closed our first acquisition this year, acquiring stakes in three boutiques from Pacific Current Group and bringing over their investment team to launch our Private Capital Solutions business. Our Private Capital Solutions business was successful at having a first close on our fund before the end of the year, which was record time, and the three underlying portfolio companies continued to perform exceptionally well. I'm very pleased with the initial efforts, and we'll talk a little bit more about prospects for PCS. In the fourth quarter, we also renamed our Quality Dividend Income strategies to Quality Value.
This more clearly conveys the value nature of the strategies and fits within a larger value-oriented bucket of client assets, and I believe can be a very meaningful growth driver for the business going forward. If we go to the next slide, again reiterating, I believe that this business begins and ends with performance, and the only reason for us to exist is if we can outperform.
I'm pleased to say, as you can see here, that across all four of our core strategies, we are outperforming on a three, five, and 10-year basis, and in all strategies except for EM on a one-year basis. This very strong investment performance continues to drive our business and is the lifeblood of everything we do. Now, importantly, as we look at the next slide, you see that we have persistence of our five-year returns and outperformance across all these strategies as well. What you'll see is in every rolling five-year period, in every one of our core four strategies, our strategy has outperformed both the peer group and the index.
What this means is that clients can have confidence that they're not investing at the top or the bottom of an investment cycle, but rather, at least looking historically, whenever they invest, we have been able to continue to perform on a consistent basis and drive similar kinds of alpha. Now, I think the most sophisticated investors are interested in our risk-adjusted returns. As we look at the next slide, you'll see that we continue to provide significantly better risk-adjusted returns relative to the index and relative to our peer group.
As we look at the next slide, everyone who's listened to these calls before knows that I believe that you should hold me to account and our team to account for how we do, what value we are adding as a management team as compared to a theoretical passive GQG.
That is, had you owned GQG at the beginning of the year and simply had market returns, what have we done to earn our keep in adding value and adding assets to the business? Again, I'm pleased to report that this year our distribution team drove over $20 billion of net new flows, and our investment team added $500 million of excess return on top of a very significant, very strong market return as well.
And if you extrapolate this out from the beginning of our business, you can see that that addition of net new flows plus excess return from GQG adds up to over $125 billion in total assets added by this management team. Moving on to our strategy, if we look at the next slide, as I mentioned, we accomplished our first acquisition this year. I'm very pleased with that result.
The PCS team has done an excellent job both in fundraising, successfully having a first close within just a little bit more than six months of post-acquisition. The pipeline for continued fundraising remains very strong. I would expect a second and subsequent close this year so that we have a robust and very strong fund. The underlying boutiques that we took stakes in have also performed quite well, and the deal pipeline for our PCS business remains quite strong.
Now, importantly, what I'd like to point out is that in doing this acquisition, our core business continued to perform well, and the PCS business continued to perform well, and so it's proven to me and proven to our team that we're capable of doing a successful acquisition without distracting the business and being able to continue to perform in the core and driving the core business forward.
If we go to the next slide, we also, as I think everybody is aware, launched this year our Middle East operations, and I'm pleased to say that as we sit at the end of the year, we have 14 team members in Abu Dhabi. We are in our permanent space. We're licensed to do business. I'm very excited for the prospects that that region brings. Now, I'll reiterate to everybody that the core reason that we made the investment in Abu Dhabi is first to drive access to a global talent base that would be harder to recruit from the U.S. or Australia or the U.K.
It opens up new avenues in this hyper-competitive business of acquiring and retaining talent, and I believe that gives us a huge differentiation relative to our long-running peers in terms of that global competition for talent. It also is intended to drive operational efficiencies. We are a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week business. We operate in markets all over the world, and this gives us an important location where we can drive operational and client-serving efficiencies to drive that global business.
Now, importantly, we also see it as a robust opportunity for new investments and for long-term revenue growth as well. Those opportunities strategically may take more time, but taken as a whole, we're very, very excited about what Abu Dhabi and the Emirates offer to us. Finally, looking at the last slide, the next slide, strategically, we have taken the decision in the fourth quarter to rebrand our Quality Dividend Income strategies to Quality Value.
Now, it's important to note that we are not changing any of the investment approach or the portfolio construction, but this has been driven by client feedback where several clients have said that they would like to invest in these strategies, but they needed them to be branded value, not dividend. And in researching that, we recognize the scale of the market opportunity for value products is substantially larger. It's early days, but I'm quite excited about this as I believe it gives us a very meaningful growth opportunity over the intermediate term that could be $several billion, if not tens of billions. Steve Ford will elaborate a little bit more about how we're going to market with this strategy and what our clients have said. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mel, who can dive deeper into our financial result.
Thank you, Tim. As Tim discussed, we closed on an initial funding of the PCS Master Fund, enabling the fund to repay the term loan and GQG to deconsolidate the fund. While the accounting rules around deconsolidation are complex, the PCS Master Fund is now a standalone entity. As we review the financials, we will highlight the effects of deconsolidation and note that the PCS Master Fund had a zero impact to our overall net income after tax. Now, let's take a look at our full-year results. Slide 12, please.
We are pleased with our financial results for full year 2024 and continue to see good momentum heading into 2025. GQG experienced circa 50% growth year-over-year on key metrics, including net operating income, net income after tax, and diluted earnings per share as a result of higher average FUM.
FUM growth was just under 27% year-over-year, driven by $20.2 billion of net flows with a tailwind from equity markets that were mostly positive around the world. Looking at the bar chart on the left-hand side, our operating margin for full year 2024 was 76%, a 170 basis points increase from 2023.
Even as we continue to invest in the business, we note that net revenue and operating income have each grown over the past three years at a compounded annual growth rate of 31.9%. Our declared dividend per share on earnings during the period increased 50% year-over-year. The dividend declared today of $3.78 per share represents 90% of distributable earnings for the fourth quarter of 2024. Slide 13, please.
We continue to have what we think is a high-quality revenue profile due to the concentration of management fees versus performance fees and the competitive pricing of our products. Management fees represented 96.8% of our net revenue in 2024. We believe this high proportion of management fees provides a foundation for stable quality earnings, particularly during periods of equity market volatility.
Our average management fee during 2024 was 49.6 basis points, up from 48.8 basis points for 2023, primarily due to a shift in mix. Net revenue increased by approximately 47%, and operating expenses increased 37% as compared to the prior year. We're pleased to see our prior year investments in the firm fueling revenue growth. More than half of the increase of operating expenses in 2024 was directly related to costs that are driven by the growth in FUM and sales.
These expenses also include our strategic investments in Abu Dhabi and the launch of the Private Capital Solutions asset management business. Let's take a closer look at expenses. Compensation and benefits as a percentage of total operating expenses has remained consistent year-over-year at circa 56%. As expected in a human capital business, we believe the greatest investments we can make are in our current team and in attracting other talented people as needed to operate the business and serve our clients.
Compensation expense increased as a result of new employee additions, increased sales commissions related to higher new sales, and long-term incentive compensation. Compensation expense as a percentage of net revenue decreased 1.1%, significantly contributing to operating margin expansion. As we've said before, GQG is focused on creating a firm that thrives beyond its founders.
Achieving this goal is reliant on creating a resilient organization and planning for succession. Resources added in 2024 were tilted toward more junior roles to build an enduring foundation and resulted in a lower average cost per headcount. As Steve will further discuss, our wholesale business continues to grow around the world with approximately 130% growth in net sales year-over-year.
As third-party distribution, servicing, and related fees are primarily a wholesale FUM-based expense, the growth in this line item was driven by the increase in net sales in vehicles where these fees are incurred. General and administrative costs in 2024 increased by $10.9 million due to FUM-related middle office expenses, higher professional fees, and increased travel activity. As we will see on the following slide, $2.3 million in PCS Master Fund legal fees are included within our 2024 operating expenses.
As you would expect, the largest single expense is income tax. Our U.S. GAAP effective tax rate decreased from 26.97% - 26.48% due to changes in state and local taxes. Generally, the driver in changes to effective tax rates are U.S. tax expenses, particularly the states where each state has different rules on apportionment and unique tax rates. Net income attributable to non-controlling interest is a 40% minority ownership of the Private Capital Solutions asset management business by our PCS portfolio managers. Slide 14, please.
In our half-year results, we discussed that GAAP accounting rules require GQG to consolidate the PCS Master Fund in our financial statements, and as GQG and some of its subsidiaries had guaranteed the loan, the fund utilized to purchase the initial investments of the fund.
As a result of the initial close and repayment of the loan, the PCS Master Fund was deconsolidated on 19 December 2024. In the deconsolidation, U.S. GAAP accounting rules require GQG to include in its financial statements the operating activity of the seven months the fund was consolidated. On this slide, we have illustrated the PCS Master Fund activity, which is a one-time event and not part of GQG Inc.'s ongoing operations.
In the first column on the left, we have GQG Group excluding the PCS Master Fund representing only GQG activity, followed by a column with the PCS Master Fund impact to arrive at the total consolidated results in our U.S. GAAP financial statements. The total net income after tax impact for GQG is zero.
Legal fees associated with the establishment of the fund and interest expense related to the term loan used to acquire the PCS investments were fully offset by dividend income, realized investment gains from the PCS boutique investments, and an immaterial gain on deconsolidation. Slide 15, please. As a result of U.S. GAAP deconsolidation rules, as of 31 December 2024, GQG's consolidated statement of financial condition excludes the PCS Master Fund and the associated limited partner invested capital utilized to repay the term loan. GQG has no debt, and the primary use of cash remains working capital and dividend payments.
Growth in cash and accounts receivable is aligned with growth in revenue, and the increase in compensation and benefits liability is primarily related to increased sales commissions. Slide 16, please. On the statement of cash flows, the significant activity is the consolidation and deconsolidation of the PCS Master Fund and the payment of dividends. As noted on the balance sheet, the primary uses of GQG's cash continues to be working capital and dividends. Now, Steve will give us a distribution update. Steve?
Thank you, Mel. And it's great to speak with all of you again and take you through our results and success in distribution in 2024. But before I do so, I actually want to spend just one minute on performance. And so if we could move to slide 18, I want to show one thing that I think is very powerful in thinking about our longer-term performance. And that is if you take all of the active equity strategies available in the largest institutional database of asset management firms, there's over 6,000 choices available for investors. And if you look at firms that have a track record as long or longer than ours, that's going to get you about 4,000 or a little bit more.
And then if you then say, of those 4,000, looking at their own selected benchmark, how many of them beat that benchmark on rolling five-year periods 100% of the time? Now you've got about 100. And when you go from there and say, well, how many of them did that with at least 20% less volatility than that selected benchmark? Now you're down to nine. And then one final filter is how many of those performed in every period of a drawdown greater than 10%? And you're down to four, and they all start with the name GQG.
And so while we need to be rigorous about performance every day moving forward, I think those types of long-term results put us in a tremendous position to go out and continue to drive net flow for the business. And it's very exciting for our overall distribution team.
So let's move forward and talk about the distribution results on 19. And here you get the classic view of the diversification that exists in our business by strategy, by channel, by individual client. And I'll note, you know, these things don't move quickly, but we do continue to see growth in our U.S. Equity Strategy at a faster rate than some of our others.
And we continue to see the wholesale channel that Mel talked about continue to drive results. It was quite a strong year in the U.S., of course, on an absolute and relative basis. But I think the scaling in this graph actually kind of masks the broader strength that is existing globally for us in distribution, in particular in the wholesale channel, which I'll talk about a bit more. Let's move forward to the next slide.
Here you can get the historical view of FUM, of growth by channel, and then ultimately broken down by quarter, and I want to, again, just highlight the strength in the wholesale business, and frankly, you know, a little bit of the slowdown in the institutional side where we have had seven quarters of consecutive net outflows in the institutional business.
While those outflows have been quite small and not meaningful in the grand picture of our distribution results, they have been more than overshadowed by the strength in our wholesale channel, and while there are bright spots in our institutional pipeline and we will continue to drive opportunities in the institutional channel, I think you can expect to see the wholesale side of the business continue to be a strong driver for us as we move forward.
There are a lot of things that we've done to make those investments to put us in a position to do that. I think, frankly, there's just a very large addressable market that plays into our strengths here moving forward. I also want to spend a little bit more time on the fourth quarter. While it was a good net result at $2.8 billion, the reality is it was off the peak of prior quarters. I'm certain there's a question about, you know, what is the new normal for, you know, net flows on a quarterly basis.
So if we move to the next slide, I think there's something that'll help U.S. shareholders better understand the flow profile for the year. This actually breaks down flows by strategy by month. You can see that consistency in the November and December hits. I think there was some speculation about what was driving that, but I think we can clear that up about what we believe was actually happening. I think there's two things. The secondary or lesser effect is actually a seasonal effect around taxes, where in certain years there can be tax-driven selling and redemptions as investors need to reposition around distributions in certain funds.
While I don't think that was the primary driver here, I do believe it was a driver of the redemption pressure that we saw in November and December. I think much more strongly the effect was Donald J. Trump being elected president of the United States. I think as investors in the U.S., and this is purely North American net flows that you're looking at, as investors began to price that election, and then obviously once he was elected and thinking about asset allocation as they looked forward, I think clearly they took their allocation to non-U.S. stocks down because you actually see here that we had positive net flows in U.S.
The good news is we've already reported January results. While we do, I think, see a greater flow strength in our U.S. Equity Strategy, there is a more return to normalization of flows across the strategies consistent with our historical results. I'm certain that the new administration will be volatile. There are a lot of things that affect flows on a month-to-month basis that one should not extrapolate out.
I also think the effect that we saw in November and December is not likely to be permanent. So let's move forward to the next slide. I want to circle back quickly to wholesale distribution strength. You can see the year-over-year success of this globally. We're breaking this down by vehicles, which is the primary vehicles we use in the geographies that we focus on wholesale distribution. So more than a doubling year-over-year, obviously very strong. Tim took you through some of the highlights, the numbers.
And if you look on the right side, I won't read off the bullets, but these are some eye-popping growth numbers that we have across the board. And this is not a U.S. phenomenon. We have a very large market to address here in the U.S., but we see the exact same trends in Canada, in Australia, in the U.K., and broader Europe.
And so what is underlying that? Obviously, performance, which we've talked about, but it matters a lot that individual vehicle track records in these markets specifically. And as that builds time, and obviously the results you're aware of, it becomes more and more strategically advantageous for us to address those markets. We've invested a lot in platform access and sales and recommended lists. And we've invested, frankly, a lot in our human talent in these markets to go address this opportunity.
And so I'm never here to predict future flows, but I know that the setup is right for us to address a large market here on a go-forward basis. Let's move to the next slide. I do want to spend just a quick minute, given that we are an Australian-listed company and that we have many Australian clients and a strong team in Australia.
I want to address our results there specifically. Tim talked about our one-year success, but if you zoom out as well and look at three-year success in global equity, our primary strategy, we are the number one asset raiser in the country. And we are seeing the complexion of those flows change, just like I talked about before. So an evolution from the institutional business, which is a strong core client base for us, but into an ever-growing wholesale channel opportunity that we're very excited to continue to pursue in Australia.
So let's move forward one slide. And here we want to talk about the quality value offering. And these are not new strategies. So there are five-plus-year track records depending upon which strategy to go back to. Predating IPO, and of course, you know, this would have been in our prospectus, would have been in past materials, but I think the amount of time that we've devoted to what was our Quality Dividend Income strategies was not very much in discussion with you. And I think this renaming to Quality Value could easily be overlooked as inconsequential, but I don't believe that to be the case.
And so let's move forward and talk about why this is powerful from a client perspective, as well as why it's powerful, I think, over the long term as a shareholder in the business. The first thing to understand is exactly what are the Quality Value strategies. And I think the easiest way to think about it is they're simply the cheapest part of our quality universe.
This is a persistent part of the quality universe that we look at that has a high degree of free cash flow and earnings certainty. It often has a dividend attached to it, and what you can see in this graph is that essentially we sacrifice no quality relative to our broader quality strategies that you're familiar with, but they consistently are much cheaper on average than those strategies, and if you compare it to the broader indices, I think investors are going to experience a much higher quality portfolio than what value indices have to offer, and so ultimately, this change, as Tim mentioned, is driven by client feedback.
Clients that went through diligence with us on these strategies actually screened them through initially as value portfolios and said to us, "Look, you can call them what you like, but for us, these have all the characteristics of the high-quality fundamental value building blocks that we need in portfolios." And that allowed us to really think through how to better position in the market and I think now go address a meaningful sales opportunity. Let's move forward one slide.
And so as a shareholder, how big is that opportunity? And one way to think about it is let's compare it to the opportunities that we were going to try to address or we're addressing in dividend income strategies. And so if you look at that entire size, that entire market is roughly $1 trillion relative to $4.5 trillion in value-oriented strategies.
And so what this does is, A, gives us a bigger pie to go after, but it also expands us to really take advantage of the full set of our distribution channels across institutional sub-advisory and wholesale, which I think gives greater resource utilization to our distribution on these strategies. Then if you move forward one more, you'll see the value universe relative to the size of the growth universe.
And while not quite as large, you can see that it's very comparable. And I'm not here to tell you that we're going to go build another $150 billion value franchise next year. However, I do think if you take an intermediate to longer-term view, this could be substantial, as Tim mentioned, billions, if not tens of billions of dollars of opportunity set that we can go address.
I think the next part is quite compelling as we move forward one slide to say, how likely is it that we can go address that opportunity set? And what this does is it looks at the Global Equity Strategy on both return and risk, the primary drivers on a three-year basis, which is the number one searched set of performance criteria for investors, and compares it to the top 10 asset-raising firms in those categories or in that category over the last three years. And I think we compare incredibly favorably on a return basis, even more favorably on a risk comparison.
And when you put the two together, I think that's what ultimately investors are looking for in driving flows. So the top raising firms in this global value category raising $5-$6 billion over that timeframe in net flows. And the picture looks very similar as we move forward to the next slide on the International Strategy. And then I'll move you forward one more to the U.S. Equity Strategy, which is really the big prize, where the top asset-raising firms are raising over $20 billion net the last three years. And I think we have very favorable peer comparisons here on risk-adjusted returns.
And so we've been investing a lot with our team on education, on marketing, on repositioning. And I think at the end of the day, this gives us more ways to win, more chances to cross-sell. And I think for investors who are very style box-oriented in how they allocate capital, again, it opens up a new way to win. So with that, I'll pause my comments. I'm going to turn it over to Rajiv Jain, our Chairman, Chief Investment Officer, and he's going to give you some comments on current markets and portfolio positioning.
Thanks, Steve, and thanks everybody for joining. As most of you are well aware, I mean, the markets have really started off with a bang, but if I have to recap last year, first half was pretty decent, and then the second half, we had some, you know, so if you look at Asia, for example, India, underperforming China, and some pharma names in Europe giving back, but net-net overall, it was kind of reasonable year. I would not characterize it as a great year, but a reasonable year, but I think we're clearly compounding on a fairly strong base over the past few years.
But the important sort of distinguishing feature, which is important to note here, is the portfolio positioning. So while we entered last year meaningfully overweight tech, we exited, you know, most of the portfolios, particularly U.S.-centric portfolios, significantly underweight tech. So from a risk perspective, we are not sort of, you know, drinking the Kool-Aid too much on AI and so on and so forth.
So we actually found other opportunities, particularly financials and so on and so forth. So some of you might recall that has clearly, you know, separated us from the pack, and it's very appealing to our clients in context of not making a one-secular bet. If it works, that's wonderful. If it doesn't work, it's end of the road.
Whether it's energy, a tech before and then energy, and then tech again, or financial and so on and so forth. We feel quite actually optimistic because if you look at the deregulatory wave that seems to be at the early stages in the U.S., we feel, having seen that moving a few different markets, we're quite excited about the market setup. Interest rates, as long as they behave.
I think if you look at corporate earnings, generally have been robust, whether it's even European banks, Asia, places like India, corporate earnings, while they may not be as strong as what people are expecting, but overall from a growth angle, they have been fine. We feel that then, you know, that from a corporate earnings perspective, interest rate perspective, the market setup is attractive.
You may have different views on what the new administration in the U.S. would or would not do, but the focus on deregulation has historically been fairly bullish for markets at large. So, you know, we entering 2025, far more optimistic than maybe we were last summer. You know, we shall see where we go from here. With that, I'll hand it over to you, Tim.
Okay, thanks, Rajiv, and thanks everybody for that presentation. I think with that, we will open it up to Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Please limit your questions to two questions at a time. If you wish to ask a further question, please rejoin the queue. Your first question comes from Scott Murdoch from Morgans Financial. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks for taking the questions in the detail today. If we could just start on the dividend policy change, obviously that provides you some flexibility with the capital base as you've articulated in the, in the presentation. But just, I guess, a two-part to this question. Practically, are we, are we thinking we're looking at reducing the payout over time to build that capital, or could we see the payout ratio sort of move around significantly from period to period when you need the capital?
And just secondly, I guess the reason why this has been brought about on the strategic growth opportunities, just an update on the current thinking, is this really just about co-investing in PCS, or is there further abroad thinking in terms of the capital requirements?
Yeah, thanks, Scott. Appreciate the question and a good and important one. So as a starting point, no, there's no, we don't have a strategic direction today that we intend to reduce the dividend to build up capital. You know, in fact, today we don't have use for the dividend that we wouldn't cut the dividend sitting here today. And I remind everybody that, you know, Rajiv and I, while we take a base salary, we get paid almost exclusively through the dividend. So we have a very high personal incentive to pay high dividends.
We like the fact that the stock is a high dividend paying stock. What we realized though last year in the PCS acquisition was that, well, while we were very successful in using debt and ultimately paying down that debt, there are real complexities that come along with using debt to do acquisitions. Having, you know, executed, I think, quite well on our first effort, first foray into M&A, I think our confidence in our ability to do deals has gone up.
We want to have the flexibility and have maximum flexibility to, you know, to use the balance sheet how we see fit, where we see really important growth opportunities. Now, I would reiterate again that we are going to be always very disciplined. You know, Rajiv and I are the largest shareholders in the business.
We are mindful that, you know, M&A is extremely hard in this industry. It's rarely successful. But we thought it appropriate at this point, having done a deal and having lived with borrowing in the deal that we did this year, that it was smart for us to increase the dividend range so that we can use it if we think it's appropriate in the future.
Okay, thanks, Tim. Just on my second question, just on flows, I guess not to disregard the strengths in the channels that Steve talked to, just on the institutional channel, which has been, I guess, largely in outflows over most quarters over three years. Can you just talk to this channel around its sort of, I guess, maturity or saturation, if we can use those words, and also just touch on any risk or client stability that you see in the EM fund given the more recent performance?
Sure, I'll take a first pass and see if you can add color if you'd like. But, you know, Scott, my view is that the institutional business is more mature for us. It's the business we were in first. But keep in mind that while net flows are slightly negative, as Steve said, they're not, you know, hugely materially negative. And what that implies is actually we still continue to have very strong gross flows as well. So we have inflows and outflows there. I think it's less of a growth driver than the wholesale and intermediary business will be for us. But it is, you know, still an important channel for us. And I believe that we will continue to be able to grow at some level.
And I do believe that this value, this rebranding of value gives us a new avenue to go pursue in the institutional business. But I think what we're pointing out here is that going forward, the real growth driver, the more meaningful growth driver we would expect to be coming from the wholesale and intermediary markets more than the institutional market. In terms of EM, you know, I don't believe that the short-term performance, you know, underperformance is a meaningful driver to flows. I think the meaningful driver has been, as Steve pointed out, at least in the U.S. market, a very meaningful Q4 asset allocation away from non-U.S. towards U.S. equity strategies.
I think that happened very quickly and very sort of violently. I don't think you're going to, that's a continued trend that you would expect to happen. I think people who made that move have made it. And look, our long-term performance in EM, I think our brand and reputation in EM are all very, very strong. So I don't think short-term underperformance there really affects flows in a meaningful way.
Yeah, I totally agree with all that. I think the other broader context to keep in mind here is just when you think about the total institutional channel, especially the U.S. piece of it specifically, I mean, the pie gets smaller every year, not bigger. And a lot of these plans are in runoff. So there's a natural redemption pressure there to a mature client base.
And so I don't, I think that's not unique to GQG. And we continue to have, you know, overall strong gross sales to offset that. So the, you know, the net numbers have been pretty minimal. And, you know, longer term, I am bullish about how value could expand the ways in which we can win in the channel. But I don't think that's a, you know, a near-term opportunity.
Let me actually add one more comment on the EM side. So if you go back to our early days, for first three, three and a half years, we actually didn't really outperform the EM much. And that did not impact flows in a meaningful way. So we have seen this move before. And the simple reason is that EM, you do have to have far greater sort of relative bets versus others.
China underweight or overweight can itself be a big swing factor and be very clear on our positioning and thinking on China, but it doesn't sort of change the fact that you could underperform or outperform. You know, I've seen 800-1,000 basis points, you know, sort of swings within a quarter. So that's not unusual. The other thing on the flow side is that, you know, it's a subtle issue.
I would not be sort of anchoring too much on it, but I think it may be worthwhile to mention that if you look at the new administration, as their focus on ESGs begins to go down, we are actually, we do feel that if you look at Europe, we are beginning to get more looks. It doesn't really get any money, by the way, just to be very clear, but we are definitely getting more looks.
I think that was kind of a drag on our business because we have had fossil exposure. And that, you know, we believe that people are beginning to be more open-minded about fossil and stuff like that. So, and especially looking at the cost that incurred to folks who completely avoided in the last three years. So we feel that on a relative basis that's actually a competitive advantage than it has been for the last few years.
Okay, thank you for the answers. I'll stick by the rules and look forward for a minute.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Nicholas McGarrigle from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Good day, thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to dig into the, maybe the Australian flows a bit more. It looks like there were some outflows in the second half from Australian clients. Is that predominantly in the institutional channel given the Australian fund flows remain positive, you know, over $1 billion for the calendar year?
Yeah, Nick, that's exactly right. We had a couple larger institutional outflows that skewed that, I believe.
Okay, the other, I guess no one's raised it yet, but obviously the travails of November with the Adani haven't, they've obviously had an impact on flows in the November, December month. January seems to be back on track. I just wanted to get, I guess, a comment on conversations with investors at a broad level, what that looks like.
Are there any that are still, you know, perturbed by it or have they kind of built sufficient confidence that the assets, you know, have a value and the, you know, the positions aren't challenged? I guess you're recommitting to those positions that look like in terms of the weight in the funds. So maybe just a general comment on that in terms of investor sentiment and commitment to those positions.
Yeah, absolutely, Nick. So look, there was probably about a five-to-ten-day period where we saw some retail outflows that we would attribute to Adani, although obviously we don't know directly, but that's, you know, what we, our view was that it was likely Adani driven. Beyond that, we really haven't seen any. We've had obviously very, very active dialogue with our broad client base on the news that came out in November. I'm confident at this point that there are, if any, very, very few, but I don't think any lingering client risks associated with Adani.
Frankly, if anything, I think what we're seeing here is that perhaps the Adani indictments were more politically driven than maybe the first instinct appeared. Clearly the new administration is taking a very different approach to global corporates and matters of FCPA broadly. So I think that clients are sanguine with where we are. I think we're, you know, Rajiv can speak to this, but we're very happy with our position with the Adani.
Keep in mind, you know, we've had realized gains in Adani of circa $1 billion realized for our clients and far more of that unrealized. So, you know, our clients have been very well benefited from these investments and we're confident in where they, you know, where the positions are in the portfolio today.
Yeah, and so let me just add a couple of comments. First of all, you know, the numbers we gave, the percentage terms, they're only going down because the overall flows keep, you know, have sort of gone up. But I think the performance numbers, the earnings numbers of the group have been perfectly fine. And I think the other aspect here to sort of incorporate on all of this is that if you look at the last two odd years that we invested, the returns have been very strong in the group versus other emerging market opportunities. So if you look at what happened in China and other places, so on an absolute and relative basis, it's been a meaningful contributor.
So I think there's nothing to sort of hang your hat on in context of the return that have been generated because if you look at what has happened in China over the last two years, you know, two to three years, or Brazil or South Africa and Indonesia and Malaysia and so on and so forth, in emerging market context, you know. I think returns have actually been, you know, positive because if we didn't have these, we could easily have had South Africa or China and so on and so forth. When you compare relative basis, this is actually far more positive than it may seem.
That's really helpful to get those comments. And maybe one last one just on the OpEx second half versus first half, I think expenses were down, presumably largely related to bonuses linked to alpha as well as flows. Is that fair to say? And then I guess the new headcount that you're adding just in some context around particular areas that that investment's being made.
Yeah, Nick, in terms of comp expense, you know, I think the team's been compensated quite well. I think everybody's very pleased with the compensation. But to your point, this is a performance-oriented compensation structure. It's the way we, it's the way we've always been. Everybody knows that here. And so you do have more variability in comp expense, you know, that that is driven by, you know, individual and group performance. Sorry, what was the second part of your question?
Just where you've obviously had a lot of headcount over the year and just intentions on kind of headcount number additions into next year and where those investments are being made.
Yeah, you know, without giving too much, you know, specificity, you know, I think we'll continue to invest, as I said, in certain key infrastructure areas. You know, as the business grows and gets more complex, obviously we have to add some bodies around operational, you know, trade operations, for example, or investment operations. So there, you know, there are bodies that you have to add for the infrastructure. We will continue to invest in distribution. That's what, you know, I think we've been paid well for those investments and the return on those investments have been very, very good. So we'll continue to do that.
But like always, we're very measured in the way we, you know, the way we add. And you can see that in Australia where we don't go whole hog into hiring dozens and dozens of people. We incrementally add two, three, four, make sure that, you know, that we're getting the return on investment that we make.
So, you know, Nick, I would say that, and keep in mind that remember last year we launched our Abu Dhabi office and we integrated the whole PCS business. So that's, you know, there's a lot of headcount there that, you know, I wouldn't expect to replicate in the coming years. So I think, you know, we'll have incremental increases in infrastructure and in sales-oriented headcount.
Great, thanks for that.
Thank you. Your next question, it comes from Nick Burgess from Ord Minnett.
Please go ahead. Yeah, morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. Just on the U.S. Equity Strategy, just taking into account all products and channels, some of the comments around the rebranding of the value product are helpful, but just taking into account all products and channels, you know, obviously the numbers, performance numbers are outstanding and capacity opportunity is significant. So how do you prosecute that opportunity to the maximum over the next few years, do you think?
Yeah, thanks, Nick. I think it's an excellent question. Again, I'll take the first pass and see, feel free to add any color, but I agree with you completely. I think that the, you know, the performances absolutely stand out. Now, keep in mind we launched U.S. equity, we brought to market U.S. equity as the fourth of our four core strategies in terms of, you know, sequentially and a couple of years after the three firsts that we launched with EM International and Global. And so it's a little bit less mature, which is why it's a smaller asset base and, you know, and I, but I agree with you completely.
I think that there's a very significant growth opportunity in the, in the core quality, dynamic quality product that we have and in the quality value product that we're rebranding to. You know, last year we really saw a ramp up in our separately managed accounts that we offer only in the U.S. Equity Strategy. And we'll look for other avenues to continue to grow. And again, these are relatively young distribution partnerships with large retail distribution wholesale platforms that I expect to mature and grow and compound.
So I do think that there's a very big opportunity there for us and that we'll continue to see relatively higher growth in U.S. equity strategies as compared to the others. But, you know, it's always hard to know what inputs would go into that. Steve, I don't know if there's anything you'd add to that.
Yeah, and look, it's the biggest prize, but it's also the most competitive to go after. I think the performance, you know, as compelling as it is, gives us that opportunity. What we've seen in the U.S. market and we're starting to do a bit in other markets is this retail SMA strategy that Tim has talked about. That's an area where we can implement that strategy and not compromise our alpha proposition in any way.
There continues to be a large growth part of the market in these retail SMAs. The other beauty that we've seen in it is that you get product extension off of it as well. An advisor that uses that vehicle is also very likely to use your commingled fund vehicle as well alongside of it. We've seen that on really only three platforms in the U.S. at this point. There aren't, you know, hundreds that we would want to be on. You want to be careful about who your partners are. There are still more platforms for us to add, certainly in the U.S., Canada, and Australia and other markets. You know, I am bullish on that as a way to continue to extend our growth in U.S. Equity Strategy.
Okay, thank you. That's helpful. My second question is just around management fee margins. Any broad comments around the outlook on that particular line would be helpful. Clearly there's been some improvement there, some positive mix. I guess given some of the comments you've made through the presentation, that positive mix looks set to continue. I guess, are there any offsets there? For instance, if U.S. equity, as we've just been talking, grows considerably, would that be perhaps a little bit of a headwind, even if it was the wholesale channel? If SMA grew, is that a headwind? Just any comments around that management fee margin in that context would be helpful.
Yeah, Nick, look, it's again a good and important question. It's very hard. This is one of those that's very hard to give any sort of predictive guidance on. I, as you remember, I always say, I think the best answer is just extrapolate out where we are today. Having said that, if you look at the range of where our fee has been since we've been public, and Mel can give you the precise range, but we're really at the higher end of that range, I think now.
And so, you know, to your point, if U.S. equity grows faster than EM, that's a downward pressure on average, you know, fee management fee margin. You know, retail growing faster than institutional is an upward pressure. You know, net net, I would, you know, I don't have really good guidance other than to say I don't think it's going to go up meaningfully from here. If I were being conservative, I, you know, might see it normalize to just directionally where it was last year. But that, that's an imprecise statement because it's just, it's impossible to predict with what the mix shift will look like.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tim Lawson from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
I just had one of my questions remaining. In terms of just the seasonality of distributions and any changes in sort of reinvestment trends or the timing of reinvestment you're seeing impacting any net flows?
Yeah, Tim, it's a good question. I don't know that we know the answer to that. You know, we can sort of speculate. I think that what you see is clearly, you know, some seasonality and outflows in Q4 and some seasonality and inflows in Q1, but it's really, really hard. It's impossible, in fact, to trace that precisely. And so I don't know that we can say there's a different trend.
I think the only thing that we saw meaningfully different this year as compared to years past was what we perceived to be a Q4 asset allocation difference where, as I said earlier, you know, with the new administration, people moved out of non-U.S. towards U.S. equity. But I think that's a one-time allocation, not likely to be a meaningful ongoing shift in allocation.
Yeah, I think that's right. The only thing I'd put beyond that is we did have a slightly larger distribution this year in some of our U.S. funds, which will drive tax-sensitive investors to make a redemption in front of that distribution. So again, we don't have the data to know for sure what did or didn't specifically drive it, but I have to believe there was some effect there. I don't think it was the primary effect in November, December, but it certainly played some role.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question, it comes from Elizabeth Miliatis from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. Just the first one is just around acquisitions within the PCS business. You know, maybe if you look out a few years, what kind of things are you looking to buy, how much are you looking to invest within that space, and then, you know, where might some get to sort of on a medium-term basis?
Yeah, thanks, Elizabeth. It's a good question. So just to refresh for everybody, the capital that the PCS business is deploying is all third-party capital. So like our other funds, we are the investment manager. We raise third-party capital and that capital is deployed into the underlying investments that are made. And so just to make sure that everybody understands, it's not unlikely to be our balance sheet capital, although in certain circumstances we might co-invest off of our balance sheet or even warehouse deals off of our balance sheet, but no intention of doing that today.
So that, you know, look, I think that that's this is a business that, you know, I would hope to see our first fund get to $200 million-250 million. You know, I think that from there, you know, you typically have a fund cycle every two, three, four years, and you would expect to see those funds grow from there. I don't see any reason why over the intermediate term this can't be a billion-dollar funds under management platform.
And the types of businesses that historically have been targeted have been, you know, highly specialist, highly value-added private capital, whether it's private equity or private credit or private real estate, but specialist strategies where we believe that the underlying teams have some very meaningful differentiation can drive really significant alpha for limited partners or investors.
The teams have been very successful in finding those types of situations, you know, over the years. So that's what I would expect to see. You know, as we've said in the past, I would not look at this as something that will have a material impact on our financials anytime in the foreseeable future. It's just almost impossible to imagine a scenario where it would grow to a level that it would be impactful. However, I do believe that culturally it is very impactful and very meaningful to what we're doing in terms of creating opportunities and diversifying the business and, you know, sort of getting our ceilings, as it were, with respect to doing deals.
Yep. Okay, got it. Okay. Then just ask me another question just around costs. Obviously, there seems to be some one-off sort of impacting the half, the second half. But if we just look at the cost to income ratio, first half versus second half, it's materially improved. As we sort of look out into FY25 and onwards, how are you guys thinking about that? You know, should we continue to see some operating leverage or, you know, maybe 50, 100 basis points each year or something like that? Or will you continue to reinvest within the business?
Yeah, thanks, Elizabeth. And another super important question. So, you know, as we said before, and this is just a really deeply held operating philosophy, we'll never target a margin. And so we're never going to target and say we're looking to expand our margins from circa 75%- 80%, for example. In fact, frankly, again, somewhat philosophical, my view is that the risk we run at running north of 75% margin is the risk of underinvesting in the business, not, you know, spending too much.
So, but that's not the way we look at this is we will spend what we have to spend to field the very best team we can field because this is the most competitive business in the world. And we recognize that we have to perform. And so, you know, sometimes that means that our margins will dip and sometimes, you know, we'll get the benefit of margin expansion. The other thing I would say is that the single biggest driver of margin is beta in the market. So if the market is up 10% next year, most of that falls to the bottom line.
You know, that's just the reality. And then the, you know, what we are driving in terms of sales growth, you know, there are fixed costs associated with that and the scale with the growth. So, you know, the point of that is that margin, because of that, because the biggest contributor can easily be the market, market-driven returns, it really is out of our control. It's a result, not a target.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Tim Carver for closing remarks.
Great. Well, thanks again, everybody, for joining us. As I say, we're pleased to present the result to you. And we'll look forward to seeing many of you as we come down for a roadshow in a couple of weeks in Australia.