Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. On behalf of Magellan, I'd like to welcome you today to Magellan's results presentation for the half year ended 31 December 2022. I'm Sarah Gordon, I manage the investor relations function at Magellan. Today, the company's results will be presented by David George, Magellan's CEO and Chief Investment Officer, and Kirsten Morton, Magellan's CFO and Chief Operating Officer. We will hold a Q&A session at the end of the presentation, and please note that today's presentation is being recorded and will be available on Magellan's website. We may also have media in attendance today. Thank you, and I would now like to welcome David to take you through the presentation. Thanks, David.
Thank you, Sarah. Thanks, everyone, for attending our first half 2023 results briefing today. To start today's session, I'll provide an overview of Magellan's business and financial performance for the first half of FY2023. Kirsten Morton, our CFO and Chief Operating Officer, will then take you through our financial results in more detail before handing it back to me to provide you with an update on the progress we're making in implementing our five-year growth strategy, delivering on our FY2023 priorities, and the outlook for the second half of the financial year. We will then open to Q&A. Over the past 12 months, Magellan has experienced a period of accelerated and significant change.
I joined Magellan in July to lead the group through the next stage of its evolution. At our 2022 AGM in October, I outlined my 5-year growth strategy to drive Magellan's growth. The strategy builds upon Magellan's strong foundations and facilitates its transition into a more diversified business with a broader range of capabilities and offerings that deliver sustainable growth. It is early days, but we are making good progress on executing the priorities we set. We've positioned the business to execute on our 5-year strategy, which I will talk about in more detail today. We've made the necessary changes to set Magellan up for future success. We have rationalized and simplified our funds management business. We continue to operate within our financial year 2023 expense range of AUD 125 million-AUD 130 million.
Magellan is a fund manager of scale, with AUD 46.2 billion of funds under management and is a profitable business. The board has declared an interim dividend of AUD 0.469 per share, which is 85% franked and will be paid to shareholders on 8th March 2023. Markets in the past 12 months have been more volatile with the emergence of inflation. This has attracted a traditional response from central banks who are tightening policy through interest rate rises and seeking to balance a credible and committed stance on the maintenance of price stability while minimizing their impediment to economic growth. Slowing growth, inflation, and interest rate hikes have been a difficult mix for equity markets in 2022, driving negative returns for the calendar year.
This is cyclical, related to higher discount rates and lower corporate earnings expectations, which will evolve as we eventually reach a peak in inflation and the interest rate cycle. This market environment creates additional considerations for asset allocations for investors, which are also less supportive of allocations to equities. The first of these is related to higher interest rates, as investors no longer have only anemic returns available to them from their allocation to cash and fixed income investments. The second is that a volatile environment in these equity markets also pushes investors to consider diversifying their risky asset allocations beyond equities towards private markets. This has been a structural feature of investor portfolio allocations, which we expect will persist. Our existing investment strategies of Airlie, Infrastructure, and Global are designed to deliver long-term returns through economic cycles, and all three have outperformed the applicable benchmarks since inception.
Our Airlie Australian Share Fund maintains an exceptional three-year and long-term track record, outperforming the S&P/ASX 200 accumulation index since inception and over the last three years. Airlie is a team and business going from strength to strength with up-and-coming talent and capacity for new strategies. Magellan's infrastructure strategy remains one of the best of its kind globally, with a strong long-term performance track record. The infrastructure team also have the depth of talent and capacity for new strategies in the future. Our process at its heart is a strict definition of infrastructure, which for Magellan excludes businesses with high sensitivity to commodity price movements, competitive pressure, or sovereign risk.
Whilst this approach has led to a recent period of weaker relative returns, given the low exposure to businesses that benefited from the energy price spike in 2022, over the long term, its performance demonstrates the success of this disciplined approach. The underperformance in our global equity strategy from late 2020 to early 2022 was due to a number of drivers. Some were stock specific, where some part of our investment thesis was shown to be incorrect and it resulted in changes to portfolio composition. Other large drivers have been positioning related, and to mitigate this reoccurring, we've implemented dynamic risk limits where appropriate to manage concentration risks. Some of the considered and deliberate changes made focused on how the team works together, oriented to creating more dynamic and regular interactions, more discussion among portfolio managers and analysts, and more fluid prioritization of coverage for analysts.
All of these things serve to democratize and make more transparent the debate on key issues and decisions. Our investment philosophy for Global remains unchanged. We believe investing in the world's best companies is a path to creating and protecting long-term wealth. These initiatives will take time to show up in our performance figures. It is encouraging to start seeing positive outcomes in the form of more dynamic engagement across the team, with quality investment ideas being brought forward earlier and prioritized more efficiently. As CIO, I will continue to work with our teams to review and amend our approaches where necessary. Turning to our first half 2023 financial performance. Average funds under management over the period was AUD 53.8 billion, which was down 52% compared to the previous corresponding period.
As FUM is the driver of management fees, our first half 2023 management fee revenue was down 49%, broadly in line with the decrease in average FUM and reflecting an increase in average management fees. Our first half 2023 group statutory net profit after tax was AUD 83.8 million, compared with AUD 251.6 million in the corresponding prior period. After adjusting for non-cash items, unrealized items, and items related to strategic initiatives, the group reported adjusted net profit after tax of AUD 98.3 million, which compares to AUD 248.5 million from the prior corresponding period. Looking at our core funds management business, profit before tax and performance fees was AUD 119.9 million for the half, compared with AUD 293.7 million in first half of 2022.
Overall, our interim financial results reflect the accelerated changes the business experienced in 2022, the prevailing challenging market conditions, and the reduction in funds under management over the 12 months to December 31. Client outflows were largely isolated to global equities. Magellan remains a business with considerable financial strength. As at December 31, 2022, we had $837.4 million in cash, financial assets and investments in associates. Sorry, $837.3 million of net tangible assets and $882.4 million in cash financial assets and investments in associates, no debt, and generated $90.1 million of net cash flows from operating activities during the year. We remain a profitable business, delivering adjusted earnings per share of $0.536.
As mentioned, the directors have declared an interim dividend of AUD 0.469 per share, franked at 85%, which is in line with our dividend policy of paying out 90%-95% of the funds management profit. With a strong balance sheet and profitability, we remain well-positioned to continue to pay dividends consistent with our current policy, implement capital management initiatives designed to enhance shareholder value, and prudently invest in our business to deliver growth. The foundations for growth. In addition to the business's financial strength, I spoke at the AGM about Magellan's capability and foundations that will support the future growth plan we plan to deliver. Within investments, we have an exceptional research engine and large investment team who deliver intensive fundamental company analysis, industry research, and macro insights.
These building blocks allow our experienced portfolio management teams to deliver a range of strategies that meet our client needs. The broader Magellan team supports this with a scalable operating platform and well-established legal, operational, risk, and compliance expertise. Another key strength is our market-leading distribution and marketing team, who drive outstanding multi-channel connectivity, relationships, and partnerships. As an organization, we have a committed and passionate team of people with an immense pride in the shared success of Magellan, and a proven track record of successful product innovation and team integration. These quality attributes, alongside the scale of the business, provide an exceptional base from which to build, grow, and diversify. I'll talk shortly in more detail about our five-year strategy and the progress we're making. First, I'll now hand over to Kirsten, who will take you through our first half '23 financials in more detail. Kirsten.
Thanks, David. Good morning, everyone. I would first like to take you through the financial results of the group, followed by our core funds management business and our expenses outlook. The group's adjusted revenue for the half-year ended thirty-one December, 2022, was AUD 208.8 million, and the group's adjusted net profit for the same period was AUD 98.3 million. The net profit is down 60% on the prior period, which reflects the reduction in funds under management, the recent change the business has gone through as it transitions from being a founder-led business, along with very challenging market conditions. Management and services fees were AUD 181.1 million for the six months to thirty-one December, 2022, and this result was broadly in line with a decrease in average funds under management during the period.
Performance fees were not material for the period. However, as we always mention, these fees are lumpy, and they have the potential to fluctuate significantly period to period. Other revenue was AUD 27.6 million in the current half year, up AUD 7.6 million. Look, this revenue typically comprises distributions we earn on investments in our funds, realized gains and losses on those investments, foreign exchange movements, interest income, and also advisory income of our U.S. business, Frontier Group. The increase in other revenue for the current half year is mainly due to higher distributions earned on our fund investments and also interest income, given the higher interest rates. Our share of the financial result from our investments in Barrenjoey and FinClear was an AUD 8.1 million loss for the six months to 31 December 2022, primarily due to challenging market conditions.
I will touch on that in a little bit more detail shortly. As we have mentioned previously, our view remains that adjusted net profit provides a much more meaningful performance information on our business and the comparability of results half on half. By way of a reminder, it is the group's statutory net profit excluding certain items. These items are now shown on page 10 of the slides, and for the December 2022 half year comprised five adjustments, which I'll go through. At AUD 2.4 million relating to the non-cash strategic transaction costs, and that relates to the revaluation, which is for accounting purposes, of the Magellan Global Fund option liability. The next adjustment is a non-cash item of AUD 2.3 million, which relates to the amortization expense on intangibles from the Airlie and Frontier businesses that we acquired in 2018.
AUD 0.9 million relates to the non-cash accounting remeasurement of staff equity loans. Now, like, as a reminder, whilst the accounting for staff equity loans remains unchanged, there is P&L volatility due to changes in the repayment assumptions and also changes in loan terms for departing staff. These changes differ for each employee can make it the period to period net P&L impact less predictable. In light of the increased volatility on the loans, which reduces the comparability of results period to period, we've excluded the non-cash interest income and expense. We also have a non-cash item of AUD 2 million relating to the non-cash employee share option expense. Now this is a new adjustment this period, and it relates to the one-off issue of share options to employees in April 2022 as part of the staff retention program.
It's not included in the prior year comparative. We are making this adjustment as it's a non-cash item. AUD 6.9 million of unrealized capital losses in shares and units held in our proprietary portfolio, the funds investment portfolio. As we record market movements of those equities directly in the P&L, we feel it's meaningful to remove the unrealized market volatility from our revenue, whether it's a gain or a loss. Just please note that all those adjustments I mentioned are after-tax amounts. If those adjustments were not made, the group's statutory net profit after tax for the half year ended 31 December 2022 was AUD 83.8 million. Finally, diluted earnings per share was AUD 0.456 per share, which is in line with the movement in statutory net profit.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share was AUD 0.536 per share. That's in line with a decrease in adjusted net profit. As David mentioned earlier, the directors declared a dividend for the six months to 31 December 2022 of AUD 0.469 per share. They were pleased to increase the franking of the interim dividend to 85%. The group's effective tax rate for the six months to 31 December 2022 was 28.4%. This rate is higher than past years, which is a direct consequence of having lower funds under management offshore. The other point I'd just really like to make is that the gap between our effective tax rate and the prevailing corporate tax rate of 30% is now small, far smaller than previous years.
What that means is that there will be a smaller one-off impact on Magellan when the Offshore Banking Unit license regime is abolished on the first of July 2023. Of course, one benefit of paying higher tax is that it generates higher franking credits available to distribute to shareholders. The directors review the franking rate every six months, and under a higher corporate rate, the franking credits will accumulate faster, which should enable the franking rate to be lifted over time. Now let's turn to the financial results of our core business, our funds management business and the driver of our group's profitability and dividends. Funds management revenue for the half year ended 31 December 2022 was AUD 182.5 million and down due to lower funds under management. The average base management fee at 31 December 2022 was 66 basis points.
The increase in our average fee is due to the change in the mix of the retail and institutional funds under management. Consistent with prior years, our main operating expense, aside from tax of course, is employee expenses, as our people are our fundamental to delivering value for our clients. Employee expenses are AUD 45.5 million for the six months to 31 December 2022, an increase mainly due to the expense for the cash retention payments, an initiative we announced in March 2022, but as part of the broader staff retention program, and costs associated with the company's realignment that occurred in October 2022. Just to be clear, funds management employee expenses excludes the AUD 2 million of non-cash expense for the employee share option plan that I just discussed earlier.
Other expenses are down 16% compared with prior half year. That's mainly reflecting disciplined cost management. After adjusting for performance fees, the profit before tax of the funds management business decreased 59% to AUD 119.9 million. Now despite the decrease in the half year, Magellan is still a highly profitable business with a very competitive cost-income ratio of 34.2%. Turning to slide 12, just a couple of comments I'd like to make about expenses. Our guidance for funds management expenses for the year ended 30 June 2023 is AUD 125 million-AUD 130 million.
We continue to operate within this guidance. In the current year, this also includes AUD 15.2 million of costs associated with the acceleration by one year of staff cost retention payments and also costs associated with the company realignment in October. A cost-conscious mindset, regardless of the prevailing business conditions, has always been a central part of how this business has been run. Nothing's changed. Business operations are managed efficiently. When it comes to expenses, we will continue to manage the business prudently as we always have. With expense discipline being paramount, we will continue to invest to support client-focused outcomes and ensure expenditure with a view to growth. Turning to slide 13, the fund's investment portfolio is a subset of the Group's balance sheet and an important aspect of the Group's liquidity.
A summary of the fund's investment portfolio, which totals AUD 359.3 million at 31 December, is shown on the slide. That portfolio includes co-investments in both Magellan's listed and unlisted funds, which creates very strong client alignment. Consistent with prior years, our aim is to earn satisfactory returns for our shareholders, and Magellan has set a pre-tax return hurdle of 10% per annum over the business cycle for the fund's investments portfolio. Since inception from the 1st of July 2007, and excluding the Group's investment in MFF Capital Investments, portfolio has reported a pre-tax return of 9.6% per annum.
We acknowledge that the current return is lower than we would like it to be. We are highly focused on improving investment performance in our funds, which in turn should improve the performance of our fund investment portfolio. Associate investments. Before handing back to David, I will touch on our associate investments. At 31 December, the group held two investments on our balance sheet. These are a 36% economic interest in Barrenjoey Capital Partners and a 16% interest in FinClear. During the period, our share of the associates results after tax was a loss of AUD 8.1 million. Despite weaker market conditions and trading volumes across the investment banking industry, Barrenjoey continues to strengthen and diversify revenues. During the period, a number of new business lines went live, including fixed income derivatives, equity financing, and private capital.
Their half-year financial results were negative for the period after taking into account establishment costs, things like technology and operational development costs and staff acquisition costs. Establishment costs are expected to decrease materially in the next financial year. Barrenjoey expects to largely complete its initial build-out in the 2023 financial year and is now focused on growth. Briefly touching on FinClear. FinClear's public equity markets business has been impacted by weaker market conditions. However, they continue to invest in attractive growth opportunities and recently launched FCX, a secure DLT-based platform for investors in private companies. Magellan remains a supportive shareholder of both businesses and continues to manage and assess these holdings in a prudent and patient way. Any further investment in these businesses would depend on the opportunity at the time, with the focus of maximizing shareholder value.
With that, I will now hand back to David.
Thank you, Kirsten. I'd like to refresh for you our strategy for growth and diversification in the coming five years. Our objective for Magellan in five years is to be a fund manager of greater scale with over AUD 100 billion in funds under management from a broadened product mix and to be attractively positioned to grow in segments aligned to client demand. We will also focus on maintaining our position as a partner of choice for the Australian wealth industry and broadening institutional relationships at a global level. These are the critical ingredients for delivering returns to our shareholders and clients. To deliver our long-term strategy, our growth will come from three areas underpinned by disciplined capital and cost management and aligned, aligning our employee value proposition with client and shareholder outcomes.
First and foremost, our focus is to ensure that all of our three primary investment strategies are delivering on their performance promise. I spoke earlier about the steps we've taken to date to create the conditions for improved outcomes in our global strategy. We have substantial capacity available across our three primary strategies, and our Airlie and infrastructure teams are well-positioned to engage with clients and take on new business. We also have well-defined opportunities to leverage the skills and investment we have made in our current capabilities to deliver new products in the near term, which is our second growth pathway. Magellan has a large investment team, which has developed over many years, deep knowledge and capability in several areas.
We are well-positioned with a high-quality platform and a history of innovation to create strategies in areas of growing client interest such as energy transition, our core series, and Australian small cap equities. We will also expand beyond our current strategies to add new and complementary capabilities through inorganic growth. To reach our AUD 100 billion goal, inorganic growth will be a key contributor. In deciding where to invest, we will look to areas of increasing demand and allocations and where the needs of our clients are growing, such as in alternatives and private markets. We will explore opportunities to invest in experienced quality teams and capabilities where we can replicate the integration success of Airlie. Our approach in this regard will at all times be disciplined.
Any acquisition or investment we make in this area will be strategic, scalable, and complement our existing business, delivering diversification and synergies to the platform and clients with the objective of ultimately creating long-term shareholder value and sustainable revenue growth. Our people continue to be our most valued asset. Engaging our people within a high-performance environment and with an attractive employee value proposition will be central to achieving our long-term objective. These five critical elements play to our strengths and leverage the qualities and financial capacity that Magellan possesses. Let's now look at the progress we're making in delivering our FY23 strategic priorities across our three pillars: platform, product, and people. You can see on this slide what we said at the AGM would be our FY23 areas of focus, and on the right-hand side, details of what we have delivered since then.
In regard to our platform, we've simplified Magellan's funds management business. This has included considered adjustments to our organizational structure to realign resources to support more coordinated communication with clients through distribution and marketing, and within our product strategy and development. Cost management remains an area of focus, and our funds management business continues to operate within our FY2023 expense range of AUD 125 million-AUD 130 million. As Kirsten mentioned, this is inclusive of costs associated with the acceleration of retentions and of organizational change. We've bought back 4.2 million shares to date in relation to our on-market share buyback of the authorized 10 million at a cost of AUD 46.7 million. In terms of product, we've had a very busy period.
As I've outlined, we took steps to create the conditions for improved performance in the global equities investment team. This included adjustments to portfolio management responsibilities as well as to meetings and the modes of communication across the team. These changes are designed to facilitate improved collaboration and information flow. We are starting to see positive outcomes from these changes, with interactions and debate becoming less formal and more frequent, investment ideas being brought forward earlier, and then prioritized more efficiently. As part of this process, we've continued to add to and expand the depth of our work in ESG, building on what has been developed and refined over the past 15 years. We welcomed a dedicated ESG specialist resource to the team in the first half. It continued the process of embedding this thinking more actively across all of our client solutions.
We've also made good progress on our product development pipeline. These strategies leverage our current intellectual property and will be supported by our strong operations and distribution capabilities and represent new avenues for FAM inflows. Our new Energy Transition investment strategy is now available for institutional clients. This strategy is oriented towards the significant investment opportunities that arise as the world's economy shifts to a dramatically lower carbon intensity. This will occur over a multi-decade cycle, and our research experience in infrastructure and sustainability has provided a strong knowledge base on which to identify and invest in companies that we believe are positioned to drive and benefit from the energy transition. We have also been making good progress in the relaunch of our Magellan Core Series, with work completed to refine and reconfirm our definition and portfolio construction process for the Core International and Core ESG strategies.
Each offering within the Core series represents the broadest exposure to the Magellan research engine and companies which fit our definition of business quality as well as meeting our stringent investment criteria. The investment universe defined by Magellan's forward-looking and fundamental research differentiates the Core series, and we believe that with the appropriate distribution support, this offering is scalable and provides a strong value proposition to cater towards lower-cost client requirements. We are also well progressed on the launch of the Airlie Small Companies Fund, a retail fund which we expect to make available to investors in the second quarter of calendar year 2023. Small cap equities in Australia is an area where high-quality managers can generate consistent outperformance. The Airlie team has a strong track record in the Australian market and already covers some of these smaller Australian companies.
This makes expansion into this segment a logical near-term growth opportunity for Magellan. Beyond executing on our new product pipeline, through the remainder of FY23, our performance focus remains our number 1 priority. This half, our focus will be on opportunities to support portfolio managers and analysts with additional tools and data. The third pillar of our FY23 priorities is our people. We're a people business, and we want a culture that supports high performance, career development, and opportunity. 1 priority has been to initiate a discussion on reaffirming our culture and values. Magellan has a good culture, but culture is something to surface, work on, and evolve continuously. This is a process of soliciting feedback and having discussions to define our ethos as a company.
There are also opportunities to engage on day-to-day improvements in the business and explore how we drive high performance and career development and align teams to the long-term success of Magellan, our shareholders, and clients. During the half, we've accelerated the staff retention program, bringing forward the payments by 1 year from September 2024 and September 2025 to September 2023 and 2024 respectively. These retention initiatives are important to allow employees to remain focused on clients and the business during a period of change and uncertainty. They also help mitigate the stress that some of our team bear with the staff loans, which can be a hindrance to high performance in our teams and are therefore aligned with shareholder outcomes. We recognize the need to ensure our employee value proposition aligns our team to deliver our 5-year growth strategy and positive client outcomes.
We will establish a long-term incentive plan designed to achieve this, which will balance an opportunity to participate in Magellan's shared success with value for shareholders. We're prioritizing this work and aim to complete it during the current financial year. In terms of the outlook for the remainder of the financial year, a critical debate for markets remains the inflation picture and the re-emergence of interest rate cycles in countries around the world. Higher interest rates as a result in a predictable slowing in economies. While it appears we are closer to the end of the interest rate hiking cycle, it is far from clear how sticky the higher price pressures will be, and therefore, how quickly central banks can ease off on the brakes.
China's easing of zero-COVID policies and apparent willingness to stimulate for growth should be a net addition to global growth, perhaps also to inflationary pressures. This won't necessarily be negative for equity markets overall, but these interrelated drivers indicate that it will be a patchy period of data, and therefore, a volatile phase until the shape of peak inflation and interest rates becomes clearer with time. Importantly, these are more challenging conditions for businesses. For that reason, we see the focus of markets shifting from the interest rate cycle to corporate earnings. Cost pressures, financing pressures, and slowing economies will create challenges for many companies, resulting in dispersed performance and earnings outcomes. I've said before that I'm bullish active management, and this is exactly the environment where deep understanding of companies can allow our team to differentiate and capitalize on value as it emerges.
Thoughtful long-term and deeply researched investing will be rewarded. These are good conditions for performance. Volatility offers periodic opportunities to invest in businesses at attractive prices. Magellan has the experience and capabilities and long-term orientation to be nimble and lean into these opportunities. To wrap up the presentation today, and before opening to questions, I would like to reiterate what I said at the start. We are at the beginning of the next phase of Magellan's evolution. We've outlined our five-year growth strategy and our focus is now on building upon Magellan's strengths and transitioning the business into a more diversified one, with a range of capabilities and offerings that deliver sustainable growth and revenue. In the four months since we announced our five-year strategy, we are making good progress in delivering our FY2023 strategic priorities. We are well progressed in organic product development, as I've outlined.
We are also now better placed to review opportunities to add new and established capabilities, which will complement our offering, both in equities but also beyond in areas such as private markets, consistent with our client portfolio needs and with our capacity to deliver. We have much to do, but we've hit the ground running with our strategy, and I look forward to updating you on our ongoing progress at the full year results in August. I'll now open up to questions. Sarah.
Well, thank you very much, David and Kirsten, for the presentation. We will now move to Q&A. If you've joined the presentation via webinar, you may ask a question by typing it into the Q&A icon. If you have dialed in by phone, you can ask a question by pressing star nine on your keypad. When called upon, you will need to unmute yourself by pressing star six before you will be able to ask your question. Okay, David, we'll just start with you. The first question that's coming through is, does Magellan see itself in business in 20 years?
20 years is a very long time, I think it's, Magellan's been in business for 20 years already, I think seeing it in 20 years is an easy thing for me to do.
Great. I'll head to you as well. Just in the cost guidance, you call out the AUD 15 million of retention payments. Does this imply these are one-off and there's scope for employee expenses to step down next year, or should we be using the FY2023 employee expenses as the base going forward?
By their nature, the retention expenses and the retention program was a one-off. So I don't think that that number should be directly translated into the forward period. And we don't provide forecasts at this time for FY2024, but retentions are one-off expenses.
Okay. David, I think this one's for you as well. Can you comment on the performance of the High Conviction Strategy?
I certainly can. The High Conviction Strategy is a concentrated, portfolio, so naturally has greater variability relative to market and greater risk and volatility attached to it. Performance has not been as good as we would have hoped. I've made some changes, with the portfolio management team, in particular, appointing Alan Pullen and Nikki Thomas as portfolio managers. I believe we've got the right team in place, and I'm confident that returns, will be more towards our expectations going forward.
Okay. Thank you very much. Again, on the investment team, can you please detail the changes that have been made to the investment team and whether you have flattened the hierarchy of the team?
Flattened the hierarchy is a reasonable way to think about. The first and most important piece of those changes has been to remove some of the other, and potentially distracting efforts that we were undertaking in the investment team. We're always looking at new strategies and ways to think about our markets and where we can apply our skills. We'd let that expansion happen too broadly and into areas that weren't directly adjacent to skills and capabilities that we were already able to demonstrate.
I've focused the team back towards the baseline, the global strategy, the infrastructure strategy, and less on the new strategies that were too far out of the team's current remit. In terms of the team function, we did make some changes to how the leadership works and how analysts work together. The first of these was the appointment of Gerald Stack as Deputy CIO. He's a very talented manager of people and has built an outstanding team within the Infrastructure Group. He takes a larger role in working with analysts across the broader team in order to get the interactions working, in order to get work allocation working better, and also interactions between portfolio managers.
Some of the changes that he's been instrumental in have been working towards, how we have our meetings, how quickly we discuss new ideas, and how frequently everyone's in the same room or having conversations at the desks. It's creating a more dynamic interaction environment is sort of been the key piece.
Okay. Thank you, David. Again, this question is for you, moving on to the growth strategy that you've outlined. How do you explain the ongoing outflow of FUM?
We publish our FUM figures every month. And ultimately FUM overall is a function of client decisions. Our clients have made some of those decisions, and we've talked about some changes we've made, in particular on the global side to address performance. Which is one of the things that's important for clients. We focus on what we can deliver. We can deliver performance, which we are hyper-focused on, and we can deliver outstanding client service around that. We have a number of strategies across the Magellan business, many of which are very well positioned to have proactive and positive conversations about FUM flows. That includes our infrastructure strategies. That includes Airlie, and that includes some of the organic growth strategies. Energy Transition is available at the moment, going forward.
Thank you, David. We'll move towards some balance sheet questions now, and I'll direct these to you. Can you touch on the balance sheet capacity and ability to continue the buyback and also invest in inorganic opportunities? In that, how much of the AUD 882 million is deployable?
The focus in the last six months has been about resetting the strategy and then orienting the organization to be best able to execute on the strategy. That's been the priority and we've done a great job at that, I think. In terms of capital management and the balance sheet, that's something that we'll assess on an ongoing basis, and in light of that, and in context of that strategy. I expect that's an ongoing conversation, but one of the most important things to say about where the balance sheet is that it provides us with a tremendous amount of flexibility to invest for growth and to be disciplined about how we do that.
Thank you very much, David. Sticking with balance sheet theme, the next question is, does it make sense to hold as much fund investments versus using the funds to buy back more stock?
The fund investment portfolio, as Kirsten outlined, serves a couple of purposes. One, it in some cases is about seeding products, and we do some of that. As well, it provides an opportunity for us to align ourselves with clients. That's the other purpose. The size of that will shift and change over time, and we think it's appropriate at the moment.
Okay. Thank you. Just one final question on balance sheet. Do you intend to reintroduce the dividend reinvestment plan?
We have no plans to reintroduce the dividend reinvestment plan.
Okay. Thank you, David. The next question, again is for you, relates to the Airlie Small Cap Fund. The question is, what is the target for FUM for this product, assuming its focus is Australian only?
We have thoughts on capacity, but capacity is something that, in, particularly in Australian small cap equities, needs to be managed carefully. We'll certainly manage capacity prudently as we gain inflows. And that's a process of ensuring that as we gain FUM and perhaps approach capacity, we're monitoring that very closely. Prudently managing capacity will be a key focus in that market.
Thank you very much, David. Again, this next question is for yourself, and it touches on your growth strategy you've outlined. The question is, given many managers are focused on growing in alternatives and privates, are you confident you can attract a team at a reasonable cost, and how should we think about the timeframe for this?
I think it is an area of interest for clients, and therefore I imagine other managers as well. I'm confident that we, as a platform, have a great value proposition for investment managers. We have outstanding operations. We have outstanding compliance risk management support, and we have outstanding distribution. Those are things that investment teams appreciate, and it makes their life easier, and it allows them to focus on what's important for them. I do think we have an opportunity to expand the platform, and we're an attractive destination. In terms of timeframe, there's nothing. It's very difficult to put a timeframe on things like that. These are opportunistic processes. You need to have a lot of things go right for it to make sense.
In doing that, I think we'll just operate with our normal discipline. We will make sure that any acquisition or any transaction in that space, makes sense for shareholders and adds value.
Thank you very much. Again, just touching on the growth strategy, the question is, I know you were targeting AUD 100 billion in FUM in five years, but right now, what is your best guess of FUM trajectory over the near term?
So I won't offer a forecast on FUM trajectory, and we never have. It's a function of client choices, but also markets. That's a very difficult question to answer. As outlined in the question, over the five-year term, we have a target to be a much larger investment manager. We will do that by diversifying our business, we will do that in a way that grows from within, from our current strategies, grows organically from products that we develop, from capabilities that we can demonstrate and grows through acquisition.
Great. Thank you very much. The next question again, I'll direct to you, David, in regard to our associate investments. There is talk that the investment Magellan holds are worth much more than book value. What are your thoughts on this?
We certainly value those investments according to accounting principles and standards, which perhaps Kirsten could talk to more. We have two associate investments. They're both businesses that are in a growth path. Their valuation for the future hopefully will reflect all the effort they're putting into that growth path.
Okay. Thank you, David. Again, just another follow-up question in regards to the Airlie Small Cap strategy. Will it be managed by the Airlie Large Cap team? If so, won't that dilute the Large Cap offering?
There's careful consideration into that question, certainly. The strategy is under development. What we will ensure happens is that we have appropriate resourcing and appropriate skills. We'll invest where we think need to expand the team in order to support additional coverage and ensure that there is no distraction.
Okay, thank you very much. Again, I'll direct this next question to yourself in relation to the broader strategy. Are you currently in conversations around acquisitions, and if so, how far down the path are you?
I'm not gonna comment on it, on any specific M&A or any discussions like that. As I said before, in our strategy, we do have one of the pillars as expanding the platform in areas that make sense, and that may be through inorganic growth. Other than that, I have no details to share.
Okay. Thank you very much, David. Again, this question is directed at you in regard to the comment in the article in today's AFR suggesting John and Matt from Airlie are considering their future with Airlie, given the completion of the 2018 earn-out agreement.
Mm.
Are you able to comment on that?
Yes, I can. I mean, I can't comment on any speculation in the article, but Magellan's built a very good relationship with John and Matt over the last 5 years. The Airlie business has been very good for Magellan, and I think Magellan has been very good for Airlie in supporting the business with a great platform as well as with distribution avenues for them to grow and diversify the Airlie offering. I expect that to continue for some time.
Thanks, David. As part of the growth strategy, sorry, organic growth opportunities, you've outlined the Energy Transition investment strategy. Can you please confirm some rough numbers for capacity of this strategy?
Yes. There's no exact capacity. The expectation, though, is that the capacity for that strategy is very large. It covers a global universe, and there's a range of companies, but many of them are large global companies. Overall, from a diverse strategy point of view, there should be significant capacity measured in the tens of billions.
Thank you very much. Just touching on FUM again, the next question is how much institutional FUM remains in global equities?
We don't disclose that directly, but we still have a range of institutional clients in global equities.
Okay, thank you. We'll now move to the phone lines. May I ask the participant with the phone number ending in 1362 to please unmute themselves and go on ahead and ask your question.
Hi. Thank you so much for taking my questions. This first one's just on the institutional money. Just if you could characterize, you know, how your discussions are at the moment with the institutional clients. You know, we've seen some pretty elevated outflows still, through the back end of last year, though this month, sorry, this year was actually not too bad. If you could just give us color on that. Then also on the fees, it seemed like there was on my calculations, a bit more compression in institutional fees in the first half. If you could just sort of give us color on that and whether we should expect some continued compression going forward.
Thank you for the question. In terms of the discussions, you know, we have very active and very transparent discussions with our institutional clients around the world. I can tell you they're mostly focused on performance, they're mostly focused on markets, and they're really transparent and active. From a flows perspective, I think, what I can say is larger flows were seen in early 2022 and certainly, that's perhaps to be expected in an institutional market when there's a certain amount of change within a strategy. What we've seen, as you say, is perhaps less. The discussions have been really transparent about how we're performing in markets, adjustments we're making to the process, and they're very good. From a fees perspective, we...
Again, the focus of discussions is much more about how the strategy's going, the portfolios and the investment process that we're delivering for them.
Okay. Well, thank you very much. That's all the questions on the line. We'll just have one more question that's come through online. David, again, I'll direct this one to you. What is Hamish Douglass' role, if any, in Magellan at the moment?
Sure. Hamish Douglass is engaged through a consulting agreement with Magellan. That was put in place to offer Magellan and ensure that they were, it was available to Magellan, Hamish's insights and input through time. That consulting agreement has just come on foot in October, so it's quite early days, but it's working as expected. It's a consulting agreement like we have several of in service of the investment process and clients. Over time, we will evaluate that just like any other in terms of the value it provides both to the team and clients.
Okay. Well, thank you very much, David and Kirsten. That concludes the Q&A and today's presentation. We appreciate everyone for dialing in. We look forward to welcoming you at our full year results in August. Thank you very much.