Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Navigator Global Investments Limited 2022 Second Half-Year Results briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Amber Stoney, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the FY 2022 interim results briefing. My name's Amber Stoney, and I'm the CFO of Navigator. With me today is our CEO, Sean McGould, as well as Ross Zachary, MD of Strategic Corporate Development. The agenda for the call today is for Sean to make some opening remarks about the Navigator Group and then to provide a review of the Lighthouse Investment Partners business. Ross will then discuss the NGI Strategic Portfolio business, and I'll finish with a walk through of the financial results for the half. Following that, we'll open the call for questions. With that, I will hand over to Sean.
Thank you, Amber, and thanks everyone for joining today and this evening. As we go over the results, I will be referring to the presentation that we filed earlier, and I'll start on page four just looking at the interim results. The group AUM, we're happy to announce, increased and is up to AUD 21.6 billion. That's on an ownership adjusted basis. We'll also talk about the total assets that each of our affiliates manage as well in a few slides, but very happy with the group AUM. Adjusted EBITDA for the six months is $20 million. That was an increase of about a third over same period last year. Revenue also increased to AUD 53.4 million, and that was a 12% increase.
The dividend also was normalized this year to AUD 0.055. We have some information in the back as to when that will be declared and paid. Interim results. Very happy with what we are seeing so far this fiscal year. Turning to page five, like to talk about the group now. When we look at this page, we can see that from a year ago, 18 months ago, this page has expanded. This is certainly part of our vision as we continue to grow the firm. We'll see that there are really three operating areas of the business now.
One is Lighthouse, which has been the historical business, and I'll go into some more detail on that over the next few pages. We have our strategic investments that we hold. Six of them, you can see the aggregate AUM there is about AUD 40 billion. That's increased since the time of the purchase as well. Then our strategic partners, both Longreach and GROW. Ross will walk through some of the details related to the strategic investments and the strategic partners, but wanted to show everyone just how much the group has changed over the past 12-18 months here. Very happy with how this looks and how it's going, and I'll talk about some of the growth drivers on the next page.
Very happy with the progress that we've made to date. On page six, just some of the highlights. Here, showing $56 billion asset management firm now. We are focused exclusively on institutional quality alternative investment strategies. We've made great strides expanding beyond Lighthouse. We continue to see increasing market demand for alternative investments, both liquid and private investments, which we're focused on and in the areas that we own now.
We do continue to see a trend where investors seem to have, you know, strong allocations to liquid equities and bonds, but are increasing their allocations to alternatives, and whether that's hedge funds, private equity, real estate, venture capital, and we wanna position the firm for those growth opportunities. Second, we are seeing a change in the investment environment, and we're seeing inflation pick up. We're seeing interest rates start to normalize, and that's presenting a strong opportunity set for hedge funds and also for our other affiliates and partners. We think some of the volatility in the markets and some of the changes we're seeing in the regimes are very healthy.
I'll go through some of that performance, or what we're seeing in terms of performance, in more detail, when I talk about Lighthouse. The equity focus strategies that we've seen have performed quite well in recent months versus our peer, and we've certainly seen some volatility in the global equity markets. We've also seen very strong investment and financial performance across the NGI Strategic Portfolio. Ross will cover that in more detail, but we're very happy with the results there. Also, very good alignment and a very good working relationship with our partner, Dyal Capital. They remain a global leader in the alternative investment management space and with all of their affiliates as well.
We have made a lot of progress over the last six months as far as working together, developing a very strong pipeline, which has been fantastic. It has been great to work with Dyal, as a shareholder and as a strategic partner in NGI. We continue to find new ways to work together and add value. The pipeline that we've generated of new opportunities is particularly strong. Turning to page seven now, just looking at the value proposition for NGI. We now have a highly diversified earnings stream, and we have chances to grow that organically and inorganically as well. You know, before the transaction with Dyal, the earnings stream really just came from Lighthouse, and Lighthouse has been around for 25 years.
Has been a stable business and a stable profit generator. But it's certainly nice to have more highly diversified earnings stream from the equivalent of, you know, seven Lighthouses now, you know, producing high-quality earnings. In addition, the earnings across the eight established businesses that we have each have very different products and that creates stability, we think, across NGI. We think not only the earnings are more diversified, but now there's a higher quality of earnings as well because we have more diversification across the product sets. Each of these firms, as we've pointed out, have been in business for well over 10 years, 20 years in some cases. Very well-established businesses, good earning streams, good products, and that helps NGI as well.
The stability of earnings is also stronger than what it was in the past, and that's due to the preferred earnings stream we have off of the strategic portfolio. Ross will go into more detail on that. Again, the earnings are more stable for a portion of the business, and we're very happy about that. The fourth point is an active pipeline of investment opportunities. It is very strong. We can talk about that. We have more opportunities now than we can certainly act on or pursue. It's great when we have many things to select from, and that is the case right now. Very, very happy with that. There's really three ways that we can win and grow in this business.
The first way is through investment performance. All of the firms have some portion of their earnings from incentive fees. There is strong alignment with clients to generate returns, and grow AUM through performance. We're all aligned there, and certainly, that can be a driver of growth going forward. We also have organic growth and new product development. Each of the firms that we own an interest in, including Lighthouse, and Longreach and GROW, they all have business development teams that are actively trying to increase AUM and fill up the products. In addition, each of the firms has new product development mandates. I am confident we will see growth in the coming years through both asset-raising efforts and through new products.
When we look at the business, prior, when it was just Lighthouse, there's only a certain amount of new products that we can launch into the market in any given year. In addition, just the marketing opportunities, think of this now magnified, you know, eightfold, across the holding company. We think there will be new product cycles much more regularly across all of these firms than certainly one firm could have generated on their own. The third piece, just new investment and acquisition opportunities, that is working well, as I mentioned, with Dyal. The pipeline remains strong, and we're very confident that there's gonna be some good opportunities here this year going forward. We really have three ways to grow this business going forward.
I would say this is a much more scalable approach than it was just Lighthouse as a standalone basis. I see lots of opportunities for to grow over the next decade and beyond, and we're committed to doing that. Amber, if we could switch now to page nine I wanna talk specifically about Lighthouse and where we are with this business. About AUD 14 billion in AUM. We now have 25 years in the business. We have 163 employees. For those of you that have known us for a long time and been following us, that would be a fairly substantial jump from the previous year.
One of the changes that we made at Lighthouse in our operating model is we now have employees that are portfolio managers. When we started investing through managed accounts, even if a portfolio manager was going to be exclusive to us, we typically set them up in their own LLC and they would not be considered employees. The expenses of that LLC and the portfolio manager's compensation would run through the fund. Over the past several years we've had more requests from portfolio managers where they just wanna be employed by Lighthouse. We're happy to provide that opportunity to them. You will see our headcount steadily grow as we bring on portfolio managers and as portfolio managers transition from their own corporate entities to become employees of Lighthouse.
We think that's a trend that will continue in the future. What I should point out is that doesn't necessarily mean our operating expenses increase, and Amber will go through this in more detail. Basically, those costs of the portfolio managers just as in the past when they were their own entities are still passed on through the funds in a pass-through structure. There's really no increase in operating costs from this change of model from more of having their own independent corporate entities to being employees. You'll notice that jump in employees but not associated costs. We continue to grow our investment professionals here at Lighthouse as well. Very happy with the investment team with the research that we have globally. It's as strong as ever.
I expect it to continue to improve each year and to continue to uncover opportunities around the globe. I'm happy to report that we're well-positioned in North America for our research, Europe, and Asia as well, and continue to make more investments in the Asian region to improve our research there. Our investors are broadly diversified, and I will go through some more comments on a few pages just on the investment pipeline that we have. Core values remain the same. We wanna generate alpha through idiosyncratic stock selection. We wanna continue to innovate and provide new products and services to our clients.
We offered, you know, our hedge fund solutions group to our clients years ago, and that business continues to grow. We also have more specialized hedge fund products now in both North Rock and Mission Crest. We are committed to continuing to innovate and change with this industry. We wanna continue to manage the risks. There have been some very unique risks over the past six months that I'll touch on when I get to the investments. I think we've done a very good job of navigating these recent market conditions and are dedicated to continuing to having the tools to improve our risk management. Partnership goes without saying. We treat our investors as partners, and we wanna meet their needs.
We do that through transparency as well. We're an open book. We have tons of data. I think we have a lot of unique insights we can share with our clients. We take that attitude towards not only our clients, but to our service providers, to really everyone that we work with within the ecosystem. The core values remain the same, but that's a quick snapshot on Lighthouse. Page 10, just looking at the product mix that we have now. So hedge fund solutions, so we have AUD 6.6 billion in. That continues to be our commingled and customized funds business. We think we have certainly seen stabilization in that business and can see growth going forward.
The returns on our multi-strategy products on a calendar year basis were very strong last year, and we wanna continue to build off of that. Our two hedge fund offerings that we have now are both North Rock and Mission Crest. I expect the majority of the growth in the short term over the next six months in the Lighthouse business, and we have very good traction in both of those areas. A lot of inbound calls, which is unique. Typically, we're out there looking for new investors, and we have received a number of inbound inquiries for both of these funds over the past several months. That's a good sign as well. The managed account solutions business.
We've certainly put more resources into it, and the sales effort has picked up. The pipeline there, again, remains robust, and having a number of new conversations there as well. Very happy with how the business is shaping up, and think we can see growth in each of these areas. More specifically, on page 11, just looking at some of the breakdown of the investor type and the AUM. I'll break this up really into two sections. One is just on the investments themselves.
The equity markets over the last six months through today, if you look at the MSCI World or ACWI equity index, it's actually down about 60 basis points. The last six months have not been very good for the equity markets on a global basis. We have made money in both of our equity products, so in Global Long Short and in our North Rock fund, and we're very happy with that. The environment has been very tricky as equity markets have rotated from more of a growth stance to a value stance. Also, just different geographies have moved differently over the past six months. It's been a tricky environment from a factor perspective.
There's been lots of factor volatility as we've moved from, you know, COVID closures to reopenings, to different parts of the globe having different responses to COVID and different reactions to seeing the movements in China over last summer, and some of the regulatory changes that we had there. It's been a lot to absorb, but the funds have performed well. They've performed consistently, and that goes back again to an increased research effort into some of the risk parameters. Right now, the funds are very balanced towards growth and value, and towards the different sectors. That has been, you know, paying off well in terms of returns. In a month like January, I was happy with the results.
A month like February, I'm very pleased with the results so far that we've seen since through mid-month. We're making money on both up and down days and on the long and short sides of our portfolio. I think that again, the effort that we've put in to looking at these various factors and how to neutralize them, again get more focused on idiosyncratic risk, has paid off. Also underneath the surface of the equity markets, the average stock has corrected massively. When we look at something like the Nasdaq, which is more tech-dominated in the U.S., over you know 45% of that market or of those stocks have had a 40% correction.
It's been a tricky environment to work through, and I think we've done a good job. February is a really good month, so I'm happy with that. We wanna keep on delivering results to our clients. Happy with that. On the pipeline, the pipeline continues to actually grow, which is great. We continue to see growth there. We're seeing good geographic dispersion as well, so all areas we have pipeline growth in. We're also seeing clients and prospective clients start to travel, which we have not seen since the beginning of COVID. Those are all encouraging signs.
As I mentioned, probably the greatest areas of growth over the next six months will come from both North Rock and Mission Crest in addition to the hedge fund solutions business. Very pleased with the progress on the pipeline and how the team is performing coming out of COVID, being able to see clients again, and then also clients being able to visit from overseas locations. We had our first visitors from Europe this past month. We have a Middle East visit at the end of this month, and we have our first Japanese visits the first week of March. Things are starting to open up, which is great from a marketing perspective and a pipeline perspective.
All in all, I'm very happy with how the Lighthouse business is positioned right now for growth going forward. I'm happy with the investments and the investment results, and happy at the end of the call to answer any more specific questions on the markets or ask what's going on, but feel we're well positioned coming into the second half of the fiscal year here. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Ross to talk about the strategic investments. Over to you, Ross.
Thanks, Sean. Yeah, I'll start on slide 13 here with a quick update on the NGI Strategic Portfolio. Start by saying we've been very pleased with the performance of the portfolio this year. You'll see on the top part of the slide here that portfolio firm level AUM of AUD 40 billion is at its five-year high, and we've seen a 10% increase in ownership-adjusted AUM since we closed the transaction on February 1. Good growth and good momentum, and we're happy that we're seeing that across the portfolio. The managers have generated strong investment performance across their products, but especially in their key products, for the calendar year 2021, and this includes a number of strategies that did see material drawdowns in the beginning of 2020.
We feel like all of those managers have not only recouped their gains, but have gained momentum and improved their expertise in their respective strategies. As Sean highlighted earlier, each one of these six businesses remains active in bringing both existing and new products to market. There's good momentum there. This performance in asset growth has resulted in AUD 20.1 million of profit distributions to Navigator through February 14 of this year. This represents our AUD 17.5 million preferred share for the full fiscal year of 2022, plus 20% of the AUD 13.1 million above that received year to date, or an additional AUD 2.6 million. To summarize there, we've already received our pref of AUD 17.5 for the full fiscal year, plus AUD 2.6 million through February 14, which we're excited about.
You'll see on the bottom left hand of the slide that only AUD 7.2 million of these distributions were received through December 31st. That's all that you'll see reported in the interim results here from an accounting perspective that Amber will walk through. This does represent some seasonality in the distributions that we've highlighted in prior discussions about the portfolio. It may be a bit more amplified this year than others in an outstandingly strong performing year, but we do expect that the first half of our fiscal year should see a seasonally lower number. That's why we wanna make sure to provide you guys the year-to-date number that we have. We remain very excited about the outlook of these six firms, and we do expect their recent performance only strengthens their leadership position in the industry.
In the context of some of the attractive dynamics we see now in the hedge fund industry that Sean hit on, we're very excited about how these six firms will perform going forward. I'll flip to slide 14 quickly. We wanted to spend a few more minutes again, reviewing the structure of our ownership in this portfolio because we realized the two-stage transaction with Dyal can at times in a snapshot in time be a bit complex. We'll walk through this a little bit. On the left-hand side of the slide, you know, the first stage of the transaction, we are halfway through year two of a five-year profit sharing arrangement that we have with Dyal.
In this period, we were highly focused on getting a high-quality earning stream that was well covered by the portfolio to provide a balance to the company and help us execute on our growth opportunities. As I highlighted on the left side, we've received year two's prep already. We do have some limited upside to this structure, but we think that the high quality of this earning stream is tremendously valuable to us as we look to grow. The sensitivity analysis on the bottom left will show you that in almost any scenario, in these scenarios, if you think of rolling up by six firms, there are pretty wide, a wide set of outcomes. Navigator should earn somewhere between AUD 20 million-AUD 25 million or so for the next, you know, this year plus three more fiscal years. That's
There's 3% index in there as well, so there's some embedded growth. On the right-hand side of the slide is the second stage of the transaction or the settlement. To use this fiscal 2022 year-to-date example, at this stage, we would have been acquiring the AUD 10.5 million in distributions that Dyal's already shared in of the AUD 21 million year to date. Excuse me, the AUD 30 million year to date. Amber will walk you through a bit more about how the accounting for this settlement impacts earnings until it happens. I would highlight that this structure uses a fixed formula, is based on the actual financial performance of the portfolio, and will, in almost any scenario, result in an increase in Navigator's earnings in the following year.
Through the formula that we agreed upon with Dyal, we also have very good visibility into the quantum of the 2026 payment well in advance of it being due. We view this redemption payment as a known scheduled acquisition of incremental earnings in businesses we already know and we already like. That will be accretive in almost any scenario that we can think of. You can see on the bottom right, we have some scenario analysis to review. We can come back with questions, but it has some implied outcomes there which all show material increase in our earnings, as well as the implied kind of multiple once it's run through the increased agreed calc. The last thing I'd highlight here in slide 14 is upon this redemption payment in 2026, the strategic partnership with Dyal does not cease.
That partnership is longer term in nature than just this profit sharing and redemption of the profit-sharing interest. It's related to the services agreement and shareholders agreement that we executed with Dyal at the time of the transaction last year, and those are predicated on Dyal's overall ownership in Navigator. Dyal's ownership will be material, if not at similar levels to what it is today at the time of the redemption payment, given both what we know about the existing escrow agreements agreed, as well as our understanding of their own long-term time horizon. Hopefully that's helpful as you think about the portfolio in the context of our next few years' earnings. Amber, if we flip to slide 15 quickly. We wanted to highlight two very exciting investments that we did make in the first half of the year here.
These two investments illustrate the key criteria for new partners that we're really focused on. Both groups are led by experienced, cohesive management teams with deep industry relationships in their specific markets, proven investment and proven operating track records, and a specific focus on deploying strategies that target current client demand. These specific opportunities here provide Navigator exposure to the growth we expect to continue in both the alternative asset management industry in Australia through Longreach, as well as the rapidly growing but highly competitive and specifically relationship-driven onshore Chinese asset management market through our partnership with Grow. As Sean mentioned earlier, the acquisition pipeline remains remarkably robust.
The current pipeline shares certain characteristics with Longreach and Grow, but I would note that generally speaking, it's focused on U.S. and European private markets, alternative managers, who, if we're successful in partnering with, are at a size that would contribute significantly to our earnings closely after completion. Whereas these two investments, which we're super excited about, are a bit smaller in nature and will take some time to contribute in a material fashion. Amber, I think at this point I'll turn it back to you to cover the financial results.
Great. Thank you, Ross. As Sean stated earlier, we've come in with an Adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2022, right on $20 million. This is up 33% from the equivalent prior period, and we're really happy with the result. It reflects both the earnings that we've gotten from the NGI Strategic Portfolio as well as some reductions in operating expenses. In terms of our FY 2022 guidance, we reiterate that guidance at $40 million-$42 million. We're pretty comfortable with coming halfway there already, and we think that the second half should mirror the first, even if there's a slight difference in the underlying components of the income between the two halves.
In terms of the Navigator results, like most companies, while we have our statutory results, we also have a measure that we think more fully reflects the performance of the group, and that's our Adjusted EBITDA. This slide steps through how we go from our statutory numbers through to the Adjusted EBITDA number of AUD 20 million. Within revenue, we're required to book under the accounting standards where we pay for expenses on behalf of the funds and then are reimbursed after that. That represents the AUD 14.4 million in this half under the reimbursement and fund operating expense line. Because there's an equivalent expense, it's actually EBITDA neutral, and we consider that in our Adjusted EBITDA, this should be backed out of both revenue and expenses.
Similarly for the revenue from the provision of serviced office, this is a straight reimbursement that we get through of occupancy expenses we pay. There's no markup on it, and so there's an equivalent offsetting expense. Again, we think the right thing to do for our Aadjusted EBITDA is to back that out. As you can see, the sum of those reduce the revenue side and our Adjusted EBITDA by AUD 15.3, and there's also a corresponding reduction in the expense line. The second adjustment we do to get to our Adjusted EBITDA relates to the cash payments that we make. Under the accounting standards that commenced on July 19th, there were some changes where the actual rent component is considered to be a liability and that payment now doesn't go through as an operating expense.
We still think that it needs to be back, put back in, into our EBITDA, so we add it back from that perspective. There is an equivalent, lease depreciation expense, but obviously that doesn't go into the EBITDA line. Lastly, our third adjustment relates to the NGI Strategic Portfolio. Both the investments that relate to that portfolio as well as that future redemption payment that we make in 2026 that Ross just talked through. Each of those need to be fair value each balance date. Each of those may move up and down. They're unrealized, and they're generally offsetting.
In this case, because we had a really excellent first half, the redemption came in higher than the increase in the assets, but I'll talk through a little bit more about that in a later slide. Just on to the next slide, and this is just showing how we've actually compared to the prior year Adjusted EBITDA. Last year was equivalent period, AUD 15.1. You can see from there, and I'll go through in more detail the particular items, but largely the management fee and performance fee revenue has stayed fairly consistent between the periods. The key new item that is in our revenue is the distributions coming through from the NGI Strategic Portfolio.
On the expense side, you can see that our expenses have stayed pretty much the same on our employee costs, despite that change in operating model that Sean referred to earlier. Our operating expenses have actually come down 22% compared to the prior period. All of that equals down to that $20 million Adjusted EBITDA result for the half. The next slide, we actually set out the statutory. Like it or not, the accounting standards must be followed. This one actually shows you how we get to the statutory EBITDA of $14.4 million, including those items that I mentioned before. We still focus on EBITDA at this point.
We have a tax expense but no actual tax payment given the significant losses that we're still using up in the Lighthouse side of business, and our depreciation and amortization still remain relatively small, so hence our focus on EBITDA. In terms of the key revenue items, management fees, as I mentioned, actually came in pretty much the same as last year's result. This reflects both an increase in the average AUM compared to the prior period, but there was also an offsetting reduction in management fee average management fee rate. The two of those actually end up offsetting to put us in a similar position. That reduction in management fee rate you can see didn't actually move too much from the second half of 2021, only down two basis points.
We're really seeing the full impact of what happened back in March 2020, when we had some of those significant impacts in our AUM coming through from the beginning of the pandemic. They're actually settling out, as you can see from that trend in the average management fee rate. The performance fees, we actually had AUD 8.8 million in performance fees for the half, so another real good year. Only slightly down on the equivalent period last year, which was, you know, historically a very good period. The split of that per the pie chart, so about just under 50% still comes from our co-mingled funds. We earn a third from our customized, and the hedge fund portfolio produced about 18% of those fees.
We do see the hedge fund portfolio and products likely to be a bigger contributor to performance fees potentially going forward. They're in a really good growth phase, and they do have a performance fee option that we would think will be attractive to new investors. We might see that ratio shift in future. In terms of the NGI strategic portfolio, as Ross said, it can be a little bit complicated. Just to reiterate, we put that box on the slide just to step through the key accounting policies. It's certainly a lot simpler this year, which I'm very happy about. In terms of the actual distribution income in the P&L, we only recognize that the income that we get is on a cash basis.
We book revenue as and when we receive the cash from that portfolio. We only recognize Dyal's share of that cash once we exceed the minimum distribution amount. As Ross mentioned, we physically received the cash up to AUD 7.2 as at 31 December, but following the half calendar year close, we received all cash on the 3rd of January, which was an excellent result. In terms of the actual assets and liabilities, the holdings that we have in the investment managers, they're held at fair value, and we reassess those each balance date. We look at what's happened in the portfolio, we look at our underlying assumptions, and we actually measure those fair values using a discounted cash flow model.
Once we actually took into account the great performance and those impacts, we wrote up the fair value of those investments by AUD 28.7 million for the half. On the flip side, we also have to look forward and estimate what the redemption liability we're gonna pay in 2026 will be. We need to fair value that. We estimated what it is, and we discount it back to a current fair value. When we look at that, we need to both unwind the discount that we've applied as each year passes, and we also just need to look at if there's any changes to the estimated end payment amount.
Because we had exceptionally good calendar year 2021, and that fixed that first year of the calculation in terms of the redemption payment, that meant that our redemption liability, our fair value increased a bit above the actual investments. The net result was a decrease in fair value of AUD 7.2 million. In June, we actually had an increase of AUD 8.4 million. Overall, we've had since acquisition, the assets have actually increased marginally more than the liability. In terms of operating expenses, as I mentioned, the employee expenses have actually stayed flat compared to the prior comparative period.
This is despite obviously that increase in the actual number of employees that we have, but reflects the fact that we have the pass-through model in operation so that their employment costs are largely passed on to the funds. You can also see this dynamic reflected in the reduction in the information technology and the professional consulting fees. That kind of ties in, I guess, when you see that the increase in our fund reimbursement go from AUD 4.4 up to AUD 14.4, that reflects that pass-through model through as well. Overall, really happy with the expenses. They're down slightly, obviously, which is a good result from that perspective. Lastly, I just determined an AUD 0.055 interim dividend.
The record dates, that will be the 24th of February and payment the 11th of March. That represents a 74% payout ratio on the Adjusted EBITDA, which we're very happy to be able to deliver. That's the end of my section of the presentation. Happy to pass it over for questions.
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. Today's first question comes from Philip Chippindale with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Good morning, team. Thanks very much for your time. First question, I just wanna touch on the employee costs, which are obviously flat versus PCP. The head count, though, now that you're including all the PMs, it sort of muddies the waters. I guess, where I'm going with this, I'd just like to know, can you give us a sense of, you know, the change in employee costs on a maybe a percentage basis versus the prior period? You know, what sort of wage growth are you seeing? Then maybe a comment as to what that's looking like at the moment. Are you experiencing any wage pressures, et cetera, in your business?
I would say, Phil, not anything significant as far as that. As far as the percentages, I would probably wanna come back to you on that. I think we've done a very good job of managing total head count that we have here and directing resources where we need them. We continue to get a little bit more specialized in our operational activity. But no, you know, most hedge fund businesses like Lighthouse, a lot of the total compensation is gonna come from bonus as opposed to fixed remuneration, and a lot of that's gonna be determined on the performance as well. I think in that respect, we're not seeing massive you know pressure on that.
You know, I think everyone here knows you know, we wanna perform for our clients. If we do that, you know, fees you know, AUM goes up, fees go up, our clients are happy, and you know, we can pay more. I think the pay in this industry is a little bit more variable than in other industries, but not seeing tremendous cost pressure at this point.
Okay. Thanks, Sean. You mentioned earlier that, you know, you're seeing a lot of opportunities come across your desk. Can you give us a sense of the types of opportunities that you're seeing? Is this really a comment that's linked to your relationship with Dyal, is that where these opportunities come from? And then, you know, I suppose a bit of a follow on there. Is it sort of single manager opportunities? Is it portfolios? Again, just give us a sense of the types of things that you're getting the opportunity to look at.
Yeah. I'll answer that, and then I'll let Ross jump in as well. I would say that the opportunities are a combination of both our sourcing and Dyal, and more importantly, working together. I think that Phil, it took a little bit of time to get this story out there and for groups to understand what we were doing and how this could be advantageous to them. The types of groups range from you know, hedge funds to real estate firms, to private equity firms, venture capital firms, and as Ross mentioned, really on a global basis. I would say they are not really portfolios of companies or portfolios of firms that we're looking at. They're more one-off.
Right now, yes, the pipeline is very strong. We expected it to take a little while for the opportunity set to kick in. We needed to go explain ourselves to this market and for people to realize what we were doing in the space. I think it is in full gear right now, and the pipeline remains very strong. Ross, I don't know if you wanna comment anything else.
No. I think you covered it, Sean. I think that is the range of kind of underlying asset classes. I would just reiterate that, you know, we're seeing, you know, well-established, kind of proven teams and existing scaled businesses who are looking to partner, which is really attractive for us because we have something that we can look to. They can contribute to our earnings, you know, almost immediately after entering the partnership. Often, you know, when we do partner with them, they have a good use of proceeds to kind of fuel growth. I would say those are common characteristics across those asset classes, which is, again, yeah, as Sean said, it's a function of the pipeline we've built with Dyal, getting the word out and just kind of where some of these businesses sit in their own evolution. It's a busy and exciting time, Phil.
Thanks, Ross. Final question for me before I jump back in the queue. Just your EBITDA for the year of AUD 40 million-AUD 42 million. You've done AUD 20 million in the first half. Obviously you haven't changed your guidance. What does the guidance assume in terms of receipts or distributions from the Dyal portfolio going forward? Obviously, it's been a lumpy one and obviously January saw you know the bulk of that come through. Just wondering, does that sort of guidance not assume any more? Is it sort of a relatively small contribution? Yeah, just love a comment on that, please.
Yeah, I mean, I think, we're reflecting the extra AUD 12.9 million that we know of, to date. Taking that into account, just keep in mind, we only get 20% of any additional distributions on top of that. You know, for every extra AUD 1 million that comes in, it's only AUD 200,000 additional revenue for us. We do expect that there will be some more, but I think we're still comfortable within that guidance range, just, because you can't count it until it's actually received.
Okay, thanks .
One thing I would point out as well, you know, Ross and I are commenting that the pipeline is strong. There are some associated costs with purchasing interest in these firms that are not, you know, insignificant. You know, we've got to factor everything in going forward here from the. You know, I feel very good with how Lighthouse is doing now, how these strategic investments are doing, as well. Hopefully, if we can continue to add to our portfolio of companies, you know, there are some transaction costs related to that as well. That's something to keep in mind. They're one-off costs. They're not recurring. We do need to spend money to make these transactions happen.
Okay. Thanks very much. Appreciate you, Tom.
As a reminder, please press star then one if you'd like to ask a question. Our next question today comes from Nick McGarrigle with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Thanks for the question, taking questions and, following on from Philip's good questions, just another one on the Strategic Portfolio. I think the original guidance for the contribution from that portfolio was 20-22, and given the bulk of returns have been received and everything from here is, as you said, 20%. Does it imply that the underlying business excluding the Strategic Portfolio is going better than expected, given you've maintained guidance?
In terms of the Lighthouse business, I think that's tracking along as we expect. Certainly we're happy with the way that we've modeled out the costs on that and how that's reflected. Certainly we have an amount of growth on the AUM side reflected in the second half. We're feeling pretty comfortable with that in the pipeline.
Can you just talk through that growth and where that's currently coming from in terms of just the pipeline of flow? I'm assuming you're talking about flow more than January and February investment performance.
Yeah, a little bit of both. Obviously we're pretty happy with the pipeline, and the way that that's actually tracking through. With everything in the asset management space, until you actually get the investments made and can't count on them as well. We usually also factor in a small amount of growth just from investment performance based on long-term averages as well.
Can you just comment on performance in January and February thus far? I mean, the markets have been fairly volatile. Has that been good for the managers within Lighthouse?
Yes, it has, particularly here in February. You know, there's a big growth sell-off obviously in January. Some of it's continued here into February with certainly the U.S. markets down. You know, volatility has ticked back up as evidenced by the VIX index in the U.S. Now, the alpha production has been quite strong. We're seeing companies, particularly in this earnings season and particularly in February, that if they're missing numbers or it's weaker, they're going down and we're making money on that on the short side. Those that are beating earnings or guiding higher have performed well.
In from August through December, you know, we saw some, I would say less rational behavior, and you were seeing a lot of factor movements again between growth value. Earnings didn't play as big a role in how some of the stocks were moving, and now that's really caught up. But one of the things that we concentrated on in the second half of the calendar year was making sure that we weren't gonna be overexposed to any one type of factor because we thought there would be a violent reversal in some of these factors. If you look at a factor like unprofitable tech companies, that's rolled over. If you look at biotech, it's rolled over.
If you look at some value things, they perform well, like financials, industrials, materials, energy, which we don't have a lot of exposure to. It was really important to be balanced here. You're seeing very different results within the hedge fund industry this year. Those that were tilted more towards growth have had a really rough year. Those that were tilted more to value have certainly made more than we have. At the same time, we've produced very consistent results. Our clients were very happy with the results in January. They're very happy with the estimated results here in February. I'm very happy that we made some changes to the portfolio in the middle part of last year and really tightened things up. No, so far, so good in this calendar year.
We saw a lot of rebalancing in Australia from institutional investors in those six months to December. Can you talk through how allocators are thinking about markets at the moment and how that impacts potential flows into hedge funds?
I think that investors absolutely love private markets and would continue probably to put more capital in there. You know, the public equity markets have done quite well, and I would say there are a lot of institutional investors that are overweight the riskier assets in their portfolio, be that public equities or private equity or venture capital given it's performed. No, we haven't seen you know any of the recent marks on that. With growth rolling over and tech rolling over, you'd have to assume some of those investments come down. Also, fixed income investments in the U.S. have not worked well this year and are down as well. A standard you know 60/40 portfolio through this point in the year is down.
We are seeing more interest from institutional investors, who need to, you know, get the risk balance right, who can't put any more money into privates in that scenario. It has ticked up fixed income. With rising interest rates, there's a concern to put more capital there. I think that's why we're seeing a pickup in interest, as well as our own performance. Our multi-strat performance was strong last year. North Rock did well, Mission Crest did well. We just continue to build on that. Again, these visits by investors, potential investors from foreign countries is also very encouraging to us.
Thanks. I might ask just one last one and open the line back up. Just in terms of the strategic portfolio, can you give us a sense of the contribution that you've received up until mid-February? How much of that came from or the proportion from performance fees as opposed to management fees, just so we can get a sense of the stability of that return going forward. I know that performance fees have been consistent, but it's just useful to get some sense of the performance fee split in that distribution this year.
Yeah, I can start with that. I don't know if Amber and Sean, you wanna add in. It's hard to say, Nick. Because these are profit distributions, they do come out post expenses, obviously. We'd really wanna look to the underlying revenue split of these because each of the six businesses, they are run quite differently. They have different kind of operating footprint size, investment teams, performance fees, et cetera. The comp structures can be different as well. In terms of, you know, I wouldn't wanna split up the management fee and performance fee earnings specifically, but I would say that in kind of an average year, what we see across the portfolio is kind of a rough. These are rough numbers, and they're in line with historical numbers we previously disclosed.
In an average year, you would see probably 70/30 split in terms of management fee, performance fee revenue for these like, you know, these scaled multi-product businesses that we're invested in. I would say as performance picks up in those years, you know, you can't translate this exactly to earnings depending on various cost structures, but it typically can shift all the way to 50/50 for these scaled businesses. Still a very large component from management fee profits, but a more meaningful component from performance fees. If you think of the AUD 20 million we've received to date, or more specifically, the AUD 30.6 million of gross distributions that came out of the portfolio, I would say we're probably closer on a...
When this whole full year trues up to somewhere between that 70-50, because it's, you know, again, there's diversification across the six, but it's a strong year. We still feel really good that our prep captured through kind of management-related, management fee-related earnings, plus some upside from there. How we think of it right now with regards to performance fees, and especially in the context of the answer Sean just gave you, is that strong performance in today's market, especially for these established firms that have been out there and they're known, is just a really good momentum builder to continue to raise assets and be leaders longer term. There is a trend towards established groups. There is a trend towards groups who are shifting and launching new products like Lighthouse and the six groups that we are invested in.
If they're having a good year as well, in strong performance, it's good momentum. Even though we don't share in as much upside in the first five years here from that, it's a really kind of value accretive trend that we're seeing.
Great. Thanks. Second question.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. McGould for closing remarks.
Well, thank you everyone for listening this morning and this evening. As always, if there's questions or follow-up after this, please let us know. We are excited about what we're building here and the changes that we've made over the past year and a half. We think they're starting to work, and that's showing in the results that we have, and again, very optimistic here for the future. Thank you for your time today. Appreciate it.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.