Okay. Good morning, everybody. It has just moved to 9:00 A.M., and we can start. Welcome to everyone, ladies, gentlemen, fellow shareholders, colleagues, and visitors. Welcome to the Pinnacle 2022 Annual General Meeting. Thank you for taking the time to join us here in person and online today. I wish to begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, traditional custodians of the land on which this AGM is being held, and pay my respects to elders past and present.
My name is Alan Watson. I'm the Chairman of Pinnacle Investment Management Group Limited. Before we begin today with the agenda, I'd like to introduce my fellow board members. Going to my right. First on my right, we have Ian Macoun, our Managing Director. Next to Ian is Deborah Beale, then Mr. Gerard Bradley and Ms. Lorraine Berends, our Independent Directors.
On my far right, we have Andrew Chambers and Adrian Whittingham, sorry, our Executive Directors. At this meeting, we're sad to say farewell to Adrian, who is not standing for re-election. On behalf of the board, I would like to thank Adrian for his commitment and extraordinary contribution to the company for more than 15 years, both as an executive and as a director.
We wish him the very best in his future endeavors. I also note that Gerard Bradley AO, has provided notice of his intention to retire as a non-executive during 2023. Gerard has served as a director of the company since August 2016, and during his tenure has provided strong leadership as chair of our audit, compliance, and risk management committee, while also serving as a member of the remuneration and nominations committee.
I want to take the opportunity at this meeting, together with our shareholders, to express our gratitude for Gerard's dedication and contributions to the company during a period of very, very significant growth. Also here today is Calvin Kwok, our Company Secretary, Chief Legal and Commercial Officer, and Mr. Dan Longan at the back, who is our Chief Financial Officer.
I would also like to welcome the company's auditor, Mr. Ben Woodbridge from PricewaterhouseCoopers, again, at the back, who is here to answer any questions that shareholders may have in relation to the 2022 financial statements. Next slide. This slide contains important information and disclaimers in relation to the presentation, which I encourage shareholders to read. Okay. I now turn to the agenda for today's meeting, as shown on the screen. The meeting will commence with the formal business.
After that, Ian will provide an update from the Managing Director. I've been informed by the company secretary that we have a quorum, and I now declare the meeting open. I'm also advised there are no apologies recorded prior to the commencement of this meeting, and that the notice of meeting was sent to all registered members within the notice period required. I now table the notice of meeting, and unless there are any objections, I will take the notice convening this meeting as read.
I will now proceed with the formal business of the meeting in the order that it appears in the notice of meeting. There are three items of business to attend to, being the formal tabling of 2022 financial statements, adoption of the remuneration report, and re-election of two of the company's directors.
Shareholders may ask questions prior to each resolution being put to the vote. Shareholders attending in person, please raise your hand if you'd like to ask a question. Shareholders joining online, please click on the Q&A icon, select the topic your question relates to from the dropdown list, type your question in the box, and once you've finished typing, please hit the Send button.
Shareholders joining online who would like to ask verbal questions, please follow the instructions below the broadcast window. You will be placed in a queue to ask your question. When it is your turn to ask, the moderator will advise you to introduce yourself and ask your question. I request that shareholders limit themselves to two questions and only ask questions at this time in respect of matters relevant to the item of business being considered.
Questions may be moderated or amalgamated if there are multiple questions on the same topic. As usual, Ian will be providing a fuller update after the formal business of the meeting has been dealt with, and there will be an opportunity for shareholders to ask general questions after that. Okay. The persons entitled to vote are shareholders, representatives and attorneys of shareholders, and proxy holders, all of whom should be holding blue admission cards if you are attending in person.
On the reverse of your blue admission card is your voting card and instructions. Please also ensure you print your name where indicated and sign the voting card. When you have completed your voting card, please lodge it in a ballot box to ensure the votes are counted. If you require any assistance, please raise your hand.
If you're voting online, please click on the Vote icon to access your voting card. Please select For, Against, or Abstain on each resolution. Please note there is no Enter or Send button as votes are automatically recorded. You may also change your vote up until the time I declare voting closed.
As noted in the notice of meetings, resolutions will be decided by a poll, which I now declare open. I will put the resolutions to the meeting shortly. All valid proxies received have been recorded and these will be reported to the ASX after the meeting. For shareholders' information, we will now display on the screen prior to the consideration of each resolution, the proxy voting for each resolution.
The first item of formal business on the notice of meeting is to consider the financial statements of the company for the year ended June 30th 2022, together with the directors' report and the auditors' report as set out in the 2022 annual report, which have been made available to shareholders. I formally table the financial statements of the company for the year ended June 2022, and the related directors' report, directors' declaration, and auditors' report. If I may, I will take all of these reports as read.
If anyone has any questions in relation to the financial statements, the content of PwC's audit report for the year end June 2022, the accounting policies adopted by the company in relation to the preparation of financial statements, or the independence of the auditor in relation to the conduct of the auditor, please either submit them now or raise your hand. There are none in the room and online. Okay.
The next item of business is to consider the adoption of the remuneration report for the 2022 financial year. The remuneration report is contained within the 2022 annual report and forms part of the directors' report. The remuneration report incorporates information required by Section 300A of the Corporations Act, and sets out the remuneration policy for the company and reports the remuneration arrangements in place for key management personnel, including the directors.
Section 250R(2) of the Corporations Act requires companies to put a resolution to their members that the remuneration report contained in the directors' report be adopted. If anyone has any questions in relation to this resolution, please submit them now or raise your hand. I now put the resolution shown on the screen to the meeting. The number of proxies received by the company as at 48 hours prior to the meeting are now shown on the screen. Can you all see that or do you want me to read it out?
No, that's good.
Can't see it. Okay. There were 101 million votes cast, of which 99.35% were in favor.
Thank you.
Okay. Please cast your vote on the voting card. Re-election of directors. The meeting now needs to consider the re-election of two directors in accordance with the constitution. The constitution requires that one-third of the company's directors eligible for rotation, being all directors other than the Managing Director and any director appointed as a casual vacancy, stand for re-election every three years.
The directors to retire by rotation at each AGM are those who have been longest in office since their election or last re-election. Deborah Beale and Andrew Chambers are retiring from office and offer themselves for re-election. The explanatory statement attached to the notice of meetings provides information in relation to Deborah. In summary, Deborah has had a distinguished career in the finance industry, having worked for Merrill Lynch and Ernst & Young, and has extensive experience in corporate governance, risk management, government, and public relations.
If anyone has any questions in relation to this resolution, please submit them now or raise your hand. Okay, the number of proxies received by the company as at 48 hours prior to the meeting of the resolution is on the screen, and that is a total of 127,394,916 votes, of which 99.67% are in favor. Please cast your vote on your voting card. Thank you.
Turning now to Andrew. The explanatory statement attached to the notice of meeting provides information in relation to Andrew. In summary, Andrew is currently responsible for leading the company's institutional and international distribution divisions and has been a senior executive with the company since 2008. He has been an executive director of the company since 2016.
If anyone has any questions in relation to this resolution, please submit them now or raise your hand. Calvin, anything online? The number of proxies received by the company as at 48 hours prior are now on the screen, and that's slightly different. It's 127,395,116 have been received, and 99.51% are in favor of Andrew's re-election.
Please cast your vote on the voting card. Please ensure you cast your vote on each of the resolutions. Now for shareholders attending in person, please lodge your completed voting cards in a ballot box. If you need any help, please raise your hand or type a message in the Q&A box if you require more time to complete your voting cards. Anyone else? Everybody okay? Oh, one in the front row here. Okay, is that everyone? Thank you. I now declare the poll closed. The results of the poll will be announced to the ASX as soon as they're available, and that concludes the formal business of this meeting. I will now hand over to Ian, our Managing Director, for an update.
Thanks, Alan, and good morning, everyone. What I would like to do today is firstly, to review the key themes and outcomes for your company for the 2022 financial year. To briefly review the financial highlights for the 2022 financial year. To provide an update on developments during the first quarter of the new 2023 financial year.
To elaborate on the success we have had during the past several years in executing on our strategy of increasing the diversity and robustness of the business while growing rapidly. To explain how this has created an excellent platform from which we can continue to grow both in Australia and internationally in a variety of ways, with three mutually reinforcing horizons of growth, while being robust to the kinds of external adversity experienced in both 2020 and 2022 financial years.
To share some detail on the strong progress that we have made in the vitally important area of corporate sustainability and the great work of the Pinnacle Charitable Foundation. As shareholders are aware, the 2022 financial year was a difficult year for your company as market and funds management industry conditions deteriorated, commencing around the beginning of the second half of the financial year.
The buoyant conditions in the world share markets that prevailed through 2021 financial year and the first part of the 2022 financial year, gave way to weak conditions which prevailed through the second half of FY 2022 and the first quarter of FY 2023. The result was that our profitability for the 2022 financial year increased only modestly over the record of FY 2021 and was below what would have been predicted at the beginning of that 2022 financial year.
Happily, markets have strengthened again during the period of about six weeks since the end of September, but that is a relatively short period of time and there is a long way to go before the current year ends. Predicting the outcomes for this financial year is extremely difficult. The slide that's now showing on the screen has been extracted from our annual results presentation of August 2.
It sets out how we summarize the key themes and outcomes for your company for the 2022 financial year. We continued our unblemished record of increasing our profit every year, notwithstanding that the FY 2021 profit was double that of the previous year. We benefited during FY 2022, and this will increasingly be the case going forward from having further diversified our business, including increasing the proportion of funds under management not exposed to equity markets.
Pinnacle and all of our affiliates undertook substantial further investment that will add to capacity and add to the growth in our funds under management and profits in future years. Provide further detail on our profits, funds under management and flows shortly. The fact that we were able to hold to the FY 2021 net profit after tax and earnings per share, and in fact provide some modest increase over the record levels of FY 2021, was a useful demonstration of the continuing benefits from the increasing diversity in our business of asset class and investment strategies of the affiliates, client type and domicile, and performance fee exposure.
Although we are planning to continue this diversification process for many more years, the outcomes we've delivered during the recent period of difficult conditions give us confidence in the robustness of the business and our ability to be resilient in the face of further external adversity that may lie ahead.
Slide 18 elaborates these themes. It starts off with the simple facts of the percentage increases during FY 2022, 14% increase in net profit after tax, 8% increase in earnings per share, and 22% increase in dividends on the record results that we achieved in FY 2021. As I mentioned earlier, the reality is that our FY 2022 profits were only modestly ahead of the previous year and far below what we were all anticipating at the start of that financial year.
We work hard to be a high-growth company, and we don't like to disappoint our shareholders by delivering anything less than high growth. Clearly, though, there's a significant degree of cyclicality to our earnings pattern, and the trajectory will not be a smooth upward straight line. What we've managed to date is very high growth during favorable market conditions, then holding on to that success with just modest growth during market downturns, resulting in still high average growth rates.
We have the very recent example of only single-digit growth in FY 2020. Recall, this was the initial seriously COVID-disrupted year, and that was followed by a doubling of our profits in FY 2021. The average growth in earnings per share is now 32% per annum over the last three years, even though this includes two down periods in the space of these three years.
We've always said that we cannot predict future market conditions and that we would not be immune from any market downturns. We've worked hard to make the company increasingly resilient. Market downturns are, of course, part and parcel of our industry. I'm old enough to have experienced many during my career, as have my colleagues.
We can't predict precisely when we will come out of them, but we do know that recovery does inevitably come, and our job right now is to achieve the best possible outcomes in the current circumstances. At the same time, importantly, to keep your company strong and our high-quality capabilities intact and match fit, so we can continue rapid growth and take full advantage when conditions again become more favorable.
In point two of this slide, our aggregate base fees have continued to increase notwithstanding the much lower headline net inflows this year, following the record net inflows last year. This is because the net institutional flow numbers mask a picture of quite large outflows during the 2022 financial year, largely from old domestic institutional mandates, which are at generally modest fee rates and large inflows into higher fee asset classes and strategies from both local and international investors, the net effect of which has been to increase average base fee rates and the aggregate base fees through the year. The large net inflows into retail in the first half also helped increase total revenue. The result is that affiliates' run rate of aggregate revenues at of June 30th 2022 was significantly higher than the aggregate revenues through the 2022 financial year.
We note that industry-wide pressures have had an impact on net inflows. Retail inflows fell to low levels in the second half of the year. AUD 700 million of net inflows compared with AUD 2.9 billion in the first half. This is quite similar to what happened from March 2020. Equity markets dropped substantially and aggregate industry flows dried up. That was followed by record inflows in FY 2021 and the first half of FY 2022 as soon as market conditions improved again. We note also that the FUM with performance fee potential has continued to increase both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of the total FUM.
In point three, we call out the fact that the diversity of our asset classes has continued to increase with an increasing proportion of our FUM not being exposed to equity markets, and also that the breadth of our performance fee FUM has further increased. We now have 22 strategies with the potential to deliver material performance fees up from 18 a year earlier. This year it was helpful that 10 affiliates delivered performance fees. We received material performance fees even though none of our large performance fee FUM strategies, except of course Palisade, fired this year. We look forward to those strategies firing in the years ahead.
In point four, we're emphasizing how much Horizon 2 investment we've made throughout the group during the year, noting that this very substantial investment, which has been made within just about all of the affiliates as well as within Pinnacle itself, will drive growth over the medium term.
This investment has very significantly moderated our FY 2022 profits. For the first time, we've sought to quantify this impact, estimating that our net profit after tax in FY 2022 was reduced by, in the order of AUD 12 million as a result of these investments. We believe this approach within the Pinnacle Group of deliberately incurring large P&L expense on initiatives such as major new investment strategies which will not produce revenue for several years, is of such magnitude as to cause many analysts and shareholders to underestimate Pinnacle's true profitability.
Though they reduce current year's profits, these investments tend to generate extremely large returns over the medium term. We make the point in five that our balance sheet has been highly valuable. We use it as an enabler of growth, employing it as an accelerator for new affiliates and new strategies within existing affiliates. We've given a couple of examples there.
Access to capital also enables us to facilitate succession within affiliates, such as with the recycling of equity. We make the point also that Pinnacle is the natural acquirer of additional equity of affiliates. As affiliates grow in value very substantially, long-serving affiliate executives can achieve some liquidity from their equity at the appropriate time, and a lesser percentage equity is needed in order to achieve the same incentivization impact as was achieved in earlier years.
We note that we had AUD 120 million of dry powder available for the acquisition of equity in Horizon 3 initiatives. We've borrowed AUD 120 million for this purpose. Turning to slide 19, the FY 2022 financial highlights. We reported net profit after tax of AUD 76.4 million for the year, up 14% on the record FY 2021 NPAT of AUD 67 million. Our diluted earnings per share was AUD 0.395 per share, up 8% on the FY 2021 record, and we declared a fully franked final dividend of AUD 0.175 per share, the same as the interim dividend, taking total dividends for the year to AUD 0.35 per share, up 22% on the FY 2021 dividends.
The aggregate revenue of the affiliates at 100% was AUD 505 million, up 22% on FY 2021. AUD 448 million of this revenue was base fee revenue, and that was up 36% on FY 2021. Now, just before we get into FUM and fund flow numbers, I need to remind shareholders again of the distorting effect of a AUD 3.9 billion very low-fee inflow into Plato in April 2021, and then coincidentally, an even lower fee outflow of AUD 3.9 billion from Omega in August 2021. These effectively offset each other, and we have urged shareholders to exclude them both when reviewing FUM and flow numbers for FY 2021 and FY 2022.
Hence, we said, please think of our total net inflows in FY 2021 as AUD 12.8 billion, not the headline AUD 16.7 billion. For FY 2022, we think of our total net inflows as AUD 4.5 billion, not the headline AUD 600 million. I have said I'm pleased this is the last time I'm gonna have to focus on that particular detail. In terms of funds under management, our aggregate affiliate FUM at June 30th 2022 was AUD 83.7 billion. This was down AUD 5.7 billion or 6.4% on AUD 89.4 billion at June 30th 2021, or down AUD 1.8 billion, 2%, adjusting for the Plato Omega distortion.
Aggregate retail funds under management was AUD 21.1 billion at 30th June 2022, up AUD 800 million or 4% on a year earlier. The ASX 300 Index was down 10.4% over the year, and the MSCI World Index down 17.1%. Total net inflows for the year were AUD 3.6 billion in a tale of two very different half year periods, compared with AUD 4.4 billion in FY 2021. Slides 46 to 52 of the presentation provide a retail market update. Total net institutional inflows, including international, were AUD 900 million, adjusting for the Plato Omega distortion, compared with AUD 8.4 billion in FY 2021. Slides 44 and 45 of the presentation provide an institutional and international market update.
It's important to note in summary that in contrast to the underwhelming headline flow and FUM change numbers, aggregate base fee revenue of the affiliates at 100% was up 36% in FY 2022 on FY 2021, and the run rate aggregate base fee revenue number at June 30th 2022 was substantially higher than the aggregate revenue through the FY 2022 year.
Cash and principal investments totaled AUD 178.2 million at June 30th , and our debt facility is fully drawn at AUD 120 million. It's also pleasing to note that 83% of affiliate strategies that have a track record of five- years or more outperformed their benchmarks over the classic five-year measurement timeframe.
We have had what we know to be style related and cyclical or transitory short-term underperformance in a couple of affiliates during the year, but the crucially important longer-term record remains intact and strong. Slide 20 shows our record of earnings growth over the six years that we have been listed Pinnacle. Slide 21 provides some additional commentary on this subject. Slide 22 shows our 16-year FUM and net flow history. FUM has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 23.7% per annum.
Our institutional pipeline remains strong and our client base is increasingly diversified, including overseas, as we grow and evolve, recognizing changing market circumstances. Slide 23 shows some detail on our performance fee record and opportunity. As mentioned, we are growing the size and diversity of our performance fee potential and look forward to larger performance fee FUM strategies delivering in future years.
Turning now to the September quarter, the first quarter of this new financial year. The aggregate of the affiliates funds under management stood at AUD 80.5 billion at September 30th, 2022. This was down AUD 3.2 billion or 4% from AUD 83.7 billion at June 30th , 2022. The AUD 3.2 billion reduction comprised AUD 1.2 billion of net outflows and AUD 2 billion resulting from the drop in listed markets. Total retail funds under management at September 30th 2022 stood at AUD 20.4 billion, which was down AUD 700 million or 3.3% from AUD 21.1 billion at June 30th , 2022, despite the fact that net inflows of AUD 200 million were achieved.
Overall, equities markets had a material effect, negative impact on fund levels from the beginning to the end of that three-month period. The S&P/ASX 300 Index was down 1.3% over the three months ending September 3rd, and the MSCI World Index was down 7.3%. While headline flows were negative for the quarter, there were modest positive net inflows from both retail and offshore channels, with negligible impact on overall management fee revenues in aggregate.
Slide 26 provides the specifics of the five-year performance track records of the 26 affiliate funds or strategies. Slides 27 and 28 provide further performance detail. Slide 29 updates on our more recent major industry awards. Slide 31. In this slide, we remind shareholders that we think in terms of three horizons of growth. Horizon one is the main game.
It is continuing to pursue net inflows into existing strategies of existing affiliates. We remain very confident of our ability to continue to do that and particularly to continue to grow affiliate revenue. We conservatively estimate the capacity of the affiliates existing strategies at AUD 300 billion. There is plenty of Horizon 1 runway left.
With the attendant strong gains in operating leverage that will be accompanied by such growth. Horizon 2 is the subject of an enormous amount of activity, both within Pinnacle itself and within all of the affiliates. We have stated that we estimate this is costing the order of AUD 12 million per annum to Pinnacle's bottom line, NPAT. This is a slow, patient process where we invest now for medium-term gain.
We have been doing this for a long time, and we have a strong record of very high returns on our past Horizon 2 investments, not even including unrealized capital gains on the value of the businesses and strategies that we have built. We are confident that will continue to be the case in the future. We've mentioned specific Horizon 2 initiatives in slides 33, 34, and 35, and the overseas Horizon 2 initiatives in slide 36.
In relation to Horizon 3, which of course is where we use capital to buy into existing businesses, we were pleased to have completed our acquisition of 25% of private equity and venture capital manager Five V Capital during the year. In terms of potential new opportunities, slide 37 explains in summary that we have done a lot of work on a large range of opportunities.
In the final analysis, we haven't so far progressed with any. We make no apologies for remaining disciplined and patient. Slide 38 commences the section of the presentation on corporate responsibility. We are proud of the progress we have made on so many fronts in this important area. Now, because of time limitations, I'll leave it to shareholders to ask questions or read slides 38 to 43 of the presentation and the corporate sustainability report on our website.
Slide 39 summarizes our corporate responsibility initiatives during the year, covering the ESG working group, our Women in Finance scholarships, our climate strategy, our ESG charter, our community partnerships, and our human rights initiatives. Slide 42 explains that total donations by the Pinnacle Charitable Foundation in FY 2022 exceeded AUD 900,000, with a further AUD 285,000 donated by affiliates.
Slide 45 provides an update on the institutional and international markets and flows. Slides 47 to 52 provide an update on the retail market and retail flows. Slide 53. In conclusion, I would like to remind shareholders of the basis on which we remain so confident of your company's ability to grow and prosper, which is the strong funds management platform that we have built and our highly regarded distinctive business model. Shareholders can be assured that nothing has fundamentally changed in your company's ambitions, strategies, and growth plans. We have simply had to show some patience in the face of short-term turbulence, and it is not the first time we have had to do that during our 16-year history.
That includes the commentary I wanted to provide on the slides and on the performance of the business during the last financial year and the September quarter, Q1 of the current financial year. Thank you everyone for listening. Before I close, there is one very important matter on which I would like to comment. Alan mentioned earlier that this is to be Adrian Whittingham's last AGM. Adrian Whittingham has decided to retire from the board today and as an executive of the company from December 31st.
When we announced this to the stock exchange a month or so ago, I said, "Adrian Whittingham's contribution to building Pinnacle into the strong, diversified business it is today is a credit to his tireless commitment to the company, its affiliates, fund investors, and his fellow shareholders and partners.
That at a personal level, I am enormously grateful for his friendship, partnership, and support over more than 15 years. That I will miss him greatly as a colleague." All of that is a massive understatement. This company has benefited greatly from the tremendous job that Adrian has done over the past 15 years.
It is not just his tremendous talent as an executive that has been so valuable, but also his exceptional personality, his warm, inclusive personal style that have contributed both to his success as a key Pinnacle executive, but also his popularity, both within the company and with the enormous number of people important to the company, but external to it, with whom Adrian has interacted on a daily basis for so many years.
I wish I could have talked him into staying longer, but after 15 years, it would be extremely ungracious of me to expect him to forgo other pursuits that he will no doubt undertake over the years ahead. Adrian, we wish you all the best with those, and thank you most sincerely for all you have done for us over the past 15 years.
Tough one to follow, that's for sure. Thank you, Ian, for those very generous words and one that I appreciate greatly. When Pinnacle became listed in 2016, the firm announced a net profit of AUD 4.5 million. If we fast-forward this to six years later, and as Ian reported, that net profit now sits at AUD 76.4 million. That's been an incredible result for shareholders and as part of a broad team to have achieved this for shareholders is something that I'll always cherish and be proud of. We have to remember that this was delivered under the industry headlines of consolidation, disruption in retail, and the constant question marks of the value of active management.
I'm incredibly proud to have served the company and its shareholders, of which, those of you that are here today, and many thanks for this opportunity. In particular, the shareholders and the board, led by Alan Watson with Non-Exec Directors Deb, Gerard, and Lorraine. I appreciate their support during my tenure and the last six years of being on the board.
This business does not exist without clients, first and foremost. I've enjoyed working for them and alongside them on this journey. We're strong believers in a saying which is other people's money. That is, never forget that you are managing money on behalf of a broad range of clients, and we are lucky to be trusted with this opportunity. That task was considerably easier with the quality of affiliate firms we have partnered with and the vision for them to be the best in the industry.
The leaders and colleagues in these firms have been fantastic to work with, and it's been very satisfying to see them deliver outstanding results for our clients. There's also been so many clients in the firm that have made my contribution so enjoyable. Let's face it, they made me look good. In particular, Alex Ihlenfeldt, Mark Cormack, Andrew Findlay up the back, Dan Longan, Calvin Kwok, Tim Samway, Ramsin Jajoo, and a host of others.
Last but not least, Andrew Chambers and Ian Macoun. We've seen our children grow up and mature alongside the growth of this company. It is well said that you spend more time at work than with your family. I can vouch for that, but I don't regret one minute. We challenged each other along the way, at times, testing our resolve. However, that is what partners do.
They listen, support, and are honest with each other. Andrew, thank you for your unwavering support, many early morning phone calls, and always remember we both started this journey with hair. Ian, you've been the most wonderful leader and mentor on my journey of personal growth and development, which would not have been achieved without your support and guidance. The vision which you communicated when I joined the firm was the light on the hill. You remember that one?
Mm-hmm.
This continues to shine bright under your leadership, and thank you for your friendship. While December 31 may be my final day at Pinnacle, the shareholders, affiliates, colleagues, and clients will always be part of me, and I thank you for the opportunity.
Thank you, Adrian. Now I'll just turn to the general Q&A session of the meeting. I will be slightly rude on trying to keep it under control because Ian and Chambers and the team have to head off to the UBS Investor two-day conference in about 15-20 minutes' time. If we get to that point, in order not to keep our investors waiting, I will draw things to a conclusion. It's open to general questions if people have one now. Please.
Hi, my name is Alicia. I'm a shareholder and a member of Teaminvest. I've got a question about the retail market. The number of advisors is declining. I assume that means that the retail flow coming through advisors is declining. In your investor presentation that you sent out as an ASIC announcement recently on page 43, you mentioned that you've made progress towards appointing a platform provider that will basically better serve the retail direct investors. I'm interested to just understand better how you go about accessing retail funds from direct investors.
I might call on either Adrian or Ramsin to help me with this. I'll just make a couple of comments first. Our main retail market is what we call the intermediated retail market. That is financial advisors. Though it's certainly true the number of advisors has diminished as all of the forces that we're aware of out there have come onto the industry, that is still our mainstream market, and it's still enormous.
We continue to penetrate more and more advice groups and to take our high-quality investment capabilities to reach more and more people who are advised. I think your question relates to retail investors who are not advised, so the direct investor market. It's kind of early stages for us in that regard.
We have the view that, you know, I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but everyone has a right to get access to these really high-quality investment strategies and capabilities. We would love to reach that market, but it's difficult. You know, we don't wanna sponsor the cricket, we don't wanna spend a huge amount of money on retail advertising, but technology is advancing and making this more and more possible.
Now, the quote that you referred to, which is well picked up, we're signaling there that we are doing a lot of work on identifying a platform, so this is the technology advancing, that will enable us to offer our capabilities to individual investors in a very convenient way. I would imagine they have an app on their phone.
It'll be fairly easy for them to find us and to invest. We haven't made a decision, so we haven't announced anything yet. We are, you know, I think we're fairly close to doing that, and we look forward to offering our services to that market. 'Cause I do think personally there are some good investors individually, but we see in the aggregate numbers, individual investors have a shocking time. They tend to come into the market after prices have moved up. They get out after prices have moved down and just it's difficult for them. I look forward to us offering them a more professional service. I don't know, do you wanna say anything?
Well, I think it's good.
Yeah.
Sure. That's an excellent question. Thanks for that question. The number of advisors has shrunk from about 25,000 down to about 17,500, based on the asset register. At the same time, about 11,000 advisors today are consuming products from Pinnacle and our affiliates. The number of managers they're supporting on average has grown to three managers, where it used to be one or two previously. There's a lot of runway to get from 11,000 to 60,000 advisors when you've got the quality of investments that we have today.
Yeah. I don't think it's correct to say that the size of that market is shrinking just because the number of advisors is shrinking. There's again technology and so on. There's a lot of advice still coming to those people. Absolutely, the flows have been down in the last year, but that's related to markets. That's fear. That's both advisors and investors being afraid to commit to equity markets. That's a shame. There's pretty good value at the moment. Well, I'm not allowed to make forecasts. I'll be in trouble with my chairman after for that. That's
Thank you.
Yeah. Again, any next question? Steve.
First, I just wanted to add very briefly to the comments that Ian made about, you know, about Adrian, but also about Gerard who's indicated his intention to go. It's very rare in life to build a great Australian company, and that's what this is. It will only happen with stability, with drive and passion. Both of these two directors have provided that. I'd like to add my two Bob as they say. Thank you very much. I might say a few comments. My name is Steven Wilson, and I'm a shareholder. You've only-
Larger shareholder.
You've only given us a small time for questions, so I'll try and zero in. One, Ian, you broadly mentioned something about return on equity in your three horizons.
Yeah.
The return on incubation versus the return on acquisition.
Yeah.
Are you up? I've done some math, and I think I know the answer.
Yeah.
Could you perhaps explain to us a little bit about that? My math suggests that the return on incubation, so dollars spent on incubation are phenomenal.
Yeah.
The return on acquisition is very good.
Yeah.
Could you embellish on that please?
No, well, that's a perfect summary. Yes, I was at some pains to explain that what we call Horizon 2, which is we spend money that we expense straight off our P&L on resources investing in future growth, which retards our profitability for the time being, and the benefits of that won't come through for a few years.
This is what Steve was referring to as incubation, where you build things. Absolutely, all of the incubating that we've done over 15 years, really, we started it at the beginning, has produced extremely high returns. Now, Dan has some numbers. They are enormous. It's like at least 10 times what we've invested, and that is only on the realized returns and excludes any capital gains. Of course, the main gain is that we are building capital value of these businesses.
If the earnings that we've achieved on them is so great, then you can imagine what's happened to capital value. That's the reason that our market cap is, you know, AUD 1.7 billion or whatever it is, even though our balance sheet value is much lower because we've been growing the value of these businesses. Yes, Horizon 2 returns have been enormous. 10 times, but a lot more than that, which we quantify and everyone can form their own views of what each of those affiliates is worth. Horizon 3, relatively recent because we only had capital really once we became listed to buy into things. We've done, that's Metrics and Coolabah and now Five V. It's too early with Five V to, you know, say what returns, but we're very confident they'll be very good returns.
Also delayed a little bit because of you have to wait for performance fees to come through. Metrics and Coolabah have been very good, and they're definitely worth quite a lot more than we've paid to buy into them. Horizon 3 returns have been good. I think you summarized it. I think you said something like Horizon 2, sort of huge and Horizon 3, good. That's about right.
Flowing on from that. Can you comment on the prospects, and you kind of have, but of incubation globally?
Yeah.
Have you talked a lot about the Pinnacle model, how it's distinct or are there similar ones?
Yeah.
Particularly in America and the U.K. and Europe?
Yeah. There are a few similar ones, as you'd expect in such enormous markets, but nowhere near as many as one might imagine. What we've found is that not a lot of people have been able to manage this, owning minority stakes and still getting very good outcomes. Private equity groups want to own a majority, and they don't nurture the affiliates in the way that we do. There isn't as much competition.
We think we will be able to incubate new affiliates overseas. We've done two so far. Aikya in London is going very well. Pinnacle is selling their funds at a great rate of knots. Then even more recently, Langdon in Toronto, in Canada, which is a global small caps and Canadian small caps manager. Aikya is a global emerging markets manager.
Only two so far. We're very, very selective. It's a little bit harder overseas to get to know these people, but it's definitely doable. I look forward to a lot more of that over time because the returns are tremendous. But they make us look less profitable than other fund managers with similar amounts of fund, for example.
Happily, most of the analysts who follow us, they understand this. As I said, we've started to actually quantify it because people, they sort of know it's there, but don't know how much of an impact it's making. It's definitely a major commitment, but it'll be worth it. But that's one of the reasons we're on such a high PE.
There is no model for startups internationally that I read. They're essentially succession buy models, where effectively a public company buys a private business on a lower multiple and arbitrages the difference. They buy into existing businesses. Whereas the startup models are essentially backed by very wealthy individuals who don't provide large-scale centralized distribution to help add a lot of value to these businesses.
They don't pass muster with institutional asset consultants or asset owners when they go through due diligence processes. There is no model that matches ours globally in terms of this incubation model. Not to say they won't come in the future, but they're incredibly hard to do. That's why people don't do them.
Thank you. We'll have a follow-up question on overseas, but not international distribution. I guess this one of our great upsides is that the rest of the world finds out how brilliant our affiliates are. Now you've been doing that for some time. Can you give us some sense of where you've got to in terms of foreigners investing their money with our affiliates? Then secondly, what it looks like, because I'm assuming you've been at it for several years. There must be some sort of takeoff about to.
With Xandra's area?
Yes.
The build has all been done organically. We haven't acquired any FUM with international networks. That's now AUD 10 billion of our total FUM comes from outside of Australia, from 47 countries around the world. Five biggest markets today is the United States, United Kingdom, UAE, New Zealand and South Africa in terms of our key markets.
A lot of large sort of Anglo-Saxon style markets. We have people based in the EMEA region in London covering Europe, Middle East and Africa. We have New York and Philadelphia covering the Americas. We cover both Australia and Asia, including Japan from Australia. We have a full Japanese national that sells into Japan because that's a $10 trillion market, which is very long study for short investment.
If you think about the size of the addressable market in Australia today, it's AUD 31 trillion. You've got over $100 trillion, which is managed by third-party money managers around the globe, absolutely Australian leaders. If you think about addressable markets, the real opportunity for Pinnacle is to globalize.
I think that in the next five to 10 years, we'll have more money outside of Australia than inside Australia. They've mapped diversification by client type, by geographic domicile, by currency. You know, so it'll be a very big different business in the next 10 years carrying those addressable markets. The operating margins you can get internationally compared to Australia institutionally are much more attractive.
You see that in our financial results where dollar for dollar, if we raise AUD 200 million in global equity into the U.S. versus Australia, there's a premium pickup in the margin you earn. That's very attractive from a wealth and institutional standpoint. Obviously, there's the wealth management market. We're starting to raise material money from private banks, private wealth groups internationally, and we see ourselves expanding distribution in those key channels, particularly in major Anglo-Saxon markets.
Think about Canada, New Zealand, U.S., U.K., where we have similar market structures in terms of financial advice from both advisors and institutional asset managers. Think about building a future of institutional and wholesale distribution, and incubation internationally, as well as continuing on the acquisition path as well. That's what's very exciting about the growth, the future growth of the business. They're changing mix in the underlying revenues. As you said, there's a pretty marked flip in our marketing compared with the marked flip on this page.
There's a lot of runway left yet in the company.
Yeah.
I'd like to have another one, but I don't want to talk a bit more here.
Hello, Dennis. Got a few minutes?
Okay. Flying on from what you just said, contained annual revenue return, you've started to talk about.
Yeah.
I think I read somewhere that you said it was up 20%, FY June 30. Accordingly, you said in those comments, it has had negligible or no effect.
Yeah.
My simple head says you're still up 20% contained annual revenue up on last year. Am I missing something?
That logic is completely correct. The only thing I'd say, there are a lot of moving parts all the time and so who knows where it all ends up. What you've said there is completely correct. The term contained annual revenue, the reason we are quoting that now is that, like, people just look at the headline funds under management numbers, and there's huge variation in the fee rates by type of fund. What is important is the funds multiplied by the fee rate on them. We call that the contained annual revenue in our flows. We will be reporting that more in future because the headline fund numbers can be misleading.
Shouldn't it also be amount of fund margin and then pennies received?
Yes, absolutely. That's right. The analysts do that. We just have to be careful in our sort of broad communications not to get so complicated that people get lost by it. Yeah.
Trade-off between complexity and maybe relevance.
Absolutely. You know we do twice a year we set out our FUM by affiliate and so people can get at that sort of broadly at that sort of information. There's a limit to how much. Our affiliates don't want things like their fee rates to be too granular in terms of what.
It's nervous of competitive information.
Yeah.
It's a balance.
Yeah.
Most interesting, the same fund flow from the ordinary community. We had outflowed AUD 1 billion in June for one client. At that same time, inflowed to a global equity manager that was focused trading with AUD 1 billion at three times the fee rate. There's nothing happening on the headline surface. None of these people have this improvement in the fee margin price actually.
Okay.
Have the two of you and other fund managers in Australia, the most obvious one being Magellan, but these takeovers and things started to flow through into our media?
Yeah.
Embellish, maybe not like.
We've always said we don't need other fund managers to be doing poorly in order for us to do well. We just get on, do an excellent job, and lots of people will wanna invest with us. That's the broad strategy. I've always said to people, "Don't overly focus on competitors. Be aware of what they're doing, but don't be excessively focused on them." What's happening, Magellan, Platinum, others, it's complicated, Steve, because you do have changes in the environment. This has all been happening recently at a time when equities have not been in favor. I think quite a lot of the money that's gone out of Magellan has gone into either cash or passive or private markets things.
It's like there's money moving all over the place, but it can only help us if Magellan and Platinum are in outflow and others. That's been the case. You know, the aggregate market's been an outflow. It's a complicated mix.
In terms of the money flows there, in ETFs and especially the way they're being promoted.
Yes.
Are relentlessly.
Yeah.
Isn't that affecting managers as well?
You're thinking of passive ETFs. I think particularly that their proposition is that they are cheap.
Well, they have, but the way they advertise it, I don't think that a lot of investors understand.
No.
That there's a difference between the two. They think they're all cheap.
Yeah. Well, that's interesting because we of course, have moved quite strongly into active ETFs. We think certainly there are a lot of investors, we think it's a different segment of the market out there that like to invest on the exchange rather than in funds.
Yeah.
We wanna service that market, but we're only active. That's going well, although again, it's caught up in this whole, you know, fear in the market situation. We think it'll grow. It's an area that will grow, but not particularly at the expense of the unit trusts of the managed funds. Being aggressively marketed, sure. I do think the aggressive marketing is in the passive.
I think the kind of environment that we have going forward, which is a tougher environment for investment markets, I think people will increasingly see that it's not great being in passive. I mean, there's a role for passive, that's fine, and it's been growing. It keeps us on our toes. You know, if we don't outperform, then passive is a better proposition.
As long as we outperform, we're a better proposition, and we're confident we can continue to do that. Yeah, it's a factor out there, and it'll continue to be there. Vanguard have moved into super. I think there was a question from Giova.
Giova.
Yeah.
Simon is here.
Sorry.
Has there been any thought about the payout ratio in terms of dividend and retaining earnings? Excuse me. As opposed to paying a dividend?
Yeah.
We do think about that. Historically, we have taken the view that paying out the dividend, it's a very cash generative business, as you know, but paying out that dividend to shareholders has been as good a discipline on us in our capital management process as it is. I would say more recently, we've had a debate that if, for example, we needed to spend up to AUD 100 million, then we could fund that by saying, we either will reduce the dividend payout ratio or even postpone it for, say, one or two dividends. We do have a live conversation about what is the best use of dividends. I think at the moment, and perhaps we're too old-fashioned, at the moment, we think that the benefits of that self-discipline of paying out a decent amount.
You know, we do see many companies that edge away from that. What we wouldn't want to do is edge away from that discipline. If we were to do something different, we want to do it for a very specific purpose that we could explain to shareholders very clearly. Is that a fair summary, Chair?
Yeah.
Other board members, anything you wanna add to that?
Getting franking credits as well.
Correct. We say, "Keep using them." They're valuable to people, particularly to domestic shareholders. Anything else? Yep, please.
Very well. I'm interested in why you are so much for performance fees. Is it because a lot of the affiliates come out of Horizon 2, and you couldn't start off with a management fee, I guess. You head for the performance fee. Is that why?
No. The reason we like performance fees because our managers, in general, perform very well.
I mean, you would say we seek performance fees.
We seek them whenever we can get them. Now, we do like the fact that we have the diversification of a whole lot of base fees and a whole lot of performance fees. On average, we expect to get more revenue from performance fee FUM than from base fees. We do seek it. Sometimes where there's scarcity, we insist on it.
More often than not, we offer investors the choice, and they can have either. Some of them like the fact that it's an alignment, and we don't get paid a good fee if we don't perform. No, we love them, and a third of our FUM has performance fees on it. No, the reason for that is that we've sought them.
You know, my chairman said to me a couple of years ago, "As soon as you start talking about these performance fees, they won't come." Unfortunately, at this stage, he was right. But he'll be wrong one day.
I will be wrong.
We'll all be happy about it.
I mean, statistically, and this is not me reversing my position on that.
No.
Statistically, we now have, what is it? 19 strategies covered by performance?
22.
22 covered by performance fee. One would imagine that throughout a cycle, those would perform as long as we keep that alpha generation. I mean, people have said to us, "The key thing you've got to do is that your affiliates have to keep performing." If they do, we'll get those performance fees in due course. They will be enormous when they come, some of them.
It was just so encouraging that 10 of our affiliates.
Yeah.
We had performance fees this year, and they were smaller, if you like, on an individual basis. Despite the fact that some of the big ones weren't firing, we were still able to generate, or our affiliates were still able to generate a decent amount of performance fees because of the number of strategies.
May I ask a second?
Yes.
I'm interested to know, so you're trying to diversify further away from the equity markets. Any idea in earnings per share terms or earnings, how far, you know, how much is in the equity market and how much is not?
Yeah.
No, fair enough.
We're still currently, you know, dominated by equities.
Yeah.
We think about two-thirds of our FUM is correlated with equities. The non-equities Metrics has grown a lot. Coolabah, more recently, Five V, we have Palisade and so on. It's about two-thirds. It's still. You know, we don't not wanna be in equities. We just want more and more of the non-equities as well to diversify it. It's an additional exposure to non-
To some extent, if we don't pursue that, then we are actively moving. By doing nothing, we're actively increasing our weighting in listed equities to which the rest of the world has moved, and that they've moved more to a balance of listed and alt.
You talk about it in fund terms. I was talking about in earnings terms.
Yeah. Well
As a general statement, our fees are higher on the non-equities than on equities. That's a big generalization.
Yeah.
Metrics, for example, earns significant upfront fees as they make their loans and so on. Their average fees are higher. That's a general statement. Yeah, certainly Palisade, their fund is smaller, but their fees are higher. Okay.
Okay. Any last questions? Have I given everyone a fair go? Yes, sir.
My name is Lama. I'm also part of this team as group shareholder. I mean, I'm completing a different question regarding the current corporate environment. A lot of business cybersecurity and data hack is a current issue. How do you guard any of those kind of risks with our [FGA]? And then how are we taking care to not to go through the things what are the corporate are facing currently?
Yes.
What measures are we taking in this space?
Yeah. I mean, we're looking at this continually.
Yeah.
We look at it as on behalf of all our stakeholders, which are shareholders, clients, regulators, affiliates. I'm hesitant to say I think we have a robust process in place because as soon as I say that, we'll get hacked. The team that are working on this are using the assumption that although we're doing everything we can to prevent it, we will at some stage be a victim to this.
Therefore, what can we do to mitigate the consequences of it when it materializes? For obvious reasons, I'm sort of hesitant to spell out specifically what we're doing because you don't tend to do that in these conversations publicly. But if I said to you that it is a very live conversation, both at management and at the board, and Dan, you'll meet Dan outside. Dan Longan is our CFO, but responsible for this.
Calvin here looks at it from our legal obligation perspective. I think we are, for a company our size, we're doing an awful lot. For obvious reasons, I'd rather not go into specifics. Ian, is there anything you want to add to that?
No, no. Hey, we are not asleep on the subject. It's a very important subject.
Again, we're not gonna promise you that it can't happen because it will.
Mm-hmm.
At some stage. It's a matter of when.
Alan, just maybe to add. You know, it's something that well before Optus and many things happened.
Mm-hmm.
With the topic at our board meeting every meeting, an update on how we're managing the cybersecurity. The number of, you know, attacks that happened every day even prior to this. It's always been a top of mind topic.
You would be surprised, but it would be hundreds of attempted penetrations to us.
We've had lots of training and so on for a long time. Dan phishes us all, including the directors. If you click on something that you should have known not to click on, you're in real trouble.
Which we never have.
No, no, no.
Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Any further questions? Otherwise, I'm going to be terribly rude and apologize to everyone for drawing the meeting to a conclusion.
I'm sorry. UBS happened to have their conference on today, and we're on starting at 10:30 A.M., so.
Okay. Perhaps if I could then formally thank you all for attending this morning. Thank you for the questions. It's been great. Hopefully, we can continue to deliver for you. Thank you for that.