I will now hand the conference over to the managing director, Mr. Ian Macoun. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Ashley. Welcome to all of you who've joined us on the call this morning. Thanks for being with us. This call is to discuss our results for the 2026 financial year and to enable you to check in on our ongoing progress and success, and our business positioning, strategies, and practices, which are aimed at enabling high rates of profit growth to continue for many years to come. As we pass the milestones of 20 years since the formal commencement of Pinnacle Investment Management Limited, and 10 years since the commencement of Pinnacle Investment Management Group Limited as a listed pure-play funds management company, we are better placed than ever. With a terrific culture that our long-serving executives, together with a few carefully selected newer ones, are able to imbue into the many extremely talented people we have recruited and whose high-quality careers are growing with the company.
We are in the happy position of having a very strong track record of 20 years of growth in FUM, in NPAT, and in EPS, and of strong investment performance that together have proved our model to be very attractive. We are determined to continue to evolve and grow so as to deliver a continuation of high rates of growth. Our results to date, together with what we observe occurring in our traditional markets and in attractive adjacent markets, give us the confidence to proceed apace with our growth plans to stimulate progress whilst at all times preserving the core. We are confident with good reason, but not overconfident or complacent.
We are finding and progressively addressing more and more blue oceans of demand. We are resourcing and organizing our company to produce growing funds volumes whilst preserving, indeed, increasingly exploiting, as our most important task, the very large capacity of our core capabilities, existing assets, existing strategies, and existing markets. Our distribution capabilities continue to grow and evolve to cater to both our traditional and additional areas of demand. We know how to organize ourselves as we grow to avoid the growing pains and bureaucracy that stunt the growth of some companies. Our distribution strength and experience provide us with the intel and insight on which we plan and execute. We posted with the ASX last night our formal results announcement, our annual report, including the audited financial statements for the year, our corporate governance statement, our corporate sustainability report, and importantly, our investor presentation.
We'll be speaking to key parts of the presentation this morning. The colleagues with me on the call are Alan Watson, our Chair, Andrew Chambers, Executive Director with particular responsibility for institutional and international distribution, Kyle Macintyre, who leads wholesale and retail distribution, and Dan Longan, our CFO. Also on the line, at midnight his time in the U.K., the CEO of Pacific Asset Management and freshly minted Executive Director of Pinnacle, Matthew Lamb. Matt, are you there?
I'm here. Thank you very much for involving me and inviting me onto the board. Pinnacle is an amazing business. It's a huge privilege, and I'm looking forward to working with everyone.
Great. Thanks for being there, Matt, and it's great to have you with us. I'll call out the main themes and highlights and provide some context for our results and elaborate some aspects that we feel are particularly important for analysts and shareholders to understand. In brief, we have achieved strong results in terms of underlying profit growth, funds inflows and growth in funds under management, as well as overall strong investment performance. Besides the key outcomes and results for FY 2026 and the key themes for the past year, we will outline the strong growth outlook. As always, we'll leave plenty of time for questions, which you're welcome to direct to any of the Pinnacle representatives on the call, including Matthew Lamb. Slide two is an agenda. The footnote to slide two refers to the disclaimer on slide 64 that we would ask you to please read.
Slide four is an overview or context slide provided for people who are newly interested in our company and don't yet know Pinnacle very well. It seeks to succinctly summarize the essence of Pinnacle and what we believe makes us special and a highly compelling investment. We are a highly scalable, multi-affiliate platform and business model, which has proved itself over 20 years to be able to compound the growth of earnings and dividends at very high average rates through market cycles. Diversified and resilient. Again, we are a proven compounder of FUM and earnings. We have multiple growth drivers. We are forward-thinking and innovative with no choke points to restrict ongoing growth, and a business model specifically designed for investment excellence at its core, delivering continued investment outperformance for 22 years. Slide five is a summary of our highlights or themes for the 2026 financial year.
We have enjoyed continuing strong growth in our core earnings, record net inflows, and continuing investment excellence, and we have evolved into a robust, increasingly global platform, driving scalable and diversified earnings growth with multiple tailwinds evident heading into FY 2027. Looking at the first heading on slide five, strong core earnings growth. NPAT was up 31% on the prior financial year, up 21% after adjusting for returns on principal investments and the non-cash profit recorded on the step acquisition of PAM. Affiliate margins on fund management activities before performance fees were 10% higher in FY 2026 than FY 2025. Importantly, I will elaborate on this later, Pinnacle Parent's revenues, excluding the PAM and PI adjustments, were up 50%. This is revenues from affiliates for the core distribution and operations risk tech and RE services provided by Pinnacle, which are core ongoing repeatable revenues.
These were up AUD 25.3 million at AUD 76.1 million in FY 2026. This revenue comfortably funds high-quality resourcing, both for our core activities as well as high levels of business growth, particularly with the efficiency benefits from growing scale, the use of AI, et cetera, and still contributes strongly to profit growth. Total people costs, comprising salaries, short-term incentives, and long-term incentives in Pinnacle Parent were AUD 55.5 million. Up AUD 12.2 million, or 28.3% on FY 2025. The total number of people employed in Pinnacle Parent globally increased from 144 at 30th of June 2025 to 182 at 30th of June 2026. We are confident that this process, Pinnacle Parent revenues growing faster than its costs can continue. Notwithstanding that we continue to strongly grow our resourcing for future growth. To the second point, record net inflows. Our overall net inflow number of AUD 33.4 billion for the year was a record again.
The aggregate closing FUM of the affiliates at 30th of June 2026 was AUD 229.4 billion, which is AUD 50 billion, or 28% higher than the aggregate opening FUM at the beginning of the year, and 14% higher than the average FUM for FY 2026. Approximately one-third of the AUD 229.4 billion is now from clients outside of Australia, and 44% of that is from wholesale and retail investors. We are at an inflection point as we work to replicate our domestic wholesale retail strength in other markets of the world. It took us years to build that kind of valuable presence in Australia. Of the AUD 33.4 billion of total net inflows, AUD 10.2 billion was from Australian retail. That was very much a record, though more in the first half than the second, and we note that this year's flows represent 26% of the opening retail FUM.
AUD 12.3 billion was from clients outside of Australia, and this was 24% of opening international FUM. AUD 10.9 billion was from Australian institutions, 12% of opening domestic institutional FUM, and not a bad net result given what has been going on in the Aussie institutional market last year. Now, looking at the section heading Continuing Investment Excellence, 81% of affiliate strategies with a track record of five years or longer have outperformed over that five-year period. We have achieved a solid performance fee outcome, with 12 affiliates contributing despite significant challenges for some investment styles. There are now 35 strategies with the ability to deliver material performance fees on AUD 61 billion of FUM versus AUD 50 billion at 30th of June 2025. Now, the topic of investment performance is very important and warrants some further comment. 81% is a good number.
As I said on the first half results call, for style and other reasons, not all, even very high quality managers, will outperform in all periods. Markets are continually changing and short term can be highly volatile. FY 2026 certainly qualifies in that regard. There has been a lot going on. Many of the people on this call would be very familiar with equity market conditions during the past 12 months or so. It is not an understatement to say that confusion, speculation, exuberance in both directions surrounding AI in a variety of ways, and a war impacting the oil price, geopolitics, and inflation concerns generally have loomed large. Styles such as quality and growth that have had years of favorable conditions over the past decade or more have encountered headwinds.
It is testament to the consistently high quality of Pinnacle affiliates that we have maintained a very high proportion of outperforming funds and strategies throughout our history. This also reflects the diversity of our stable, including style diversity. We see that the composition of which affiliates have recently outperformed changes through time. At Pinnacle, we are continually in close contact with our affiliates, and we retain high conviction in the quality of those whose shorter term performance has been below their usual standards recently. Their time will come again, and their talents, experience, and processes will once again translate into compelling outperformance numbers. Again, as I commented at the half year results, it is appropriate to acknowledge, for example, the strong recent outperformance of several of the managers. Plato, see slide 53. Solaris, also slide 53. Firetrail, slide 54.
Firetrail was awarded Overall Fund Manager of the Year at the 2026 Lonsec and Money Management Fund Manager of the Year Awards. Along with the major overall award, the Firetrail Absolute Return Fund was named Liquid Alternatives Fund of the Year, and the Firetrail Australian Small Companies Fund Active ETF was named Australian Small Cap Equity Fund of the Year. Resolution Capital, slide 53. Metrics, slide 55. Coolabah, also slide 55. Longwave, slide 54. Again, this would not have been the same list a couple of years or even a year ago. To the final heading on this slide five, Evolution to a Global Platform. AUD 75 billion of FUM from 50 plus countries outside of Australia, of which AUD 33 billion is wholesale retail. Pinnacle's unique supported independence and value add platform is resonating strongly across the globe.
We have a demonstrated ability to execute and deliver rapid growth across horizons two and three globally. Horizon three investment in Japan's largest homegrown private markets platform, Advantage Partners. Initial 5% was completed in January, and the expanded PAM partnership accelerates our global growth with complementary distribution platforms to enhance geographic reach, affiliate origination, product innovation, and expansion. Just a couple of quick comments on our expansion overseas that we didn't write in there. Firstly, we are not expanding overseas seeking growth for growth's sake, arrogantly pursuing some kind of ego trip, or because there is any pressure on us to do so. We have said many times we have so much natural growth coming down the pipes from Horizon one, that we don't have to undertake Horizon two or three initiatives.
We do them only when the opportunities are extremely compelling, low risk, expected high return, and where our competitive advantage is clear, and the task firmly within our core capabilities and our business models. We have been studying the opportunities overseas for most of the past 20 years. I don't think we could be accused of rushing in carelessly. We are notorious for how many things we have looked at and not done. No doubt we missed some, perhaps a lot of good opportunities. We are confident that when we do undertake initiatives overseas, they are compellingly attractive for our shareholders. We don't have time just here, but I'll be happy to go through individually each of the initiatives we have undertaken and explain why we are confident they will do so well. Some of that is done later in the preso.
Another happy situation is that as we add resourcing overseas, the cost of that is generally now added simultaneously with revenue growth. The extra resources tend to produce additional revenue quickly these days. We have a model for growing without growing pains. We can succeed with new initiatives without distracting from our existing or core activities. A particular culture related, I think, to our startup heritage and our modular approach to organization structure and our disdain for bureaucracy. Evolution to a global platform is about both reporting on realized outcomes and simultaneously reporting on the activity going on within the company that is work in progress, continuing to build out further our offshore capabilities, both affiliates and distribution and operations and tech, et cetera, for that matter, overseas. I won't take up more time dwelling on them right now.
There's more detail in the preso. It is stating the bleeding obvious to express our absolute delight at the tremendous progress already with both Life Cycle Investment Partners and Pacific Asset Management. Not only their rapid business success, Life Cycle had the equivalent of AUD 42.4 billion of AUM at 30th of June 2026, less than 2.5 Years from their effective commencement of business. PAM's run rate earnings have grown from GBP 9.4 billion per annum when we first purchased equity in PAM to GBP 17.9 million per annum when we increased our holding to 100%. As you can see from the segment reporting, that run rate has increased nicely again since then. Also, more importantly, with both of these overseas affiliates, we are delighted with the character and integrity, as well as the talent and experience and expertise of their leadership and their people.
Their passionate commitment to excellence, coupled with their philosophies and clear approaches to delivering strong results for their clients, each from a strong and very high-quality business over many years into the future. High EPS growth. Just turning to slide six, which points out that high EPS growth is supported by a diversified, scalable, and cash-generative business model. We have delivered high compounding returns. This is really an extension or conclusion from our FY 2026 highlights or themes slide. We are reporting to you on the outcomes achieved, but in addition to these outcomes, the big question people want us to answer and to explain is whether the high rates of EPS growth that we've achieved to date can be continued for many years into the future, and why we are so confident of that.
Of course, we don't have a crystal ball and can't make predictions, but we can explain our agenda, our plans, and how we are planning and executing. Thus, we are confident that high compounding returns can be achieved by executing our unique model and three horizons of growth in parallel across more addressable markets. Pinnacle's business model is globally distinct, compelling, and sustainable. Equity ownership of high-performing investment managers, combined with market-leading distribution, continues to drive strong cash generation. The appeal of the supported independence model appears to be universal amongst investment managers and clients alike. It is replicable in an expanding range of asset classes, subclasses and styles, geographies, and product formats, such as ETFs, liquid alts, managed account solutions, and so on. The total addressable market, particularly internationally, is therefore very large and growing. Turning to slide seven, the financial highlights.
NPAT was AUD 176.7 million during the 2026 financial year, up 31% on the prior financial year, but up 21% after adjusting for returns on principal investments from the non-cash profit recorded on the step acquisition of PAM, which will be explained on the next slide. EPS was AUD 0.781 in FY 2026, up 25% on FY 2025, but up 15% on the same adjusted basis. The final dividend was AUD 0.31 per share, bringing the total for the year to AUD 0.60, the same as for FY 2025. Franking was at 72% and the payout ratio was 77%. As mentioned before, aggregate affiliate FUM at 100% was AUD 229.4 billion, up AUD 50 billion or 28% from AUD 179.4 billion a year earlier. Details of the FUM of each affiliate are provided in slide 56.
Aggregate domestic retail FUM was AUD 50.7 billion at 30th of June 2026, up AUD 11 billion or 28% from AUD 39.7 billion at 30th of June 2025. The aggregate affiliate FUM capable of earning performance fees was AUD 61.3 billion at 30th of June 2026, up AUD 10.9 billion or 22% from AUD 50.4 billion at 30th of June 2025. Total net inflows for the year, AUD 33.4 billion, comprising AUD 10.2 billion of net domestic retail inflows, AUD 12.3 billion of net inflows from international clients, and AUD 10.9 billion of net inflows from Australian institutional clients. The increase in FUM attributable to market and investment performance combined was AUD 11.8 billion, including AUD 800 million from retail. In addition, AUD 4.8 billion of FUM was acquired in the Advantage Partners transaction. Aggregate affiliates funds management revenue at 100% was up AUD 251.6 million or 28% to AUD 1.1524 billion, of which base fee revenues were up AUD 258.5 million or 35% to AUD 1.058 billion.
Performance fees were down 5% from AUD 153.5 million to AUD 146.6 million at 100%, of which Pinnacle's share after tax was down from AUD 46.6 million to AUD 35.6 million. 81% of affiliate strategies with a track record of five years or longer have outperformed their benchmark over the five years to 30th of June 2026, down from the exceptionally high 91% over the five years to June 2025. There's further performance detail on slides 10 and 50- 55. Slide eight provides the numbers you might need to adjust our reported NPAT and EPS numbers to remove the unusual or abnormal non-recurring items if you like to normalize the growth in NPAT and EPS numbers. We recorded that one-off accounting profit on the step acquisition. The net impact of that in our FY 2026 NPAT was AUD 46.2 million, which could be eliminated as unusual.
As explained with our first half results, there's a second unusual factor in our results for FY 2026, which is that the overall net return we received on principal investments was very low, negative AUD 2.3 million. This is mainly due to unrealized capital losses on seed invested in three affiliate strategies, which have experienced drawdowns during FY 2026. We think many analysts would exclude the impact of this when assessing our core or underlying earnings growth. You can see the net impact of these adjustments in the adjusted NPAT and adjusted EPS lines. For anyone who considers the FY 2025 performance fees unusually large and wish to adjust for that, we've included the numbers for Pinnacle's share of performance fees impact on NPAT and EPS in the bottom two lines of the table.
For example, if you included the PAM step acquisition and PI returns, you adjusted the FY 2025 numbers by deducting the AUD 10 million from NPAT and AUD 0.059 earnings per share, by which the performance fees were higher in 2025 than 2026, then you would say NPAT grew by 32.4% in FY 2026, and EPS grew by 29.5%. Slide nine shows our record of earnings growth over the 10 years that we have been listed Pinnacle, which is through periods which incorporate a range of stages of market cycles. Over the 10 years to 30th of June 2026, we have grown EPS by 27.2% per annum compound, on average, eliminating the impact of the 2026 PAM step acquisition non-cash profit. Slide 10 provides the specifics of the five-year performance track records of the 43 affiliate funds or strategies.
Slide 11 shows the detail of the affiliate platform and highlights of the 2026 financial year. Slide 12 shows some details 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 further large performance fee outcomes each year in future years. Slide 13 shows our 20-year FUM and net flow history. Our institutional retail and wholesale pipelines each remain strong, and our client base is increasingly diversified, including overseas, as we grow and evolve, recognizing changing market circumstances. Slide 14 elaborates the evolution of our FUM by channel type. Slide 15 focuses on our evolution and growth in private markets asset classes and internationally domiciled affiliate FUM. Slide 16 shows the evolution of our international platform and the growth in FUM from clients located outside of Australia by affiliate and by country.
Slide 17 provides some detail of the increasing diversification of our business. Diversification by affiliate, by asset class, and by strategies with the potential to earn performance fees. The result is greater resilience of our core earnings. Slide 19 has detail on our revenue and margin performance and the key drivers of that performance. Note that affiliate margins, excluding performance fees, have increased by 10%. Slide 20, further detail on our financial results. Slide 21, some balance sheet commentary. Section three provides an update on Pacific Asset Management, including PAM's very recent acquisition of Asset Value Investors. Section four, an institutional and international market update. Andrew Chambers will explain the factors at work in these markets during question time and one-on-ones. Section five, domestic, wholesale, and retail market update. Kyle Macintyre will elaborate during questions and one-on-ones.
Section six is titled "Our Growth Agenda," slides 33-39. I don't have time to go through all of this, but the bottom line is it explains our results in growing the business and that we plan to continue our purposeful expansion into larger international markets through a growing affiliate presence, expanding our globally relevant product suite, and increasing our global distribution footprint. We return to this theme of our growth agenda by way of conclusion at slide 47 shortly. Section seven is on corporate responsibility. Again, I will leave it for you to read those slides. We are immensely proud to highlight the work of the PNI Foundation and the donations that we've made during the year.
In conclusion, referring to slide 46, I'd like to remind shareholders once again of the basis on which we remain so confident of our company's ability to grow and prosper, which is our distinctive business model that was designed specifically to ensure sustained investment excellence. On slide 47, our conclusion that high rates of EPS growth should be sustainable. As we pointed out very early in this call when referring to slide six, we can't make specific predictions, but we can explain why we should be able to continue to compound EPS growth at high rates. This is summarized in slide 47. Can we please now invite questions? Please note the appendix has additional information that people are often interested in, such as the FUM history by affiliate in slide 56. Over to questions, please.
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. Your first question today comes from Cameron Halkett with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gents. Congrats on 20 years, and Matt, congrats on your appointment to the board. I'll keep it to two in the interest of time. Can I start just around PAM? Obviously, another very strong year and it's clear momentum into FY 2027. Now that it's been fully acquired, can you share with us anything on any initiatives for FY 2027 that both Pinnacle and PAM will be working on together?
I think Matt is probably best placed to answer this.
There is a number of things. Firstly, I think what we are doing in the U.S. is quite interesting. We have had quite a lot of success in the U.S. It is a ginormous market. People talk about model portfolios and the SMA market that is happening in Australia. Really, model portfolios are happening all over the world. That means actually there are fewer and fewer allocators of capital, and there is more and more capital as everyone moves towards models. The ability to tackle ginormous markets like the U.S., I think, is much easier than it was historically when you may have needed sales teams that were ginormous. We are working very closely with Andrew Chambers team in the U.S. Some of the structures that we have mutually got around active ETFs and CITs and LLCs and Cayman vehicles. I think that is a super exciting opportunity for us.
Affiliate origination, working out how we can take interesting investment capabilities that sit within the Pinnacle Group and work out how to best distribute them outside of Australia, whether that is through PAM’s infrastructure, whether it is through PAM’s quasi-captive distribution, through its own model portfolio business, which is growing. I guess most obviously is what we can do in the SMA market in Australia. Clearly, the retail market in Australia is focusing on outcomes and advice, and that requires more and more financial advisors probably to outsource to SMA providers. We believe, when the time is right, the technology infrastructure, the Pinnacle brand, the track record that we have built, and the sort of global nature of what PAM do, has as much appeal in Australia as it does in the U.K. We are super excited about that.
Our U.K. business within the SMA market or model portfolios continues to accelerate. I think we can achieve. There is a possibility we can achieve what we have done in the U.K. successfully in Australia when the time is right.
Thanks, Matt.
Thanks for that.
The last Welcome. The last one I'll just do is, can I just touch on Metrics? A particularly strong year for profit growth, noting it looks like some performance fees has helped given there wasn't any in the prior year. Just outside of that, it looks like there was strong operating leverage. Is that something that we can think about again into FY 2027?
Thanks for that, Cam. It was good to see Metrics plans in regard to the bringing together and the streamlining of those asset-backed lending businesses start to come through in FY 2026. We definitely think that that can continue as they continue to get the benefits of the cost rationalizations from those platforms being combined, and then medium to longer term as they incept product that sits behind that origination capability. Yes, we absolutely think that that continues to improve for Metrics from here.
Nice. All right, guys. Thanks.
Your next question comes from Nick McGarrigle with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thanks for that. Just in terms of the, obviously, FY 2026 is an interesting year in terms of the ins and outs and part years of a range of things. I wonder if, Dan, if you've got kind of a mental map of how you think about the growth rate across the business in terms of profit and the key drivers, not obviously numbers, but thematically, what are the key things that you think are latent in the business that help deliver reasonably good profit growth into 2027?
Sure. There are really four things simplistically that we think about, and this is outside of any organic growth or any acquisitive or additional growth initiatives we may undertake. The first one is the fact that we'll have 100% ownership of PAM for the full year next year, compared to only two months this year with the balance at 25%. There's the fact that our closing FUM is 14% higher than the average. Importantly, that FUM is at a consistent fee rate with the fee rate during FY 2026 and FY 2025, that will earn therefore at similar rates. There's the fact that the profit margins in Affiliates before performance fees improved by 10% year-over-year. Then there's the 50% uplift in revenues in Pinnacle Parent, which will annualize into next year.
We think each of those four things, if you add them together, that takes you to a significantly improved starting point for next year, improved compared to this. As I say, that's before any organic growth or any acquisitive or additional growth initiatives we may undertake.
All right. Awesome. Thanks for that. Maybe just one last question from me around Life Cycle. How's that business tracking in terms of its capacity? It feels like we're getting close to a point where, do they start to soft close certain vehicles and have they had any meaningful success in raising money from U.S. allocators or into their U.S. equity strategy as an additional leg of growth beyond the global?
I'll take that, if I may. It's Andrew Chambers here. If we just recap the capacity of Life Cycle. In the Select strategy, the flagship concentrated strategy is about AUD 10 billion of capacity in that strategy. On top of that, you have a bespoke strategy, which is for institutional investors, where they replace less liquid stocks with more liquid names and substitute those. That's another AUD 10 billion of capacity. On top of that, again, you have AUD 20 billion in the diversified strategy, which you're moving from 60 stocks to around about 180 odd stocks in stock count. It's much more diversified, lower tracking error, very fit for purpose for your future, your super environment, of course, here in Australia. On top of that, again, we have another AUD 10 billion capacity in what is called their Global Equity Income strategy.
That gets you to AUD 50 billion. You add on a minimum of AUD 20 billion on top of that for the U.S. equity strategy. If we think about those ones today, we'd be probably about, I don't know, about 60% of the way there for the Select strategy. We've sold, I guess, the majority, I would say, of the bespoke capacity there. Diversified, we're probably a good 70 odd% of the way there, I'd suspect. U.S. equity is now lifting up. We've sold about AUD 2 billion of capacity already. We've had success in North America with U.S. allocators into the U.S. equity strategy. We brought on board our first U.S. allocator into that strategy on a standalone basis, and have been winning clients into the global equity strategy. There are inflows and outflows happening inside these firms all the time.
Obviously, capacity sometimes gets freed up as there's rebalancing inside portfolios. We can allocate that to new investors as well. Yeah. That's probably the summary. Sorry, Dan.
There's quite a bit of capacity left-
Yeah
In aggregate.
Substantial capacity left.
That's helpful to understand. Sorry, I lied, I'll ask a follow-up to the Life Cycle one. How should we think about revenue margins in that business over time, just given the mix of where the additional growth is across that capacity?
I think it's fair to say, given where they're at with capacity, that the focus now will be on maximizing the revenue take rather than the absolute flow numbers. You should definitely expect that margin to improve as they cycle out some of that capacity into retail, and as they start to fill out the more high-yielding strategies that Andrew mentioned, the Select strategy and then also their U.K. income strategy, which is sold entirely into retail.
Important to note, there are additional product extension capabilities within that organization. One would be into emerging market equities, and the other would be into a lower tracking error, more systematic version of their offering as well, which would increase the capacity again.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Andrei Stadnik with RBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Congratulations on the result. Can I ask two questions? My first question, just around the global distribution platforms which you touched on earlier. Are there any channels or any capabilities around managed portfolios or model portfolios, SMAs, that you think you want to prioritize in terms of your build-out?
Is that for Matt? Are you okay to take that question, Matt? I think the question is around managed accounts model portfolios.
Yeah, absolutely. I think in the U.K., there's continued penetration and growth of model portfolios. Our business remains quite differentiated in terms of how we approach that, and that business continues to accelerate. We've also embarked on a number of joint ventures, which I think will see that continue to grow. Of course, the Australian market's fascinating because the similarities to where the U.K. was five or 10 years ago, and everything else translates from a sort of technology build-out from a language perspective, from a regulatory perspective, best interest duties similar to consumer duty. It's all extremely similar. That is the obvious next stage. Canada, although has a very captive universe through the banking channels, is an area that's also looking at model portfolios. We are having some success in South Africa, with the technology, where people have actually looked to license the technology.
We're working with a large South African bank around using the technology, which is an interesting potential opportunity for us because it's a completely different sort of revenue stream, which is less linked to performance but more linked to service, which is slightly more tangible. We already do work in the Middle East through the model portfolios and some of the insurance companies and the international life businesses. We've started to have quite a lot of success. In fact, there's an international financial advisor that we run now, over GBP 400 million for, that has come in really in the last 18 months, which they're not even a U.K. business. I'd say Australia would be the obvious one. Technology in South Africa is interesting. Canada is a market we're starting to do some research and growing our Middle East presence.
Thanks so much, Matt. For my second question, can I just ask a numbers-related question just around the base fee trends? At 100% ownership, I think the FUM was up about 28% year-over-year. The base fees were up about 35%. That's a pretty good trend. Can you comment a little bit about what drove the trend with base fees growing ahead of FUM?
That actually masks a little bit of the timing impact of when some of those flows came in. The base fee was actually consistent this year on last, rather than rising. We see that as a pretty strong outcome given the amount of money that came in from institutional clients, particularly to that lower fee strategy that LifeCycle runs. In terms of the trends that we think are underpinning, first of all, maintaining that fee rate, and second, potentially improving it over time, they're intact, and they are the growth in wholesale retail, both in Australia and internationally, growth in private markets assets, and then growth in high-yielding active management strategies, all of which we're well represented in. We think those trends will perpetuate, albeit the fee rates were maintained rather than improved this year when you look at the averages.
Thanks so much.
Your next question comes from Laf Sotiriou with MST Financial. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the chance to ask the question. Can I dig into Metrics a little bit? It's great to see the NPAT broadly double in that business, but the dividend more or less halved. Can you just talk to the capital intensity at this point in time and when we should expect the dividend ramp to match the earnings profile?
Whilst I wouldn't wish to presume what the Metrics board will decide, what I will say is that that profit was reasonably back-ended. You would expect to see the dividend come through in the first half of this year. It's more timing than anything.
Yes, that's right.
It was almost half the year before and the earnings doubled, so they went in opposite directions. You're confident, and then, of course, it's up to the Metrics board, but there's no reason why you would see that that dividend wouldn't substantially step up in FY 2027.
Short answer to that is no. You do often see in affiliates that there can be a lag in the timing of the dividend relative to when the profit's generated, because obviously they need to collect the fees before they can pay the dividend out. We would definitely expect that to normalize over time. I see no reason that they wouldn't continue to pay most of their profits out as dividends.
That's right. Andrew and I are on the Metrics board, there's no intention to hoard capital from profits.
That's great.
As their profits grow, their dividends should grow. Look, as Dan said, the timing of dividends from affiliates is quite lumpy.
Look, I know. We're looking at the history of it, this is a notable step down when the earnings doubled. If you're confident that the dividends will ramp up through FY 2027 and beyond and normalize to your equity stake, then that's fine. I'll take that as your comments for now. Moving on to AVI, can you talk us through what the process will be for U.K.-based sort of funds, whether early stage or very start? This is a 100% ownership of AVI, a little bit different to what you typically do with a staking business. What's the decision tree look like in terms of whether things will go now in 100% or part thereof?
Yes. The one comment that I would make, and we might then ask Matt to comment. The practices have been somewhat different in the U.K. than Australia. We have particularly prosecuted this model of minority ownership. It was appropriate in our market. Condition's a bit different in the U.K. It's much more common, the 100% thing. Matt, this 100% is a model that you've used previously, and it was just appropriate in this circumstance, but I don't think it indicates what we might or might not do in the future.
Okay. Got it.
Yeah. I think that.
Go on.
Just to very quickly add to that. I think the 100% thing is a bit of a red herring slightly because the business was 25% owned by a passive shareholder anyway. Although not in the detail, that part of the project actually was to make sure that the fund management teams were greater aligned to the profits. Although we acquired 100% of the share capital, in reality, it almost looks more like a 50% acquisition. It is a slightly nuanced thing. As Ian said, the key for us is not really who owns the share capital, but where the alignment sits, and to making sure that we mimic the model that is in Australia, where most of the alignment towards performance and client outcomes sits with the people that are making the investment decisions.
With AVI, that works in exactly the same way, even if it appears from the release that we were buying 100% of the share capital. This was more a function of us having to take out passive shareholders.
Got it. Just one final question. Can we get a commitment on when we're going to see modernized reporting to better reflect the changing shape of your business?
Look, that's a fair comment, Laf. This year's definitely been one of our more complex in terms of the transactions that we've done and how they're reflected in the numbers and the reporting. What we've sought to do this time is to give people all of those separate components so they can either disaggregate or consider in total as they see fit. Certainly, from next year, as the business is now more settled into those separate components, we think that that'll make the reporting clearer.
Segment reporting of PAM will help as well.
PAM and just which affiliates are contributing the most and just the way that it's done. Look, the reporting's almost a bit of a dog's breakfast now. There's a lot of pages to get to the detail. It's just something to think about. Obviously, PAM's now probably going to be the biggest earnings driver of the business, and particularly the acquisition it's made. The level of disclosure is not quite there.
Look, what's important to us is that we give people the right information for them to understand what's happening. That's always what we're seeking to do, and we'll definitely take that feedback on board.
Yep. Thank you.
Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions today. I'll now hand back to Mr. Ian Macoun for closing remarks.
Great. Thanks very much, Ashley. Thanks to everyone who joined the call. We will now go into one-on-one meetings, and we'll be happy to elaborate what we were able to cover in the call.
Thank you. That concludes our teleconference for today.
Thanks.
Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.