Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Anima Holding Full Year 2023 Financial Results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Luca Mirabelli, Head of IR. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Very good afternoon to everyone connected. We are conscious that it's going to be a busy day for many of you. So without any further delay, I would like to give the mic to our CEO and General Manager, Alessandro Melzi d'Eril, who will comment on the results we announced today. Please, Alessandro.
Thank you, Luca. Hi, everybody, and thank you for attending our conference call. So I would start from, with our presentation as always. Page two, summary slide. First of all, AUM up, 14.4 billion year-on-year, reaching EUR 191 billion of assets at the end of the year. We register negative flows in low impact wrapping, the low impact wrapping category, we'll get back on it, in the next slide. We are positive on, on all the other categories, excluding, the, traditional, traditional insurance plus one. Very solid weighted average performance, substantially in line with Italian leverage, notwithstanding our historical, lower component of equity, in our asset mix. If you look at the financials, we strongly generated, performance fees, in the last quarter of the year, in particular in December.
Total revenues are, excluding performance fees, in any case, are up year-on-year, also thanks to change of mix and other revenues. The EBITDA margin is at 72%, despite some increase in operating cost, mainly due to the acquisitions we, the one concluded, completed in 2023 of Castello and labor cost. Strong cash flow as always, that remains in terms of free cash flow at double digit. Page three, our assets by segment. There are no particular news. Just to remark that, if you look at the institutional, we have the alternative fund that with 4%, approximately of the total. As I was saying before, this is linked to the completion of the Castello acquisition in July 2023. Page four, our investment performance.
Substantially in line with Italian industry, little bit below. But if you look at the funds breakdown by category, you can clearly see our lower component of equities compared to the market, to the industry. So I would say that the performance of our funds was absolutely in line, if not better, if compared to our competitors. Page five, looking at the net flows breakdown by quarter. Looking at the last quarter, we saw that the positioning towards fixed income slowing down a little bit. Equity appetite has not picked up yet, so we are waiting for it. The flexible component, as we said more than once, is largely connected to the so-called wrapping. We have a slide on it.
But in any case, the change in mix is not expected and is not having a particular effect on margins. Page six, we try to provide some more insight in terms of the company assets and the profitability of these assets. On the left side of the page, you can see the type of assets that we manage, so the type of clients to whom we sell our products. Fund user, institutional fund users, retail clients, pension funds, institutional mandates. So these categories register plus EUR 1 billion in terms of net inflows in 2023, and these categories have a higher profitability compared to the rest. Fund user are the most profitable, then retail clients, and then pension funds and institutional mandates.
If you look at the wrapping under the wrapping, that, as we said more than once, this is this funds invested by by funds of the house, we cannot duplicate fees in Italy because of regulatory constraints. Therefore, these assets has, let's say, a very limited impact in terms of profitability, and we registered on these assets -EUR 1.2 billion in terms of flows in 2023. Last, -EUR 4 billion, these are totally linked to the Class I insurance mandates. This is the lowest profitability asset class that we manage. These assets are mainly linked to the mandate that that we have come with Poste Italiane, profitability little bit over 22 basis points.
Page seven, if you look at the consolidated P&L, revenues, consolidated revenues are up EUR 333 million, if compared to last year of EUR 226 million. The most important component of your revenues is registered by performance fees, almost EUR 35 million. We benefit in December of the decrease of interest rates, registering a significant amount of the yearly performance fees. If you look at the EBITDA, EUR 266 million, up as compared to last year. We also, for your benefit, let's say, showed 2023 of Anima, excluding Castello, so the consolidated, excluding Castello. Net income EUR 149 million, +24% if compared to last year.
If you look at the profitability on the right side of the page, profitability excluding Class I insurance, increasing, slightly increasing. Excluding Class I insurance, slightly decreasing. These effects are marginal effects, coming from mixed effects, I would say. In general, our profitability I see our profitability as substantially stable also going forward, because we have a dilution coming from the fact that equity registered negative performances in 2022, and in terms of, in terms of performances or asset asset performance, and a negative performance in terms of inflows in 2023. On the other end, we have the full fixing, our products, full fixed income, in general, our component of fixed income invest in our portfolios that is repricing because of the increase of interest rates.
So these two effects seems to have provide a substantially stable effect on our margins. If you look at the cost income ratio, the cost income is increasing a little bit. This is mainly due to the acquisition of Castello. Castello is an alternative business. Of course, the margins are different both on the top line and on the net income if compared to the traditional asset management business. The other effect is coming from the new labor contract. We apply the the credit contract, and therefore we have increases like everybody in the sector.
If you look at below the, below the EBITDA, we had positive impacts from the mark to market of the group liquidity invested in our users funds, and the positive contribution because of the group liquidity invested in liquidity and the unwinding of a hedging derivative on the financing we closed last June. Page eight, just to give you a help in order to reconcile the results from 2022- 2023, the effects from the EUR 120.8 million of net income of 2022, we have an increase in terms of EBITDA.
The only investment portfolio, as I was mentioning two minutes ago, yield on liquidity, the unwinding of the derivative on the financing of the banking financing we closed in June, and then negative effects of tax and small other effects, and of course, the Castello, the contribution of Castello since July 2023, when we closed the transaction. There is not a full year result for Castello. Page nine, if you look at performance fees, after a tough 2022, we closed more normalized 2023, if we can say, and we enter into 2024 with a better situation if compared to last year.
These graphs show on the right side of the page, that we have 34%, we had at the beginning of the year, 34% of assets above high water mark, 16% within 2% distance from the water mark. The situation has changed slightly, beginning of June, beginning in January, but in substance, this is the picture. We have more than 50% of the assets as of today above our water mark or within 2% distance from the water mark. Page 10, personal expenses. As I was saying, we had some driver that brought upward the cost of our the personal cost. We had a modest increase in FTEs of Anima, at Anima level, let's say, old perimeter.
We consolidated Castello. This has brought personnel costs of the company. Of course, we had to apply the new banking collective contract. The impact in Q4 is EUR 400,000. In the run rate impact in 2024 will be more or less EUR 800,000. Variable costs mainly linked to the results of the company and the performance fees registered in the last part of the year. Page 11, net financial income. We have already mentioned this is the quarterly evolution of the management of our liquidity, basically, and what we've been able to achieve in terms of net interest that more than counterbalanced the cost we have on the debt and our bonds outstanding. Page 12, net financial position.
End of the year, we are positive by, at a consolidated level, we are positive by EUR 5 million, notwithstanding, in the year, we have been able to pay EUR 70 million of dividend, May. We repaid EUR 82 million of debt, as I said before, in June. EUR 62 million for the acquisition of Castello in July, and EUR 45 million of share buyback during the year. The company continued to generate a massive amount of cash. We have a very solid balance sheet that allows us to look at extraordinary transactions with a high pressure to do deals.
Moreover, now that we have done two deals in one year, but we continue to monitor the market, and we are ready to capture all the possible interesting opportunities that may arise. And, of course, buyback and remuneration for our shareholders and possible share count reduction. Just remind, in the last four years, we canceled 14% of the share capital following the buybacks. Page 13, Kairos acquisition. We signed in November 16, 2023, the acquisition of 100% of the share capital of Kairos Partners SGR. You may have read something on the newspaper. Kairos is asset management company invest managing open-ended fund, so multiple fund institutional mandates and semi-liquid product.
The strategies and the clients are fully complementary to what Anima does. They manage, Kairos manage EUR 4.7 billion of assets as of December 2023. The company employs 110 people between employees between Milan and Rome. On top of that, Kairos has also business, let's say, wealth management business, with approximately 20 private bankers managing 22 billion of assets, approximately. A large part of these private banking portfolios are invested in Kairos product. So I think that this could be a very interesting opportunity for Anima to gain access to some high-net-worth individuals, in order to sell our products, of course, and to better understand the market dynamics.
Looking at the new group structure, the Anima SGR continues to be the heart of the business, under EUR 87 billion of assets on the left side. Kairos, and this will continue, Anima will continue to do its historical business with strong link with retail distribution and several institutional relationship. Anima is an industrialized machine to do this business. I think that we demonstrated during the years that we are top class in doing our business. But we wanted also to gain more access to segment of client or clients where we were less present, namely some of the offices, a net of individuals, fund user, institutional fund users, financial advisors networks, so the segment of the market where we were weaker historically.
I think that with Kairos and our alternative franchise that we're building up, we can get more. We are more competitive in attracting assets from these type of segments. So Kairos will be its brand that is very well known in Italian, and not only in Italy, in Italian market, focusing on high-end retail institutional clients, and of course, trying also to leverage on the selected team of private bankers, as I was saying before. Then all the alternative world made of two companies, Anima Alternative, that today mainly manages private credit funds, and Castello mainly focusing on real estate funds. So this is a platform that I spoke about it more than once.
We will try to leverage this platform, further developing additional strategies in order to be able to serve larger type and number of clients. Page 15, dividend for the year. Our proposal, we will propose on the twenty-seventh of February, that is, we have shared our board to call the AGM of end of March. The dividend proposal will be EUR 0.25 per share, up as compared to last year, 53% in terms of dividend payout on net consolidated, registered consolidated net income. To make our last slide, Luca found a title for the slide, Recharging Completed. He's not like Fabrizio, probably, in terms of fantasy, but he's very close to him.
Net inflows, well, what we see, I think that we had a tough 2023 for the sector, entire sector. As Anima, we resisted very well, because apart from the Class I traditional insurance, that for us is, let's say, not particularly interesting in terms of profitability and the wrapping factor, we resisted very well on the retail, but not only, also on the institutional side. I think that the normalization of interest rates, and let's say, I mean, we don't have even to touch a lower level, but what we need is to start with a descent to a decrease in interest rates. And I think we are very close, if not, if we are not already there.
Because the network, if they see the movement, if they see the direction, they start to push, push on the asset management business, because it's key for them to find an additional way to make also commissions, to substitute net interest margin. So what we are seeing already in January is a consistent across all networks, consistent movement, positive movement on the asset management business. And I think that this may continue during the year. If, of course, the direction of the interest rate will be the one already started in December. Performances, as I was saying before, the decrease in interest rates has already provided some sign of what this could be paid for a company like Anima.
Because in with a strong movement in December, we have been able to increase our assets, to register important performance fees, and I think that this could be a very important trend also for the year incoming. Alternative assets. Castello is an important acquisition for us in this segment, because with Castello and Anima Alternative, we now have a platform on which to build up to become an important player in this area. I think this is synergic with our strategy, with our sales strategy on the rest of the business. As of today, Anima has the capability to reach the entire, let's say, client base, institutional and re- and/or retail, in the country, and not only in the country, because we also start selling our products abroad.
I think that having a more complete and wide range of products is key to success in doing so. New opportunities. Of course, as I said before, Kairos is very close to the strategy that we already started in the alternative, in the sense that Kairos, with its brand and its capabilities, is very important in helping us to be competitive in client segments where historically we were weaker. And I think that on top of that, having selected private banking network could help us in better understanding certain type of client segments, and also, why not, distributing our products, liquid and illiquid. Last but not least, M&A capabilities.
We, even if we did two acquisitions in 2023, of course, this will, let's say, will be a strong, a tough job for the management in the next few months in order to integrate and to put, and to try to, to exploit as much as possible all the synergies that we see in putting together all these assets. But we remain, of course, very active in the sector. We have done, in our history, several acquisitions. We know how to do, how to do it, and we continue to scout the market to see if there are interesting opportunities to further increase our capabilities and our, of course, size in terms of assets and potentials in terms of markets.
This is out also from the strong and robust cash generation of the company, that will allow us also to provide significant remuneration to our shareholders, as we always done, as we already did in the last year since we listed. So I thank you all, and I'm fully available for questions.
This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask you to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Gian luca Ferrari of Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, Alessandro, Ciao, Luca. Three questions for me. One is on the way you communicate flows. We saw last year that on target date funds having BTPs as underlying, we got all the outflows from former products, having your funds as underlying, while at the end of the day, what matters is the fact that the client is buying a fund or a targeted fund. So any chance you can move from the underlying asset view to the main product view, or not in the future? Second one is, I didn't see in your slide deck any referral to January flows. If you can anticipate or communicate what was the performance in January? And the third and final one is on Kairos, and in particular, two things.
Yes, you said that you are complimentary with them. At the same time, you have some funds that are in complete overlap. So I was wondering if you are planning to streamline a bit the product offer and, you know, merge funds that are basically having the same strategy. And second, it seems to me, from what you are saying, that you value a lot the private banking side of Kairos, and the access to family offices and networks individuals. So I was wondering if you have any target on those 20 private bankers, where this number can go in the near term? Thank you.
Hi, Gian luca. Well, thank you for your questions. Well, the way to communicate flows, we are thinking about it because there are, I mean, several different views. It's always difficult to provide a clear and a clear communication to the market, because of course, then there is the Assogestioni map that is coming out every month with data that should be fully aligned to the rest of the sector. So it's not easy to have a communication that is clear and for everybody. So we'll make some thought, and we'll try to be as much as possible complete and to provide you with the with the relevant details to also make models and to foresee the future. January flows, well, the trends are...
We will try in the communication of tomorrow, the trends are what I said during my presentation, so we still have this wrapping noise while the underlying trends of retail flows are very positive. So, I'm seeing we started well, so tomorrow we will come out with the press release, and we will try to make clarities on these two trends. Kairos, well, we are. Of course, Kairos, the transaction is not closed yet. We are working with them in order to assess what they have, what we have, and also to have a plan, an action plan by, let's say, the closing date.
Streamlining, as of today, yeah, we have some product that could be potentially in overlap, even though, for instance, I have in mind products that are, let's say, are on the same market, but with different approach to the investment, to the investment. So, let's see, but to be honest, I don't see particular, let's say, need or requirements to streamline the product offering. We will try more than, on top of that, probably, we will try to focus the two companies on different type of products. So we may decide to bring some strategies in Kairos and vice versa. So we'll try to focus the two companies on different type of products and investment products.
And on the... Yeah, please.
Please go ahead. Go ahead.
No, no, I was wondering if the 20 private bankers you expect to reinforce that part of, of the asset?
Well, the 20 private bankers, as I said, I think these are a very interesting opportunity for us. Of course, we will never become a private banking network because we would be also in conflict with our distributor. But I think that there is room from 20 to grow, for sure. We are working on this strategy, on the numbers, and when I'll have more clear ideas, I'll share with you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM.
Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the inflows outlook for 2024. Of course, I'm not expecting you to give us a precise guidance, but was wondering if we can have some more color on your discussions with the banking partners, and how confident you are they are pushing more actively towards managed assets.
If you really expect, given the rate environment remains volatile in the short term, but probably heading towards a reduction in interest rates, if this could be really the inflection point for your inflows, and if you're confident the banking networks you work with are maybe demanding you new products or actively marketing products to in order to catch this opportunity. The second question is on the massive cash generation you're continuing to experience, is very good news.
Is that potentially allowing you to be even more generous on the dividends and the buybacks going forward, so the dividend payout ratio maybe could be increased in the future, or you prefer to maintain flexibility for other opportunities to deploy cash? Finally, on the performance fees, I understand that you are in a much better position now than a few months ago. Maybe you can share with us what is the January performance fees harvesting you had, and that's it. Thank you.
Okay. Hi, Alberto. Thank you for the questions. Well, 2024 guidance. Difficult to provide a number, but I can tell you my feeling, talking to the banks and looking at their general results. Well, today, the banks, I mean, they're all saying the same thing, namely that they want to push more on asset management and bank assurance because they're expecting the interest margins to go down. They don't know the timing, but everybody is preparing to do so. If I look at January, I have to say that across all our networks, so with main partners, but not only, results turned positive through them. So I see. And for some of them also with a very interesting number, I'm alive.
So I would say that if you look at January, we started very well in this respect, and I think that we see something that has changed. So this is the first good sign. This is what I can say, and of course, what the messages I'm getting from the banks is that they want to continue in doing so. Then I think that the trend and how the interest rates will go is key in assessing what will be the performance for the banks.
Cash, well, cash dividends and buybacks, well, let's say, on the dividend guidance, we are not thinking at changing our guidance, informal guidance of at least 50% on consolidated net income. While we will continue to taking into consideration, and actually, in the last six years, we've always executed the buybacks during the year, because our idea is to pay an interesting yield to our investors, increasing the shareholders' remuneration via buyback and cancellation of shares at the end of the year. Of course, if we don't see M&A coming or reasonably coming. So this is where we are, and we will decide in terms of cancellation of shares for this year on the 27th of February.
And the buyback, of course, we will get the approval, we'll try to get the approval from this DSM for 10%, as always, and then during the year, the board of director will decide when to activate a buyback program. In terms of performance fees, we started January better than last year, so we almost doubled the number of September where we were at September last year in Q3. So it's not a huge number, but it's far better than last year. So hopefully we will continue in this direction.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Filippo Prini of Kepler.
Yes, good, good evening. A couple of questions. The first on performance fee in Q4 2023. Could you tell us, please, how much of them is coming from funds at high water mark, and how much of them coming from the fund of benchmark? And the second question is on the split between fixed and variable cost of Castello SGR. I see that the share of variable cost into their in on Castello is higher than in Anima. So, if you can explain a little bit how these variable costs are generated to which variables to which KPIs are linked. Thank you.
Hi, Filippo. Well, performance fees in Q4, basically, we registered performance, almost the entire performance fees registered were on high water mark funds. I think that we did EUR 1.5 million on benchmark funds, approximately. No, three million, sorry. EUR 3 million on benchmark funds, and the rest on high water mark funds. These are high water mark with another rate, in any case. Castello SGR, the, let's say the variable component that we registered, this is not the variable component for the five months, basically, but is the variable component for Q4, basically, that we are registering the variable component for the full year.
Uh, okay.
The next question is from Elena Perini in Intesa Sanpaolo.
Yes, good evening, and thank you for taking my questions. Actually, I've only one question, and it is still on costs. I was wondering if you can provide some guidance on the costs for the current year, also considering that at a certain point of time you will also consolidate Kairos SGR. So we have, it is true, a lower inflation rate compared to last year for the SG&A, but we had the contract renewal in the banking sector and so on. So if you can elaborate a bit on those components. Thank you very much.
See, hi, Elena. Well, on the SG&A, as you rightly mentioning, we have less pressure in terms of inflation repression. For what concern the collective agreement, collective contract, as I said during the presentation, the full year impact in 2024 will be plus EUR 400 thousand if compared to 2023. In terms of if we look in general, in terms of cost, including the contribution of Kairos, our cost income will increase, for sure, because Kairos, in any case, is a company that is at breakeven, including performance fees as of today. So it's a company that is under scale and that we have to, let's say, relaunch in terms of revenues and assets to be attracted.
So this will have a slight impact in terms of cost income on the group, for sure. Of course, we will provide the number as soon as we have the closing, so for the Q3, we will provide you with all the numbers.
Okay. Thank you.
Meanwhile, we have a minor correction on Alessandro's answer to the Filippo Prini's second question about Castello variable cost. Substantially, it is true that what you see in Q4 does not represent a run rate that you could project over a normal year. It does have some significant skew towards the end of the year. Main KPI is the generation of EBITDA of Castello. However, it is not correct to say that it is the, it represents an entire full year on Q4. There is a significant skew, though, and the run rate for the next quarters will probably show that more clearly. I hope this is acceptable.
As a reminder, go ahead.
I was about to say the same thing. If there is anyone who wants to ask further questions or if Filippo has any further questions, we are here. So apparently we either satisfied all curiosities or we bored everyone to death. In both cases, our next appointment will be for the Q1 results on May 6th , and we are looking forward for to a very large participation as just like today. Thanks everyone for attending.
Thank you all, thank you for attending the call.
Speak soon.
Bye-bye.