Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Anima Holding First Quarter 2024 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 Mr. Luca Mirabelli, Head of Investor Relations of Anima Holding. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, a very good afternoon also, and welcome to the call, also on behalf of Anima. We are here to comment a very good first quarter, which was apparently well received by the markets, along with some indications about what's to come that you might have seen in our presentation. Without any further wait, I'll give the floor to Alessandro Melzi d'Eril, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Anima. Please, Alessandro.
Thank you, Luca, and hi, everybody. So let's start with our presentation. As always, page three. In the first quarter, we reach almost EUR 194 billion of assets. This is EUR 2.1 billion up quarter-on-quarter and +1% approximately versus the year-end 2023. In the first quarter, we registered excellent retail inflows. We are very happy about that, mainly from our partner banks.
While we register negative outflows on the institutional component, mainly explained by the low economic impact wrapping component, we will get back on it. Very solid with the average performance of our product, substantially in line with Italian average.
Looking at the numbers, we were able to register important top revenues, approximately EUR 122 million, +51% if compared to Q1 2023. This was mainly due to performance fees component, but not only, also thanks to increase in recurrent revenues. With the margin at 66%, notwithstanding the increase in cost due to the acquisition, Castello, I would say, because Kairos is not consolidated yet.
As always, resilient cash flow, the free cash flow yield remains at double digit, at a double-digit rate, net of time deposit. Page 4, our asset by segment. Nothing in particular to be outlined, if compared to year-end 2023.
Page 5, as I was saying, the weighted average performance of our assets is substantially in line with the market industry, with the Italian industry. A little bit below, this is explained, properly explained by the, a more conservative overall asset mix of the company if compared to the market, mainly less equity compared to the, to the industry. Page 6.
Net flows break down by quarter. Demand still focus, still continue to focus on fix, on the fixed income products. Equity appetite is still, is still low, as you can see by, by from our numbers. We register, we, we do recurrent, surveys on the final client, on the market, and we register a strong increase in the, investment appetite, from our clients, final clients. But still on the equity side, we see a conservative approach.
But anyway, I mean, we were able to register important flows on the bond component, while the outflows are all mainly entirely connected to the disappearing wrapping, and we have a slide on it, and we already talked about that, the year-end presentation. In any case, the change in mix is not expected to have measurable effects, negative effects, as we will see, on the contrary, we are experiencing a slight increase in overall profitability.
Page seven. Net, always on flows. As I was saying before, and as you can see from the slide, we are raising money on more juicy asset classes, while outflows are all concentrated or focused on the, or comes from the very poor asset classes, such as wrapping, wrapping component and Class I insurance mandates.
As explained several times, wrapping are funds of the house, investing in other funds of the house, mainly because of investment management efficiency, efficient, a more efficient investment management process.
But in any case, given that from a regulatory standpoint, we cannot duplicate fees, the loss in terms of management fees is limited to the excess of fees of the underlying fund compared to the mother fund. In most cases, this component is zero. Page 8, numbers. Net revenues up 18%. This includes also the Castello component that wasn't there last year in Q1. Operating expenses increases again, also because of the Castello component that is consolidated in Q1 2024.
In any case, the EBITDA is up about 60% if compared to last year, almost EUR 93 million in the quarter. If you look at the net income, plus 75% if compared to last year, almost EUR 53 million in the quarter. As I already said before, looking at the right side of the page, the profitability, the average profitability of our assets is slightly increasing. Even not considering the class one insurance mandate, that of course dilutes our average profitability. This is an, I think is an important sign of our resiliency in terms of assets today, in terms of profitability of our assets.
And also, as I said more than once, I think this is explained by the fact that even if we are losing money on the equity component, the bond component with positive interest rates is better priced to the client base, therefore sustaining the overall profitability of the company.
Looking at cost below the EBITDA or not below EBITDA, but looking at cost income ratio is increasing. This is mainly due to the fact that we are strengthening our illiquid business that has a different cost structure, and also to the new labor contract that is entering in full force this year.
Below the EBITDA, we continue to exploit the increasing interest rates, positively investing our liquidity, both on our funds, but also on time deposits and current accounts. If you look at the Castello in the first quarter, we see a low contribution of Castello in terms of profitability in Q1, but this is also due to the to certain cost revenue seasonality of the company.
So this is slightly different from what we see on historical business of Anima, that has no seasonality, basically. Page nine, personnel expenses. This cost in line with the last quarter. If you compare the quarter with 2023 Q1, of course, as we said before, we have the discontinuity of Castello.
A variable cost increased because of a provision for full year provision for bonuses related to performance fees, registered in the quarter. Net financial income, page 10. As already said, we are trying to take some benefit from higher interest rates. Of course, we are not a bank, but still we were able, in the past quarter, to improve continuously the item in our income statement, coming from the investment of our liquidity.
If you look at the comparison with Q1 2023, there is also the discontinuity related to the debt repayment of last June. Net financial position. As you know, this company is always generating a massive amount of cash. We continue to do so.
Our net financial position in Q1 is already reflecting also the booking of the almost EUR 80 million dividend to be paid in May and already approved by our AGM on March 28. Our robust cash generation, we continue to provide to our shareholders a strong remuneration and keeping, I mean, allowing the company to keep a strategic flexibility in order to, with starting the transaction,
in order to be able to grow and to exploit potential opportunities on the market. In fact, page 12, on May 2 we closed the deal with Kairos. So, we received at the beginning of April the bank authorization, so we were able to complete the deal a few days ago.
Just a short recap on Kairos. Kairos is one of Italy's most renowned asset management brands, with 4.7 billion of assets and almost 100 employees. The activity of Kairos is mainly almost entirely an open-ended fund, institutional mandates. They also have some illiquid, but today less important in terms of number and assets. We strongly believe that the strategies and the client segments managed by Kairos today are complementary to the work, to what we do in Anima, and this is why we decided to go for this acquisition. Kairos also have a private banking network with 23 bankers managing altogether almost EUR 2 billion of assets.
A large part of these private banking assets are invested in Kairos products, and if you want, this small network is our first step in the direct distribution. Of course, is strongly focused on high net worth individuals. We don't want to compete with our distributor, as we always said, so we'll keep on a certain market segment, high end, in terms of client. But I think it's very important for us in order to keep the Kairos brand as exclusive, and in order to better understand what is... How this type of market thinks, and how this type of market behaves. Page thirteen.
So the idea of the Kairos acquisition and the alternative project is to be able to better serve different client segments if compared to what we historically do in Anima. What we want to do is to exploit the commercial strength of all, of all companies, and in particular, the commercial strength of Anima, to exploit commercial synergies also in Kairos, and in the, let's say, in the alternative business unit.
In fact, if you look at the slide, today we will keep three different brands: Anima for it is what our historical brand, historical type of business, Kairos, and then Castello Anima Alternative. We have different companies and brands to target different type of customers.
Anima will continue to focus on the affluent customer base, mainly managed by our bank partners and institutional investors, mandates for cash, pension funds, et cetera. Kairos will mainly focus on upper affluent, private, high net worth individuals, family offices, as, as I said before, fund users in Italy and abroad.
Castello and Anima Alternative, let's say Castello, mainly on institutional investors, high net worth individuals and family office. So if you want, Kairos and Castello will do more similar businesses if compared to what Anima does today. Products, all the factors will produce products that better fit with their customer needs. And of course, we will try to exploit all the synergies, let's say, on the back, on the operational side, of all the companies.
So we bring digital, digitalization to all the 3 companies, to all the 3 businesses. We'll try to integrate as much as possible, providers, player contracts, and everything that is the, operational platform on which all, all the 3 companies rely. And of course, this is very important for us, we will centralize as much as possible the risk process, I mean, control and risk processes.
Let's come to numbers in terms of what we believe, we can extract from these acquisitions. Page 14. We recently worked on our, new strategic plan for the next few years, and, we strongly believe that, the illiquid business, plus Kairos, could double their assets over 5 years, and making 4 times in terms of EBITDA.
Of course, these are two different businesses, the illiquid and the Kairos, but I think that both assets will bring, will be able to bring, growth to our group, and profitability. As I said before, exploiting the commercial capabilities of the Anima group. Within this growth, we, we think that we'll be able also to increase, I mean, and to bring growth, and to create, to create growth, within the Kairos private banker business.
We expect to double the assets also in this segment of our, our group, through organic growth and recruitment. And we think that we will be able to do so, exploiting an integration of Anima products and strategies, including alternative investments....
We will try, we will succeed also in recruiting new private bankers, but we will also try to create organic growth with our existing network of bankers. Also providing to them new platform from a technological standpoint and additional value-added services. Page 15. For what concern our the shareholder remuneration, we decided to integrate in our guidance to the market, both dividend and buyback.
This will imply that we pay to shareholder, I mean, we'll continue to pay to shareholder, and we will keep our dividend payout policies of 50% of group net income as a floor to be paid through dividend to our shareholders.
But we also, we also said that we'll be able to pay through dividend and buyback, 75% of group net income in a five-year period, so accumulated over five years. In order to stay in line with this new guidance, we also approved today a EUR 40 million new buyback that will start soon, in the next few days.
And in line with the AGM approval of March for the recurrent AGM approval for buybacks, from our AGM. Closing remarks. To summarize, we registered a Q1, a very positive Q1, both in terms of retail net inflows that were the strongest in years, so this is very important for us.
And of course, also in terms of economics, thanks to, as we said before, thanks to performance fees, but also, thanks to, structural improvements of our recurrent management fees, revenues, I would say. We expect the new ventures, so the Liquid project and, Kairos, including the private banker component, to be a significant growth drivers in years to come for our group.
We decided to, therefore, we decided to enhance shareholder remuneration policy, formalizing at the end of the day, what we did in the last years, and therefore, as I said before, increasing to 75% of group net income over five years, our guidance to the market in terms of shareholders' remuneration.
To demonstrate our willingness to do, to pursue this type of shareholders remuneration, we restarted with a new buyback of EUR 40 million that soon after the ex-dividend date of May 20. So on, from the 21, 22, we'll start with the buyback. So thank you all for attending our call. I remain fully available to your questions, and let's go on.
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 touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask you to use the handset when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Alberto Villa with Intermonte SIM. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, thanks for the presentation. I have a few questions. The first one is on slide 14. I was wondering if you can share with us what was the pro forma 2023 EBITDA and AUM you consider setting the targets for 2028.
Also related to that, given that you discussed internally the targets for 2028, if you have any additional target that you can share with us, maybe in terms of inflows expectations or EBITDA for the group, that would be wonderful. The second question is on the net inflows for April, which were positive. I was wondering if there is a significant contribution from mandates, and how are developing the distribution channels.
So maybe some more color on what's going on in terms of banking partners and so on, for inflows and your expectations for the coming months. The third question is on performance fees, which were solid in the first quarter. April performance was less brilliant due to markets. I was wondering if April was a positive month for performance fees and which was the contribution you're expecting from April performance fees? Thank you.
Okay. Hi, Alberto. Let's start. I'll start from the net inflows on April. Yeah, we're positive. We continue to register solid inflows on the retail component. We are very happy on that. So basically, all our partners are performing very well, in particular Montepaschi and Banco. But also the smaller channels are contributing, are positively contributing to the performance.
Looking at the institutional component, we had inflows from a mandate we won with Cassa Forense . This was public, went public last month with Cassa Forense , a few months ago. So we had to implement the operational part. We started in March, and we had the flows also on April, and this offset the outflow component, present also on April.
So, we are seeing a positive numbers, also thanks to that. In any case, the most important part, I believe, is the strong and consistent performance of our banking partners. Performance fees, we did pretty well in April. It's difficult to provide a guidance on performance fees, because, you know, markets are very difficult to be... If we'd be able to foresee what will happen, probably won't be here.
No, but maybe the April number?
The April number, I cannot,
Okay.
I cannot go public with the April number, but was positive.
All right.
Banking partners, addition, let's say on the... Hold on a second. All right. Looking at the numbers of the three entities, let's say, Anima Alternative, Castello, and Kairos, they all together, they have more or less EUR 9 billion of assets and EUR 9 million EBITDA. So this is the underlying of the slide 14, as you asked. In terms of additional target for the group, yes, of course, we did an exercise for the entire group. To be honest, I'm a little bit skeptical in going public with a specific target because, you know, our business is very much volatile.
So of course, our industrial plan envisages several actions that we will do in the next few years. So we have clear ideas on what we have to do, but I prefer not to disclose targets because the volatility to our business, I mean, let's say there is an indication, an internal indication for us to follow strategic guidance, guidelines.
Anyway, if you look at slide 415, maybe I wasn't clear on that. We, what we envisage is, to pay, as I said, 75% of net income over a five-year period, and this accounts, in our numbers, accounts approximately over for half of our, of the current market cap, paid over five years. So if you want this, you can do a reverse engineering of-
Yeah. Yeah, got it. Thank you.
All right.
The next question is from Gianluca Ferrari with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Three for me, please. One is on the increase in margins in the quarter. I think this is not driven by flows, because as you said, flows are still in fixed income products. So should we read this increase in margin as a different mix between retail and institutional? Is that the only explanation?
The second is on the other revenues. I think you are mentioning some internalization of some fund services. Can you explain a bit more, what are these services? And, if I got it right, we should plug in our models at least EUR 10 million a year more revenues going forward. So the EUR 42.6 of last year is reading more as EUR 52 plus from now on.
The third and final one is the pipeline on Kairos, on the private bankers you aim at recruiting. If you can share with us the target you have in mind, where you think these private bankers will come from, if you have targeted you know the profile of these persons you want to recruit. And yeah, a bit of color also, that would be great. Thank you.
... Hi, Gian luca. Well, I'll start from the last one. Well, let's say that first of all, the next few months, we'll, we will focus in reinvesting in the platform and the services, within Kairos, in order to be able to be more attractive for bankers and clients. Therefore, we believe that we'll be able to go on the market, in 2025.
And the profile, well, the profile is, I think, will be similar to the banker we already have in our company. So we look for high-profile bankers with, as much as possible, important assets. So we want to stay on a, as I said before, high-end market segment.
Also because we don't want to get in competition with our distributors. So we want to stay in a market segment where typically clients are multi-bank, and where, I mean, the perception of a competition from the Anima group to our clients is... There is no perception of competition, basically. If you look at the other revenues, the answer is yes.
We in terms of numbers, so we have to, you may plug in- you can plug in within your models, at least 10 new years of additional revenues per year. These revenues comes from, as you rightly said, reinternalization of, let's say, NAV calculation activities at fund level. And yeah, I wouldn't add anything.
On margins, I would say that, yeah, at least you have a little bit of increase of margins coming from the new assets, of course, because this comes from last year also. All the new target defined, repriced, are all fixed income funds and repriced if compared to the past. There is also a little bit of asset mix of between the retail, and retail that is performing very well in terms of inflows and market effects and institutional.
Thank you.
The next question is from Luigi De Bellis with Equita SIM. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Two questions for me. The first one is on Kairos. So what do you expect as a contribution in 2024 in terms of net management fees and costs? What management fees margins compare to the group average? And can you elaborate on the main strategic priorities in the next 12 months of the new acquired company? The second question on flows.
So when do you expect the headwinds related to the wrapping to normalize, and if we can expect, on, do you expect some new institutional mandate tenders in the coming months to positively impact the flows? Thank you.
Okay. Well, on margin of Kairos, let's say that Kairos is a company that in terms of net management fees last year was slightly below, slightly below the breakeven. And with performance fees they were able to stay a little bit above.
So what we expect is to have from Kairos as of today at current assets a contribution probably a little bit above the breakeven overall. And we expect to exploit operating levels of the company, so increasing the assets and exploiting the fact that we already have the cost base up and running to catch this growth.
The margin, overall margin of Kairos, like, in terms of top line, is between 445 basis points, so higher than the average margin of Anima. So I don't know if I answered to your question. In terms of project, the project is clearly, as I said, to position the brand and the company to high-end segment of client base.
So we are targeting with Kairos, ideally, private banking segment, family offices, fund users in Italy and abroad. So also financial advisors networks. So area where Anima today is present, we have the access, we have, we also sell to this type of segment, to this type of segment, but we weren't able in the past to succeed as we did in the retail affluent segment.
So we, our expectation, our goal is to exploit as much as possible the Kairos brand to be able to grow in these, in these market segments. I wouldn't add anything. Do you have additional question on that?
No, no, no, it's clear. Thanks.
And the second question was.
When will wrappings normalize?
Ah, wrapping. Normalization of wrapping.
If there are any new tenders for institutional mandates coming up?
Yeah. All right. The wrapping, we expect to normalize, let's say, within the end of the first half. So we are working on it, and also looking at the market trend, we believe that will normalize pretty soon. In terms of tenders on institutional mandates, yeah, there are tenders.
This year there are quite a few tenders. Of course, it's difficult to say if we'll be able to win or not. Also, because we have tenders also on our existing mandate, so the... Let's see if we'll be able to do positive on that. No, I think that we'll be able to do so, but you know, it's difficult to give you an estimate.
Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is from Adele Palama with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. A quick question on tax rate. I've seen that, it's a little bit higher than the fourth quarter. Is there any one-off there? What's the guidance for the year? Thanks.
Yeah, there is a one-off. There is the ACE. I don't know how to translate it in English.
Okay.
It's a tax incentive on capital retention. That was canceled by the government, and this impacted the overall. I think on the full year impact, the impact is approximately EUR 2.5, EUR 2.5 million.
And this is already spread across the entire year, so you're already seeing that, regardless of its positioning in the calendar. This is basically, let's say, tax reduction on the capital reinvested in the company that used to be in place, until last year and was discontinued by the current government starting from 2024. This is not just about Anima. It's, I would say, a regulatory change.
Okay, thanks. And sorry, can I do a follow-up on the margin? I didn't catch what's the expectation of the evolution of the margin, of Anima margin, like, the 16.7. Do you expect that to be stable or to increase?
Well, we believe that, if you look at the, at our current perimeter, we believe that the margin could remain stable. So we expect the margin to remain stable. We may have some slight increase, also driven by the, by the full consolidation of Kairos, that is accretive, even though with small numbers. So this, I would say, at least stable with some upside.
Okay, thanks.
Okay, just a quick follow-up on the tax deduction. It's called ACE, which means Aiuto alla Crescita Economica, help to economic growth. And it is basically a deduction of the theoretical yield of capital, which is reinvested in the company. It's just to, you know, push more companies to reinvest, not that we needed any incentive, but of course, we did benefit from the tax deduction, and it will not be there starting from this year.
Mr. Mirabelli, gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Very good. Hopefully, this is not a sign of a lack of interest, but a sign that we answered all questions properly. Time will tell. Anyway, thanks to everybody for attending today, and the next appointment will be on July 31st, I feel hot just mentioning that date, for our half-year results, and we hope to have you on the line at that time as well. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.