Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Azimut Holding Full Year 2022 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. Gabriele Blei, CEO of Azimut Holding. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, and good afternoon to everyone. We'll go through the slides as always, as quickly as possible in order to leave you time for Q&A. If we turn to slide number four, we have a quick highlight of the past four years. Summarizing the growth in assets, which had a cumulative annual growth rate of 12%, and we closed at EUR 79 billion of total assets, which is already discounting for the deconsolidation of Sanctuary Wealth. Net flows, EUR 36 billion in the four years with EUR 8.5 billion in just 2022, so roughly speaking, 10% of the assets. A private market has been a strong driver of our commercial activity as well as flows, with EUR 6.5 billion or 10 x more the value that we had when we started in 2019.
On the performance side, so what we deliver in terms of net weighted average performance to clients, net of fees, despite a very challenging 2022, we're still up 6.5% in the four years, where net profit closed at EUR 402 million in 2022, bringing the 4-year accumulated profit to almost EUR 1.8 billion. The dividend side, we have proposed to the AGM the distribution of EUR 1.3 per share dividend this year. We will look into it in a minute in more details, which basically accounts for EUR 631 million of total dividend distributed over the four years. I remind you that we had in 2019 almost a billion of debt, with completed a number of M&A transactions over the four years as well as buyback, which help us reconciling the dividend distribution with the net profit that we have achieved.
Moving to slide number five, we just wanted to summarize to you what we have completed in February 2023 with the closing of the second LBO transaction, which basically has enabled us to close the transaction of the 75% increase of what of the money we had invested. I remind you that half of the money was through leverage, EUR 30 million, and the rest has been equity capital that more than 1,000 people has contributed to. As far as the transaction is concerned, we wanted to highlight and stress one very simple principle. We did not sell any of our shares. We just had to go through an accelerated book building to close the leverage. We basically sold enough shares, repay the debt, and then all the remaining shares went to Timone, subject to the usual lockups.
No management has sold any single share, on the contrary, through the equity participation instrument that the management team and the key personnel has. We will go through the usual acquisition of shares on the market during the month of June once the equity participation instruments will receive the dividend. Today, there are almost 2,000 individuals in Timone, of which 21% account for the total shares of Azimut within the trust. Moving to the following slide number six, a quick picture of the asset and flows through the years, we have closed, as I've mentioned already, EUR 79 billion. Average assets excluding Sanctuary Wealth closed at EUR 80.4 billion. This is despite the negative market effects that hit also our asset base. But we have been able to continuously gather assets throughout every single quarter of 2022.
Thanks to the strong diversification in our distribution platform and networks across the world. Moving to slide number seven, you have the usual split by product and region in terms of flows. You see on the bottom left, Italy with EUR 1.3 billion, that does not take into account the fact that we had to divest EUR 150 million due to the bond repayment. If we look at the EMEA region, EUR 550 million with mainly flows coming out of Turkey and Dubai, whereas Egypt has suffered the negative macro environment as well as local volatility. APAC, Australia and Singapore were the main driver behind the EUR 625 million of flows. Whereas as far as the Americas is concerned, clearly the big chunk of the flows are coming out of Sanctuary Wealth.
So EUR 4.8 billion, as well as Brazil with almost EUR 800 million, and Mexico almost EUR 300 million. On the M&A side, we have been active on two fronts, mainly. One is related to RoundShield. The RoundShield acquisition is a private real estate company active across continental Europe for EUR 530 million, and then a smaller acquisition out of Australia for EUR 210 million. This brings the total to EUR 8.5 billion in a very challenging environment. Slide number eight, another snapshot or representation of where the assets are based, with 24% out of the Americas, 58% in Italy, our domestic market, 8% out of Europe and Middle East and Africa, and 10% out of the Asia Pacific region.
On slide number nine, you have a stronger or in-depth representation of what are the main countries of the EUR 32.9 billion or 42% of the total assets belonging to our international operations with U.S., Australia, and Brazil. As we have mentioned several times, being the major market. On the Italian side, you see a drop from EUR 49.8 billion-EUR 46.1 billion year-over-year. This is effectively linked to the negative market effect with our weighted average performance negative by 9%. Moving to slide 10. A bit of a different representation from the usual slides. We wanted to highlight after having implemented the new pricing scheme as of April 2022, how the fee structure has impacted our revenue generation and contribution, whereby you see a slower and diminished contribution coming out of performance fees, whether this is performance fees on our Luxembourg UCITS fund or our Insurance Unit-Linked products.
Nowadays, we have EUR 1.3 billion, of which only 4% belong to performance fees, whereas 96% are the current revenues. The drop year- over- year of EUR 276 million is explained by the significantly lower contribution of performance fees, partly offset by the growth of the new distribution fee that we have introduced as of April, as I mentioned, and the growth of our foreign operations, which we will see in a minute. Of the, as far as the bottom line is concerned, the 4% translates into 8% performance fees on the net profit. We expect going forward that the contribution from performance fees will be between 5%-10% of the revenues, or 10%-20% of our total net profit, depending clearly on the market environment and our capability to over-perform. Moving to slide 11.
This is quite now the usual slide of the operating cost evolution. We have only highlighted in 2021 and 2022 the impact from the deconsolidation of Sanctuary Wealth on the distribution cost as well as on our SG&A, because from July 2022, we only consolidate Sanctuary Wealth no longer on a line-by-line basis, but below the operating line. If we dig into the detail of the delta on an annual basis of the SG&A, we can check that there is a delta of EUR 23 million, of which basically almost EUR 7 million is linked to the new perimeter coming out of Italy, and EUR 6 million of new perimeter coming out of the international operations.
We have had some savings out of Italy of roughly speaking, EUR 3 million for lower bonuses, which are offset by the growth of our International business, which is also impacting our cost base for EUR 12 million. On the distribution side, there is a delta between the two years of EUR 16 million, of which EUR 8 million belongs to the fact that we deconsolidated Sanctuary Wealth. Whereas the EUR 6 million is a concept we have touched upon during our last call, and is basically linked to the impact of higher yield curve on our, and the discounting of future severance payments related to the network of financial advisors in Italy. Moving to slide 12.
Quick representation of the evolution of the EBIT margin year-over-year, with and without the performance fee element. The green line is without, and you see how the EBIT margin has evolved from a 19% of 2018, certainly a very complicated year, up to 40% in 2022, thanks to all the actions and growth and strategy that we have put in place. Slightly more than 2x over this period. Moving to slide 13. We move to the representation of the net profit and the recurring net profit over time. As far as 2022, we have, we are confirming the EUR 350 million net recurring net profit that we have mentioned during our pre-closing statement in January, and EUR 402 million of net profit.
The growth has been consistent. If we compare the margin of 2022 with 2021, you see that we have a very stable margin of 42 basis points despite a very challenging market environment and a higher tax charge in 2022 when compared to 2021. If we rebuild the impact of performance fees to these 42 basis points, we will be trending to the 50 basis points net profit margin that we always try to maintain. Interestingly enough, the EUR 350 million of recurring net profit is the highest in our history and is quite almost the double of what we had back in 2019. Let's go to slide 14 and 15. We'll spend a bit of time because this is the very first time that we have been providing, especially slide 15.
Let's focus on slide 14 for a minute. These are the usual four boxes through which we provide you with some colors and numbers on our international operations. Total assets at EUR 32.9 billion clearly have the impact of the deconsolidation of Sanctuary Wealth for roughly speaking, EUR 7 billion. This is exactly offset by the flows that we have generated from our foreign operations during 2022 of EUR 7.2 billion. On the revenue side, we have observed a cumulative annual growth rate of 24%, exactly in line with what we have seen on the asset base. Total revenues of EUR 273 million are up 10% year-over-year. If we were to exclude the impact of the deconsolidation of Sanctuary Wealth, you would see that in 2021, we would have had EUR 184 million vis-a-vis EUR 248 million.
Whereas the 2022 figure would be dropping from EUR 273 million to EUR 221 million, which translates into a growth of 20% year-over-year, or roughly speaking, 70 basis point of revenue margin. One thing that I want to underline before commenting the EBIT and net profit, is that the total revenues do not account for those revenues that are booked in our product factory in Luxembourg, and are, sorry, and are belonging to our International business. Why I'm saying this is because in the EBIT and net profit boxes, you see two lines. The two lines are basically a result of a management accounting approach, which is aiming at providing you the industrial profitability of our foreign business by reconciling all the revenues and the profit that we generate out of our business wherever this is based, i.e., trapped in our Luxembourg operations.
If we turn to the EBIT line, we have achieved EUR 78 million of EBIT from a management EBIT perspective, whereas the statutory number is EUR 56 million. The delta is explained by what we call as cross investment that is basically income from our foreign operations in our Luxembourg entity. If you check the growth year-over-year of these two lines, it is slightly lower in terms of progression of year-over-year, and this is due to lower performance fees that we had in 2022 when compared to the previous year. Moving to the net profit. Again, the two lines, the statutory line of EUR 47 million, whereas the EUR 60 million line includes the income of our Luxembourg product factory and does not include, and this is important when we turn to the next slide.
Does not include the fair value options that in a way distort the picture of our industrial profitability. It can be a positive or negative number, clearly depending on the year, but we prefer not to have this impact and show you that, between 2020 and 2022, the profitability of our management, accounting in our foreign operations went from EUR 30 million- EUR 60 million. Quite the double. From 2022 to 2020. Moving to slide 15, this is trying to answer some of the requests that we have had, in the last years or quarters, to provide with a better representation and more transparency when it comes to, the four building blocks of what we do, as far as Azimut Group is concerned.
As you very well know, we have our historical business in Italy, where we have EUR 42.5 billion. Here we have extracted the private market assets belonging to our Italian operations that you will find in the private market column in order to provide you with a fair representation. This EUR 42.5 billion generates EUR 980 million, which basically is the result of the revenues generated from our distribution activity and production activity linked to our domestic market and domestic clients. It includes clearly Luxembourg, Ireland, and our Italian asset management activities, excluding clearly the private market. At an EBIT, this corresponds to a margin of 216 basis points.
At an EBIT, we close with EUR 424 million or EUR 295 million of net profit, which is basically 70 basis points of net profit margin. Internationally, we have EUR 32.5 billion adjusted for Sanctuary Wealth. This number produce EUR 273 million of revenues or quite 85 basis points of revenue margin. Clearly, you see a difference with Italy, but we have never hide the fact that internationally there are different dynamics in different markets, and therefore, the profitability of the assets and revenues that we generate on the assets is different. EUR 83 million of EBIT and EUR 64 million of net profit, which is virtually 20 basis points of net profit margin.
Why the EUR 83 million and the EUR 64 million do not speak with the EUR 78 million and EUR 60 million of the previous page is basically because we are including the fair value options and we are not accounting within this column for the contribution coming from our alternative business in the U.S., which is included in the private market column that I'm gonna comment in a second. Turning to the private market, EUR 5.6 billion, which are split EUR 3.2 billion in Italy and EUR 2.4 billion abroad. This have generated EUR 77 million of revenues in 2022. If we observe the EUR 77 million with the EUR 3.2 billion of our Italian AUM, this is 240 basis points of margin.
Why just EUR 3.2 billion and not the full EUR 5.6 billion? This is because the Azimut Alternative U.S. business is accounted for in terms of dividend below the operating profit line. It has an impact on the net profit, not on the revenue generation. EUR 33 million of EBIT, which correspond quite to the same level of management and net profit of EUR 33 million or 60 basis point of net profit margin. The two number are similar, if not identical, simply because we are including the dividends coming from our U.S. GP staking business. This is quite offset by the tax charge that we have on this division. The Fintech, here you can incorporate a ll the activities coming from the Fintech world, as well as some of the so-called investment merchant banking activities that we have started to develop over the years.
These do not have specifically assets for the time being. We generate advisory fees and commissions of EUR 19 million. It brings us to EUR 8 million of EBIT and EUR 11 million of management net profit. Clearly, from the EUR 8 million-EUR 11 million, we have the taxes, but we include also the fair value of the options that we have within this division. I'm not going to comment any longer on the fact that the sum of all these four divisions lead us to the EUR 402 million and all the other numbers. One thing I would like to highlight is the fact that within the private market segment, which has started in 2019, sooner or later we will be starting to generate carried interest, which will hopefully uplift the 60 basis point net profit margin.
Moving on to the other slide 17, the usual representation of our weighted average performance. We still are benefiting from very solid results in 2022. We started the year with a very strong performance vis-a-vis the industry, and we are kind of very active and diligent in the way we approach the asset allocation of our clients' money, given that markets are still quite volatile. Slide 18, focus on Italy. This slide and the following ones, we wanted to provide you with a bit of insight of who are our clients and how much money they have with us. You can see that virtually 73%, so quite the 2/3 of our client base has more than EUR 250,000 with us.
We should be able to justify our prices, our advisory service to them, with or without any inducement ban that eventually may come into play. On our segmentation, in terms of client age, you see that quite a good chunk of our clients are within the, let's say mature bracket between 50 and more than 65 years of age. Turning to slide 19, private market. The usual breakdown of where we are geographically by region, U.S. and internationally, mainly sorry, Italy and internationally, mainly U.S. and the U.K., with 57% in Italy, EUR 3.7 billion or 43% and EUR 2.8 billion. As far as the asset split, no major change vis-a-vis the last update we have provided to you. What is a statistic that we have discussed with some investors over the course of the last year, has been the fact that nowadays.
There is a very large acceptance by the network of selling private market products to their clients. 90% of our network, so 1,660 financial advisors have sold at least one private market product to their client base. This converts into a penetration within our client base in Italy of just 20%, which gives us ample room to continue to pursue a different asset allocation for our clients as far as private market are concerned, to generate long-term, consistent, positive overperformance vis-a-vis our competitors. Slide 20, Private Market Platform, a different view of what we are doing and how. You see that we have grouped the activities under three pillars.
Direct investment, EUR 3.2 billion, GP staking, EUR 2.8 billion, and some of the partnership agreements that we have with a number of very respectable and renowned players in the private market field for half a billion. Of the direct investment, we do it in six countries across the group. We're quite pleased that we have started this process in Italy, and going forward, we will be expanding the private market capabilities across a number of different operations as there is appetite from our clients. We have launched a bunch of funds within the Raiffeisen and other structures that enable us to have full flexibility and approach different type of investors. On the GP staking side, this is basically the U.S. operations, and we have completed the six transactions that we have updated you on.
Moving to slide 21. Another way of looking at what we have been doing on our Italian business, is to focus on the other two businesses that have driven the flows during 2022. Azimut Life, our life Insurance business, has generated net flows for almost EUR .5 billion . You have to take into account that, if you look at the gross figure, this is even more relevant because we have generated EUR 1 billion of gross flows, which have been offset by EUR .5 billion of outflows due to the death of policyholders. And resulting in the EUR .5 billion net new money. AUM of EUR 6.7 billion, impacted clearly by the negative markets vis-a-vis 2021, but steadily growing year- after- year. What is more important and relevant in this slide is the bottom part.
As you can see, we are able and capable of growing in terms of new policyholders, whether firms or clients. This is probably the result of the thorough work we have done over the years in trying to improve the product offering as well as delivering significant performance to our clients. One thing that we are very careful is always to decrease over time, the average age of the policyholders in order to maintain a consistent and significant growth within this business line. 2022, as I mentioned, marked the best year in terms of net flows since 2016 for this business line.
Another way of looking at things within Italy is the pension environment, where we are present with a number of products and solutions, including an ESG Compliance Pension Product. As you can see, the work that has been done and the performance that has been achieved over the years has enabled us to grow in terms of assets to EUR 1.5 billion from shy of EUR 1 billion. Most importantly, to reach a 5.5% market share, overcoming in this segment some of the very large players that operate in Italy. For the Pension business, we have been active in 2022 and recorded the best net flows ever. Moving to slide 24. Just wanted to give you a quick snapshot of the partnership that we have announced back in late December 2022.
This partnership is delivered with UniCredit in order for UniCredit to develop their own asset management capabilities. We will be setting up an independent management company that has been called Nova Investment Management in Ireland. We will develop a range of UCITS funds only for them of this Irish operations. The agreement is based on a non-exclusive distribution with the UniCredit network that can rely on seven million customers in Italy today. Why UniCredit has chosen probably Azimut is a recognition of the work that we have done over the last 30 years both in Italy and abroad. We have built a global asset management team that has more than 170 investment professional across all the countries in which we operate.
Probably, we have been able to establish a significant recognition as far as the work we do and the brand that we represent. Flows and AUM from this partnership are expected over time. It does not clearly depend on our decision, but we are closely working with UniCredit in order to establish the product that they need and be able to educate and transfer the know-how that we normally do with other banking players to their network in order to ramp the business up in a very significant way. Side, the net profit, or the agreement that we have reached with them, entails for a net profit margin that stays with Azimut of, that is in line with our margin that we generate out of our domestic business.
So it's going to be quite in the 50 basis point region. Moving to slide 25. This is kind of a timeline of what we have been doing and what we will be doing in the coming quarters and years. Starting from the announcement, we will be soon filing officially the application with the Central Bank of Ireland during March. We have already done the pre-work, sorry, for the filing. So everything should be now set to be sent to them officially. We expect the license to come over in Q4, and together with that, we will be working to establish the 12 first funds that we have mentioned, which will be UCITS product. From that moment on, so between Q4 and Q1 2024, we will be starting the marketing activities, and net flows will be generated.
In 2028, there is the UniCredit will have a call option to become the majority shareholder of Nova Investment Management as they will be starting from a minority position. Sorry, from a no equity position, because we will be a 100% owner of this entity up until they exercise the call option. Moving to the other major relevant event in the M&A side, is the acquisition of a minority stake in Kennedy Capital, a 35% stake. We are very pleased that Don and his team have decided to reach this agreement with Azimut that recognize their superior capabilities in delivering returns over a very, very long period in this mid U.S. equity market. Funnily enough, one would have asked why Azimut is not present in the traditional asset management business up to now.
Eventually, the honest and direct answer is, we didn't find people like Don and his team to come on board and deliver and leverage on their capabilities for our client base wherever these clients are based. The Kennedy Capital had, at the end of February 2023, EUR 3.8 billion. As you can see on slide 27, I think this slide is self-explanatory as far as the returns that the Kennedy Capital Investment Team has been able to achieve over the years on a consistent basis vis-à-vis the benchmark. They are in the first or second quartile since inception on all the six strategies that you see on this page. Slide 28, this is how the U.S. presence of Azimut shapes up. We're present with our private market segment that have affiliate AUM for EUR 17 billion.
This is not the competence of Azimut in terms of the stake that we have because we have typically a 20% stake on all the companies in which we bought into. We have added the traditional asset management capabilities with Kennedy Capital, so EUR 4 billion of AUM. Most and lastly, we have our own distribution capabilities through the shareholding of Sanctuary Wealth that today accounts for EUR 26 billion. On the bottom part you see the six acquisitions that we have completed throughout the year, with our private market initiative, as well as the Next Generation Fund, which is basically mimicking in a fund, the activity that we do out of our Azimut Alternative Partners Holdings. I'm gonna turn now to Ale, for the usual representation of the financial accounts.
Thank you, Gabriele. We can go to slide 30. As you can see, we can start commenting the income statement, the first part of it, where you have total revenue that decreased compared to last year by EUR 163 million, thanks to an operating cost that remains stable with a lower effect of EUR 3 million, the operating profit decreased by EUR 166 million. This negative variation is mainly explained by the variable fees, actually, the 2021 with EUR 322 million almost. We have a negative variation of EUR 76 million if we compare to this year.
Main of the variation it is there, we were able to net this negative variation thanks to the increase in the recurring fees of EUR 132 million if we compare to the full year 2021. This obviously includes the contribution of the new fees that we introduced beginning of April, that counts of EUR 105 million, also thanks to the contribution of the private market growth with the EUR 18 million and EUR 21 million thanks to the contribution of the International business. Netted obviously by the EUR 9 million of the deconsolidation of Sanctuary Wealth and a bit of volatility as we were saying was before on the open-ended fund. Moving to the variable fees just to comment how we build the EUR 36 million for the full year 2022.
As we already shared at the beginning of the year, we had the crystallization of the old method, with a contribution of EUR 33.7 million. We have the fulcrum effect that impacted negatively, with EUR 5 million. Also, we have the positive contribution of the International business that generated EUR 16 million in the full year 2022. Moving forward on the other income, EUR 9 million variation compared to 2021. The other income are mainly driven by the new perimeter where we are investing. Therefore, on 2022, we mainly invest on the vertical of the investment banking initiative that positively impacted the other income.
On the other side, moving to the Insurance revenue, we have a negative variation of EUR 23 million that comes from, again, performance fees effect. The net between the two years are EUR 27 million. Therefore, we were able to again reduce the negative effect thanks to EUR 4 million of recurring fees, higher compared to last year, thanks to the growth that we have in terms of AUM despite the market volatility. Moving to the cost, as I was saying, in general, we are EUR 3 million less, but we also have to consider that in distribution costs we benefit on one side, if we can consider it as a benefit to the consolidation of Sanctuary Wealth.
As we were commenting before by Gabriele, we have also less overheads and positive impact on the higher yield curve on future severance payment to IFAs. Last point, looking to the SG&A, we have EUR 19 million compared to last year in terms of increase of costs. Here, if we take out the effect of the deconsolidation of Sanctuary Wealth, the real effect in terms of negative impact or g rowth is EUR 33 million, this is explained on two different way. One side, we should consider the variation of the Italian and International business perimeter. On one side, EUR 7 million in the first case, then for the International business, EUR 6 million are linked to the Australia presence.
The rest is mainly explained by the growth by the International business by EUR 12 million. Moving to slide 31, we have the second part of the income statement. We try again here to give you a bit of colors in terms of the impact, using the notes below. Finance income are driven by dividends from the GP stake, EUR 13 million. We have the deconsolidation of Sanctuary Wealth and therefore, the minority effect through the P&L, EUR 5.8 -. Then, the effect of the fair value option netted by the realized and unrealized gain or loss on the own investment that, netted together, is gonna be something around EUR 2 million +.
The net non-operating costs, the EUR 11 million that you see that impacted the full year 2022, is driven by the valuation effect due to the application of the IFRS 3 and linked to the transaction that we have from a minority to a majority interest in Elettra, in the opposite way, the consolidation of Sanctuary Wealth that count around EUR 15 million. Non-recurring costs that effectively impacted by EUR 7 million. In general, just to comment on finance expense, we have a lower impact due to the fact that we reimbursed mid of March, the EUR 350 million bond. Lastly, we already comment during the year, the income statement is impacted by mainly by the performance fee and the higher taxes in Luxembourg.
We also provide you on slide 32 the income statement comparing the last quarter with the previous quarter. I would say that we have no significant elements to add or different explanation considering what we already provide commenting the full year. Just to take the full variation of total revenue that increased by EUR 15 million, essentially we were stable despite the or positively it's anyway impacted by the performance fee, in particular on 30. As I was saying before, from the International business. At the level of the Personnel and S G&A, where we have a significant variation, again here, we were impacted by the higher Personnel and S G&A due to bonus accruals, changing perimeter and new initiatives we were commenting before.
Lastly, the non-operating costs, again, the application of the IFRS, it's what I was discussing and explaining before. Moving to net financial positions, slide 33. We are positive to EUR 293 million at the end of year compared to EUR 410.8 million of 2021. On below, since in the slide you have a summary on what we did in terms of this investment, EUR 240 million. We paid a dividend of EUR 261 million. We repay the bond. We did a buyback, and also we have absorbed the cash due to the effect advance and stamp duties for EUR 113 million. Obviously, on this, you have to add the results of the group that the net profit before taxes counter to EUR 555 million to reconcile the variation. I'm gonna leave to Gabriele Blei for the last part of the slides.
Thank you very much. Congratulations for the excellent job. Very quickly, the very last couple of slides. Capital management on slide 34, dividend EUR 1.3, we have already commented on it, which is basically 51% of our recurring EPS of EUR 2.55. We stick to our dividend payout policy, which we have set a couple of years ago on stating 50%-70% of the recurring net profit is what we will be paying out of our EPS as far as dividends are concerned. Why that? Is because we have this pecking order in terms of the remaining net profit of debt payback, M&A and buybacks when and if opportunities will arise. Moving to slide 35.
It's a different way of representing what we have just mentioned, or just extended over a longer period of time. The 1.3 corresponds to a dividend yield of 6% so far. It is consistent with the dividend paid in the previous years. Lastly, outlook, slide 37. We have just summarized what is the expectation for this year, 2023, where we expect to be able to gather EUR 6 billion-EUR 8 billion under normal market conditions, and EUR 450 million of net profit. Clearly, moving to 2024, the expectation is to reach EUR 500 million of net profit and 15% of the private market AUM and the management adjusted net profit of our International business on an annualized basis of EUR 150 million. These are the targets that we have already set. I am not gonna comment further, but we're happy to take any questions that you may have.
When it comes to the focus and the business development that we intend to implement over this year and the next is clearly on our domestic market, the private market, and becoming the one-stop shop for financial needs, including anything, any activity within the fintech world is what we will be focusing on with our network fully dedicated to that. The U.S., we are keen to work with our colleagues in the traditional asset management, i.e., Kennedy Capital, as well as our private market GP staking business, to try to integrate and penetrate a bit more the distribution system that we have within Sanctuary Wealth. On an International perspective, the idea is to continue to grow as we have done.
The numbers, I think, speak by themselves, and we expect to increase the profitability and the scale in most markets, but especially U.S., Australia, Brazil, and our Middle Eastern exposure. Product offering, we have a pipeline of launches. We'll be trying to become a bit more disciplined in order to become even more effective as far as the commercial activity is concerned when it comes to the product offering. This entails mainly private market launches. On the usage side, we will be merging or filling some few gaps that we may have in the product suite that we offer to our clients.
M&A is always extremely opportunistic, extremely focused to create added value, and accelerate growth where we're present already. We probably don't see ourselves very much active in new regions or countries, but we can leverage on our existing presence and scale it up also with additional M&A. Capital management, we are quite boring, but we are keen to get to a position of completely leveraging and full debt repayment by 2024, when the EUR 500 million bond expires. This is gonna be financed through the strong cash flow generation that we constantly achieve. With that, I leave you with some time for the Q&A, and we thank you for your attention.
This is the Chorus Call conference operator who 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. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Hubert Lam of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got three of them. Firstly, can you give some guidance on costs for 2023, and particularly on the G&A as well as the commission expense? I know last time you mentioned about cost management or cost savings. I think any guidance for this year would be helpful. The second question is on flows. I think the start of this year for January, February, it was probably a bit weaker than what I had expected, particularly on the managed side, if you exclude the M&A. Can you talk about possibly the headwinds that you faced in the first couple months of the year? Will we read across to the upcoming months?
Also, maybe just give us a pipeline in terms of private asset launches that we could expect to come through in the managed inflows over the next few months. Lastly, on the UniCredit partnership, thank you for the details. How much profit have you baked in for your targets before EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million to 2023 and EUR 500 billion between 2024 for, from UniCredit? I would assume 2023 is probably not much, but just thinking more of the EUR 500 billion you're targeting for 2024. Thank you.
Thank you, Hubert. Thank you for the question. Guidance on cost, or guidance, more in general, I would assume that you would be pleased if we try to elaborate a bit more on how do we get to EUR 450 million from the EUR 402 million that we have achieved so far. The base assumption is that we will work in a more normal market environment than what we have experienced in 2022, which was harsher than what we assumed at the beginning. Therefore, we had to, you know, work harder to get to the EUR 402 million. This goes with a flat year-on-year margin assumption, which eventually we will be able to maintain.
On the cost side, you know, distribution costs are very much tied to the revenue generation that you would be able to assume based on the fact that we will be reaching EUR 6 billion-EUR 8 billion and a flat margin environment, which in the end, if you look at what we have achieved in 2022 vis-à-vis 2021, is exactly very similar growth in the net profit of EUR 50 million. Clearly, there is a component linked to performance fees that has been EUR 42 million or EUR 45 million in 2022, which we are not betting to replicate in full. Therefore, we are kind of more conservative down there. On the cost side, SG&A, the base case is that through the initiatives that we have been studying and putting in place as of 2023, we will be generating incremental cost savings.
But these cost savings will probably hit in full 2024 more than 2023. Therefore, the savings that we will be generating will probably be absorbed by some initiatives that I think we have discussed in the past as far as the front-end system that is used by the financial advisors or the work to re-engineer the back-end system that is again used from our domestic business. All in all, if I have to stay on the conservative side, I would assume that the SG&A line, given the development and the focus we are placing on our foreign business to grow and keep growing the net profit, is an assumption of 5%-7% cost growth of the SG&A line for 2023.
Again, this is because 2023 will not have the full impact of the cost savings, and this cost saving will be partly used to finance and finalize some of the projects that we have been speaking about for quite some time. On the tax side, we would be expecting to trend to the 22%-23% tax rate, which will be slightly lower than what we have achieved in 2022. Flows. I think I touched a bit on this topic just now. First two months, typically January is a flattish or seasonally weak month for the industry, and we are no exception. This is because people come back from the holiday season, and typically our network wait for the convention to take place and therefore to understand the commercial initiatives that we want to put in place.
We are also very much focused on generating flows out of the Private Market segment, which is something that, as I've tried to explain in the past, you don't fully see these actions and the result of these actions in any single month because we will only account for those assets once we close, and therefore, the commitment is drawn. The first two months have been impacted by the consolidation of Kennedy Capital. Net of this, EUR 1.3 billion in February, we had EUR 300 million of flows, which are discounting for the EUR 300 million outflows out of our Brazilian operations due to the very problematic environment following the bankruptcy of Lojas Americanas, which has had a wide-range effect on the entire industry when it comes to people reallocating the asset out of some of some fixed income funds into some other products.
Moving to the UniCredit profit contribution. As we have had the chance to mention to some investors, we are not expecting any contribution in 2023. On the contrary, as we are setting up the entity and hiring the people that are required by the Central Bank, to have a fully functioning asset management company, we will incur a small loss. I would expect this loss to be in the low- single digit print. We will be confirming this as we go along with the process, and we have a bit more visibility. 2024, the EUR 500 million net profit target does not virtually have any contribution in our simulation. It is something that when and if it will start in terms of flows and net profit generation, it's going to build up on top of what we have had the chance to set as the EUR 500 million mark.
Great. Thank you for the clear answers. Just one very quick follow-up. For your distribution costs, for 2022, like what is the starting point adjusted for Sanctuary Wealth and the one-offs, so we can kind of use that as basis for forecasts ?
Absolutely, yes. In your shoes, I would do exactly that.
What's the number then for 2022? I know for that.
It is. Hold on. I think we have it. Just hold on a second. Do you have...
Distribution center.
376. You have on slide, sorry, 11, you have 376 of distribution costs, which is already net of the EUR 45 million of Sanctuary Wealth impact on the distribution cost line.
The one-offs, I think there's some other one-offs in that line previously, or was that exactly?
Which one-off are you referring to? Sorry.
Sorry, the distribution costs. Wasn't there some one-offs in Q3? I'm just wondering if that's in that line, in that EUR 376 million, you know.
Listen, there is the impact on the severance payments coming from.
Yeah.
The yield curve, which is something that, I would not enter now into a prediction of where the yield curve will be, and therefore, what's gonna be the impact. Clearly, last year, 2022, we had an advantage. I cannot estimate how this is going to become. If you assume a zero impact, I guess, this is the best approach you can get, at the current stage.
Makes sense. Thank you.
The next question is from Giovanni Razzoli of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon to everybody, and a couple of questions on my side. The first one is about a little bit more details on the target of inflows for 2023, the EUR 6 billion-EUR 8 billion. What kind of contributions shall we expect from the domestic business, which, if I'm not mistaken, you show in 2022 as provided something like EUR 1.5 billion of AUM inflows, if I'm not mistaken, between AUM and private markets. If you can share with us what was the performance year to date of the domestic business. I would also like to hear your views about the, you know, commercial effect that, if any, on the outflows that we have seen from some competitors on traditional policies, traditional life policies. It seems like it's a product that was not really penetrated in your client portfolio.
I was wondering whether you feel relatively relaxed about the, you know, potential negative impact that the outflows from these asset class may generate going forward? The last question, Gabriele, I missed your comment about the difference between the reported EBIT and Adjusted EBIT of your foreign operations, if you can please repeat it? Thank you.
Sure, no problem. Just to be sure that I got the right question, when you refer to performance year-to-date, I assume you are thinking of the weighted average performance that we deliver to clients, right?
No, the performance in terms of AUM inflows of the Italian perimeter. Just simply, AUM inflows of Italy.
Okay. Got you. While we recover those numbers. Target 2023 in terms of flows in Italy, we are expecting something between EUR 2 billion- EUR 2.5 billion. Once again, what we are keen and look to have is the quality of those flows, i.e., where this money is going. As you have seen in 2022, the big contributor were Private Market, Life Insurance, and Pension business. This is for us, as far as the asset allocation, the ideal split that we can propose to our clients nowadays. Within the EUR 2 billion- EUR 2.5 billion, this is something that we will very much look to achieve.
The EBIT margin, when it comes to slide 14, what I mentioned is that you have the EUR 56 million and EUR 78 million, just to take the 2022 numbers. The delta is basically generated by the fact that some of the earnings that are linked to our foreign business are in a way trapped in our Luxembourg product factory. Either we set up products up in Luxembourg and we distribute them internationally or there are other type of activities that we can pursue linked to our International business. In order to fully represent to you what is the true representation of earnings generated out of our foreign business, we believe that the light blue line of EUR 78 million better represent what you have in terms of International profitability, vis-a-vis the statutory number of EUR 56 million.
Turning to the traditional life insurance policy. I think you're right. I mean, today we are observing around the traditional policies a big turmoil because of the movement in the interest rates and especially the yield that you get on govies. Therefore, you are seeing deep outflows, not to mention the fact that there is a medium-sized player in Italy that went into problems that has affected the sentiment across the financial market as far as these products are concerned, and I'm referring to Eurovita, the company that went into difficulties. When it comes to our business, we are, I think, what we can say in the sweet spot in terms of products that we have distributed, and we continue to manufacture and distribute to our clients because we are in the unit-linked segment where there is no problems as far as the traditional life insurance policies are concerned.
Today we have a very, very low- single digit exposure to any of the traditional life insurance products, and none of them are with the company that went into difficulties. On the contrary, we have engaged with the very solid and renowned third-party insurance companies to sell a very minority part of products when it comes to the traditional life policies. Performance year-to-date, the number for Italy is in the EUR 150 million region. It accounts also for some outflows that we have recorded in the institutional segment. This is mainly referred to outflows from monetary funds, so very low profitability business for us that was backdated.
It does not account for the work that we are doing on the product market side, that we would expect to show you in the coming months, between March, April, and May as far as the first closing on some of the products that are in the asset gathering phase.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Elena Perini of Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon, and thank you very much for your presentation. I've got a few questions. The first one is a clarification about your minorities. I don't know if you have already talked about it before because I have been disconnected for some minutes. I see a significant jump, especially in this fourth quarter. I was wondering whether something extraordinary occurred in this respect. Then, I was wondering if you please can repeat if you have already provided your guidance on the SG&A for the current year? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much. Priorities in Q4 and more broadly in 2023, you have observed a jump on the minority side because in some of our international operations, we have been able to generate important performance fees. And therefore, we had to recognize some variable compensation to our partners across a number of countries, and this has impacted the minority line. On the SG&A side, what I tried to explain before is that we will be looking to a 2023 guidance that will generate or start to generate some cost saving linked to the initiatives that are have been started to be implemented as of January, and gradually will come into full effect and eventually impact 2024 in full.
These savings will compensate for some of the investment that we have mentioned in the past, when it comes to the back-end system that we are re-engineering, as well as the change of the front-end system for our Italian domestic network. If I would have to make an assumption today on where the SG&A line will go net of this two aspects that I've just mentioned, I think even the strong increase that we expect from our international operations in terms of growth, and some initiatives in other markets, I would assume a 5%-7% as a conservative guidance for cost growth at this current stage. Clearly, any change in perimeter is not included, but I mean, this is something that by now we are all quite familiar with.
Okay, thank you very much. If I can add a further question, I don't know if you have already dealt with it. With regards to the potential ban of inducements, what's your view? Would you expect a total ban or some intermediate solution? How do you think that you can manage this? Thank you.
Thank you. And, uh, um, so, uh, I think, you know, commenting on inducement, uh, is very, very difficult because, uh, one day you hear that it's going to be introduced, and another day you hear that, uh, um, several member states, uh, of a certain, uh, size and weight have, uh, voted against the introduction of this inducement ban. Uh, so what we can say for the time being is that we will. We are monitoring the situation, and we are, uh, trying to understand if, how, when this, uh, change eventually, if any, will be introduced. Uh, we have gathered over the years, uh, a bit of experience, uh, working in, uh, several international markets where, uh, the inducement, uh, has been banned already.
We have a number of options or cards to play. One element that we should not forget is that our financial advisors are shareholders in the business because more than 50% of the shares that are held in Timone are owned by our financial advisors. I think we have the full alignment of interest to find a way to work within an inducement ban system while preserving the profitability of the business and the growth of this business given that the alignment is there. Therefore, we will certainly find a solution as we have done under MiFID I and MiFID II in order not to penalize the client on the one side, and on the other side, to retain the profitability for stakeholders.
Okay, thank you very much.
My pleasure.
The next question is from Filippo Prini of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. I got three questions. Firstly, I start from gaining clarification. Sorry to keep on SG&A, but the 5%-6% growth in 2023 that you mentioned is calculated on the cost base, including Sanctuary Wealth or already net of the six months of Sanctuary Wealth that were included in 2022? This the second, regarding the partnership with UniCredit, are there any meaningful or material cost to set up the product factory in Ireland that are included into your guidance of cost? Final on dividend, you are paying basically 51% of payout or recurrent profit is low end of the range, below the payout of last year. Is this basically due to the reimbursement that you plan to have of your bond in 2024?
Basically on a longer term, we expect that your dividend payout could be maybe closer to the high end of this 50%-70% range of recurrent profit. Thank you.
Thank you very much for the question. As SG&A, the assumption for the growth is on excluding Sanctuary Wealth reconsolidation. The base is EUR 266 million as SG&A that you see on slide 11. As far as UniCredit, as I mentioned before, we're expecting to incur some cost and no revenues in 2023, given the approval processes we have to complete and the timing over which this will take place. Given that we have set up our own asset management company in Ireland in 2022, and we know quite well what is the type of cost that we will be probably incurring if we just take a copy-paste approach. For that reason, we are expecting some low single digit number in terms of loss in 2023. Dividend. I think you're right.
We are in the 51% range. In 2022, if I'm not mistaken, we were within the mid-range, if I'm not mistaken, 63%-65% of dividend payout last year. Clearly, if you check the amount of M&A and investment that have been done this year, sorry, in 2022 compared to 2021, is quite higher, because we are at EUR 240 million, and the year before, if my memory is correct, it was in the EUR 120 million-EUR 130 million range. On top of that, we have done the buyback for EUR 30 million, and we have repaid the EUR 350 million of debt. We never want to be too stretched in terms of capital management. We maintain as a strong commitment the fact that we will be repaying the half a billion of debt in 2024.
From that side, we thought that maintaining a flat dividend in terms of EUR per share was or is the right thing to do, and within the range that we have set, so we're not revising any guidance whatsoever.
The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Two questions from my side as well. First one is back on your slide 15. Thanks for that. Interesting, and international operations, and how they're contributing. Now they're contributing for 20 basis points in terms of profitability, which is obviously much lower than the Italian operations and the product markets. I was wondering on the current perimeter, what is the normalized, let's say, long-term profitability of the International businesses? That, these 20 basis points, something you can improve? And maybe you can, like, give us some color which areas were contributing more positively to the 2022 result, and which are the ones that are still not performing so much. The second, a related question is, if you can provide us with the M&A that you might have to incur for call options and so on, as we stand today.
Still related is on the goodwill you have on your books, it's around EUR 740 million. Do you think there are any risks of any, let's say, realignment or of this goodwill? It's in your books something that is doable. The second question I have is on the International environment. We have seen some appetite by retail investors on direct investments into government bonds, for instance. Just yesterday closed the issuance of the BTP Italia with around EUR 9 billion underwent by final retail. Is that something that could represent a risk for your inflows in the coming months, or you think it's manageable? My last one is still on the Italian operation. Can you tell us how much was the contribution coming from the recruitment last year, please? Thanks.
Alberto, I counted one, two, three, four, five questions, so not just two. That's fine. That's fine. I don't mind. No, just jokes aside, normalized net profit. I think, give me a chance to clarify. We have never said that the International business would be or is at the same level of profitability of our Italian business simply because the dynamics on each and every market is different, our setup is different, and the kind of fees and also costs that you have are different. It shouldn't come as a surprise the fact that the margin is lower. Having said that, which is not the core topic of the question, the reality is we are looking to increase the profitability.
We have a target to reach on an annualized basis, EUR 150 million by 2024, which translate into strong growth that this number has to achieve. We moved from EUR 30 million- EUR 60 million in two years. It would mean that we will have to move exactly in the same manner, if not slightly more, in the following two years, so 2023 and 2024. How do you achieve that? This is something we mentioned in the past, is we need to grow the business and reach certain scale in certain countries. Most important, in some markets, we need to integrate more the production with the distribution.
In markets in which the penetration of our existing product range from our product factories, wherever these are based, has to increase within the clients' portfolios without jeopardizing the independent status of any financial advisors that work within our network. The major driver has to come from the fact that we will continue to grow and invest, and to that angle, we want to have capital management flexibility when and if we see opportunities to accelerate the growth through M&A. On the other side, integration within certain markets is going to be quite relevant to uplift the profitability. The M&A question and the call option is not very clear to me, but I'll try to answer.
We have done several M&A transactions in 2022. For example, we have anticipated the exercise of a call option on one of our Italian acquisitions. Whereas we have exercised the call option on another previous acquisition in Italy. It is something that we do for a number of different reasons. Either to accelerate the integration and the possibility to grow the business even quicker, or because there are contractual arrangement that falls due and therefore we exercise the call options or the counterparty exercise their put option. When it comes to the goodwill, we normally and regularly do the impairment exercise on a semi-annual basis.
We don't expect nor envisage to have to do any adjustment on the goodwill coming from the acquisitions and the international presence that we have had. Interest rate, yes, they are going up. Yes, the BTPs are more appealing, but I came across a couple of weeks ago on statistics published by CONSOB. You have to think that Italians have 70% of their wealth in current accounts and Italian BTPs already. While they are an interesting instrument, when it comes to allocating the money of our clients within the building blocks of our funds and portfolios, they cannot be the solution for providing returns. Firstly, because net of the inflation, you are actually destroying or still destroying value. second of all, because when you are too concentrated and there is spike in the volatility, we have already seen what happens and what this can generate.
In 2022, we were quite away from the BTPs, and this has generated significant overperformance in our fixed income portfolios. Certainly now it is indeed an element of performance that we will be taking into account on certain duration. Will it jeopardize the inflows? Probably not as much as we are concerned, because we are more focusing on a different type of asset allocation, and the strategy is quite much more focused on alternatives and sophisticated products that can generate long-term performance for our clients. The last question, Italian split. In 2022, we had a contribution from existing advisors in terms of flows that is quite around 60%, whereas 40% comes from the recruitment activity. This is an obvious explanation of the volatility that was present in the market. When net markets are negative, the impact from flows coming from recruitment tend to be lower than the total.
Thank you very much for your patience with all the questions. I just on the M&A.
Yes.
On the M&A, my question was mostly on a ballparking number for what are the commitments you have today on deals you have done in the past that could translate into cash out this year?
The true and honest answer is that I don't have the number handy with me.
Okay.
We will get back to you.
Okay. Thank you.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Mr. Blei, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Thank you very much for your patience and time and questions. My colleagues and I are available for any follow-up. Thank you very much. Have a pleasant day, evening, and bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.