Good afternoon, and welcome to the City of London Investment Group PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to Group Head of External Relations and Data Management, Courtney Short. Good afternoon to you.
Thank you so much. Hello, and welcome to Investor Meet. On behalf of City of London Investment Group, we're very pleased you've joined us. Please note you may submit questions for the presenters throughout the entirety of the presentation. I'm happy to welcome our presenters today, including Board Chair Rian Dartnell, CEO Cooper Abbott, CFO Deep Agrawal, CLIM CIO Michael Edmonds, and KIM CIO Daniel Lippincott. Biographies are included in the presentation for reference. We look forward to sharing firm updates with you today, having released our interim February semi-annual results. As a reminder, City of London Investment Group trades on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol CLIG LM. With that, I'm happy to introduce and hand over to our chairman, Rian Dartnell.
Thank you, Courtney, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon. Welcome to our meeting. I'm happy to report that investment results for our clients have been strong in the period, and funds under management stand at a record of $11.9 billion. As you'll hear throughout the presentation, this is an important moment for our company. The team is embracing the opportunity. We have a talented new Chief Executive Officer who's been in seat for about a month, and there's a lot of planning, a lot of discussion, a lot of excitement around this next phase in your company's growth. For context, this next slide is really to remind you of the priorities we've been setting out in each of our reports in previous investor meet conversations.
The board's goals over the past three years have really been to provide the stability to the investment teams and to the operating teams so that they have the equanimity and the balance to perform for clients. That's the holy grail for City of London is performing for our clients. We've also really underlined the fact that we wanted to be transparent with all stakeholders, but increasingly with shareholders. This meeting is sort of a demonstration of our intent, and this is the third we've done in a relatively short order. I hope you are able to learn from this, and if not, Well, I'm sure you will, but please, we encourage interaction with our shareholders, and so please ask questions either during this forum or after.
The third element really that we started to discuss more and more was this last summer, where we're looking to empower the teams. We've got very talented individuals that have, many of whom have been working with City of London for a long time. This is really the moment where we say, "Let's do our best work. We know you've been doing excellent work along the way, but let's just, you know, step it up. Let's all go for it here." This is a particularly ambitious moment for our company. In that, we're looking to be more commercial.
I think we've always had a very strong focus on our clients and on their performance, but we want to be able to broaden and diversify the client base, not to grow for the sake of, you know, out-tapping our capacity, because we won't do that, but really to maximize the opportunity for the team, for our shareholders, and for all of our stakeholders. Part of this empowerment is also accountability. You know, these are the plans. These are the targets. Let's hit those. Let's exceed those. Let's move ahead, you know, with alacrity, with a bias for action. Really looking, and I think the company has done this well over time, but ensuring that we're compensating our employees through merit.
Not for the sake of having been here, but really for the fact that they've done an excellent job. I think that's happened over time, but we're making sure that's the case. Going forward, these are sort of Cooper's marching orders and, you know, his strategy as well, is that we really would like to continue to strengthen the collaboration between City of London and Karpus, two great groups. We have come together nicely over the last five- years, but we're gonna look to do even more. Those plans are underway. We're gonna refine and carefully extend our product offerings. We have a good extensive line across fixed income to equities to emerging markets international.
There are some opportunities for us to enhance the product offerings and what we're doing for our clients. As I've mentioned, broaden and grow the client base, all with earnings per share as our North Star. We are looking to improve efficiency. We're looking to grow, as I've discussed, and that we want to make sure comes through in earnings per share for our shareholders. If you take us to the next slide. Thank you very much. I wanted to really show you the dividend history. We did this last time, and this is available on our website. We're celebrating a 20-year period. In 2006, the company went public on the AIM initially, and then has been on the London Stock Exchange for many years.
From an initial 8p dividend, we've grown it consistently. Your company pays a dividend twice a year, so there'll be an interim dividend coming up, which will be paid on the second of April. Then we pay the main dividend in November. The final dividend is much larger. This is 11p. In the past few years, the November dividend has been 22p. So 33p total. You can see this sort of northeast corner going from the 8p up to the 33p. Then there are two spikes in a different sort of bluish color. Those are special dividends. We've demonstrated over time, if we have excess cash, we will distribute it to shareholders. It's your money, it's not ours.
As and when we have that opportunity, we'll take it. Anticipating a question, and we can go into this in greater detail. At this stage, we're not announcing a special dividend. I think it's important for Cooper to you know, find his feet, set strategy, make some decisions on organic, inorganic growth, and then we can consider. We do have ample cash on the balance sheet, which I think is a nice safety net for us. It defends the dividend, and it also, again, gives us strong financial stability, which again translates through to investment stability. I think those are the points I wanna cover on the dividend. We can go to the next page. All right. Here I'm very excited to introduce Cooper Abbott, who's on screen.
We had the opportunity, fortunately, to meet Cooper very early in his in our search. As of last summer in August, I had my first set of conversations with Cooper, and the board had them shortly thereafter. We've been getting to know each other, and he's been getting to know us. He's traveled across our various offices, and I think, you know, he's hit the ground running therefore because he's really been thinking and planning for this role for the last eight months. Cooper has an investor's mindset. You'll find. You'll see that right away. He's proven over and over again that he has the ability to develop high-quality teams and translate that into high-quality business. He's got serious depth of experience in exactly what we do. And then he has what I've found to be very sound judgment.
He has very exacting standards, high standards for himself, and high hopes for the company. His real enduring focus is on outperforming for clients. 20- years of asset and wealth management experience, we've written about this in our previous statements. Developing a multi-boutique asset manager, having a group of different underlying boutiques, each providing a different opportunity for clients, that's exactly what we are. With CLIM and KIM, he had six of them. We have two of them. His experience over the past 20- years has been exactly what we do, and that immediately resonated as we met him for the first time last August. He definitely has experience across all asset classes.
One of the great things is that he's had a strong focus on finding different client channels and doing that in different geographies. I think that diversity of the client channel is something that we are really looking forward to. I've already mentioned that he's very focused on investment results and client outcomes. I do really believe he has a quality growth orientation. We're gonna grow with quality clients in quality products and provide high-quality service for our clients going forward. With that, it's my great pleasure to introduce Cooper.
Rian, thank you very much for that. You know, we've gotten to know each other pretty well over these past six, seven, eight months. I've really been impressed with you, impressed with the board, and impressed to meet the depth and talent of the team. We're really pleased to be here today to present to our shareholders. Maybe people who are hearing the City of London Investment Group early in the stage. They're starting to learn about the unique prospect that we offer. I think we've got a great platform here really to build from. Let's start right here and talk a little bit about that platform here.
One of the things I have been impressed as I've learned about City of London from the outside and now from the inside is the fact that we have a really strong investment IP. You know, investments are the core of asset management. If you look across our different products, if you look across our different histories, you know, we have demonstrated excellent performance for clients across multiple market cycles. I think that's important because the environment we're in is a little bit unusual. We're starting to see maybe some volatility out there. The thing that I take real comfort in, and I think our clients should take comfort in, is that our investment teams have seen cycles. They've weathered them. They understand what opportunities can be presented in these.
The other element I would just emphasize is Karpus and City of London are fundamentally active managers. They have unique levers to be active, security selection, allocation, engagement at board levels. There's a lot of creative approaches that they bring to their view on what active management means, and a very research-based approach. In a world where there's a lot of focus on passive investing, where there's a lot of focus on firms getting bigger, I think our emphasis has always been and will continue to be, to be active and deliver excellent, consistent results for our clients. Our strategies are process-driven. We have deep teams. We have a collaboration across the teams that leads to this consistency. I would also point to our operational platform. You know, we have a deep operational capability in terms of technology, in terms of compliance, in terms of products.
We also have significant capacity that we can build onto and can be a source of growth as we move forward. On the distribution front, we have, I think, very strong capabilities and a lot of white space for us to grow and to build from. Investment performance, absolutely. The other thing I would just highlight here is the global nature of the firm. You know, this goes to the depth of the team, this goes to the experience of the team, and as you hear both of our CIOs speak and talk about what they're seeing in the market, I think that will come across very clearly. We have offices in the U.K., in America, in Asia. We trade 24 hours.
I think the real aspect is a global mentality and the diversity of our asset classes and of our teams, what we can bring to the field for our clients. The final element is just being scaled for growth. I think we've talked a little bit about the platform for operations, about distribution. We have a board with deep PLC and asset management experience. We have a board with acquisition experience, and we're a firm that has deep financial strength. We have historically proven that we can generate cash. We've been very stable in our results, and we've been very resilient.
I think those three elements, excellent investment performance, global mindset, global footprint, and the scaling for growth, puts us in a very interesting situation, going forward and in the current environment where we're starting to see an uptick in volatility. Let's go to the next slide here, and we can talk a little bit about the structure of City of London Investment Group. You can see at the top of this slide, City of London Investment Group, that is the parent. We currently have two affiliates that have their own flair, their own asset classes, their own histories and traditions, but also have a number of common elements that I think are important and that add to the DNA, the common DNA of our investment teams and our firm. You know, both teams have more than 30- years of investment experience.
Both were founded with very entrepreneurial mindsets, which I think continues to this day. Both invest in inefficient markets and do so with deep research and team-based processes. A lot of very interesting commonality in that world. Just to stress, they are very active managers. They have a number of levers that they can utilize in building out their portfolios that allow them to generate alpha across a range of market environments. Our CIOs will touch on this later, but these include asset allocation, security selection, very research-driven process, behavioral finance, managing discount volatility, engagement with boards to maximize returns for shareholders, and then also trading these at times illiquid securities, where that can be a real source of alpha. The combined group has an interesting mix of clients, including consultant advisory channels, a large book of very sophisticated institutional clients.
We have a number of high-net-worth clients, and we have a growing platform presence that I think will be an immediate source of asset growth and business growth for us. Let's take a look at the next slide and dig a little bit deeper into these affiliates. This schematically shows our two groups, Karpus and City of London. On the bottom, we have a spectrum of products that are available through City of London Investment Group. You can see it's quite a range. It's not all things to all people. We wanna be mindful and focused on strategies where we believe we have an edge, where we can deliver distinguished and unique performance.
That is, I think, a pretty compelling lineup from cash to fixed income, tax-sensitive fixed income, moving into equities, whether it's listed private equity, emerging markets, international, and global. We have a scale and a scope that I think allows us to solve a number of client portfolio challenges and to be a multi-cycle asset manager in these deeper relations. In the case of Karpus is very focused on fixed income and has a great track record in credit and in managing those types of portfolios. They also have a very deep client base that's focused in the high-net-worth world. There's a lot that we're doing in that space, and there's a lot that I think we can transmit over into City of London. City of London, as many of you know, is predominantly institutional and consultant-driven.
That's what that book of business looks like. I would just say it contains some of the most sophisticated consultants in the world and some of the most sophisticated institutional investors in the world. Between fixed income and equities, between high net worth, between institutions, I think we have a very unique proposition with these two affiliates, all under the guise and under the clear philosophy of engaging in active management to deliver these results. We are active in our portfolios, and there's no reason we can't be active as we think about how we manage our business. The challenges in asset management and wealth management are well known. We face those along with the rest of the industry. I also think that our position is unique and our investment focus core is gonna remain very strong.
We also have the ability to be active and nimble, given our size and scale, to think about modularity, to think about the different ways that asset management can scale between investment, between operations, between distribution. That's some of the work that we're doing right now. We wanna be mindful in terms of our cost efforts, but we also want to make sure that we are spending enough and that we're positioning ourselves for growth down the road. Product alignment is a key element for any asset manager.
You know, we do not want to be all things to all people, but we want to have enough of a spectrum of products, enough of a menu for clients to be a part of their discussion over the longer term, so that we can help them solve investment challenges, investment problems that they may be facing with good outcomes across a range of product types. I think we've got a good start on that front. Distribution, as we've touched on, strong footprint in institutional and consultant-driven world. I think strong knowledge base on the wealth management side. Most of our business right now is in the U.S. It's in North America. This says that there's a lot of white space for us to expand into. You know, we can continue to penetrate wealth and the institutional world with what we're doing.
There's also, I think, some very interesting early soundings we're receiving from the RIA world, the OCIO world, wealth management platforms, where I think our strategies can be excellent fits for those types of clientele. We can also think about geographic expansion over time. You know, how do we take the relationships that we have in the U.S., in North America, with sophisticated clients, with a range of global consultants, and look at that, and look at ways that might translate into the U.K., into Europe, and into Asia. This final element here, to be a platform of choice, I think is really key. That's the ultimate goal for where we want to position ourselves, and it requires that we do a good job on all of these other elements.
To me, being a platform of choice means that we are go-to option for clients, that we're more than a vendor. We're a partner. We can be trusted to deliver consistent investment results to help them solve the challenges that they're facing. I think that we can be a platform of choice for new partnerships as we look at the capabilities we have right now with our investment IP and think about new ways to deploy those, new ways that meet evolving client needs. I think it also opens up the door, it gives us a platform to potentially bring on new affiliates. It gives us an opportunity to bring on interesting teams and so forth over time, should those situations present.
If we move to the next slide, I would just say, we have a very strong operating core, and this allows us to move forward to this next phase. You know, growth is part of our mission. It's part of our initiative. It's part of our commitment to you as shareholders, and we wanna do that in a controlled, very thoughtful, and quality manner. I think to date, we've proven a consistency of execution, a consistency of results, and very deep and very long-term relationships with our clientele. I think we have an opportunity to expand that, but we wanna be thoughtful in how we do that. And as Rian said, while growth is an important initiative, we don't wanna just grow for growth's sake. We want to be quality, wanna have a compounding effect, and we wanna move forward with intention.
There's certainly an opportunity, industry-wide and within our group, to look at simplifying and strengthening our operational and product set. You know, we wanna think about the type of SKUs we have. We wanna make sure that if we're offering strategies that they can scale, that they can make sense, that they have room for clients to use this for a long period of time, and that we have that built-out menu that allows them to reallocate as their portfolio needs change. I think a big part of this is being in the market. It's being commercial. It's listening to clients, listening to consultants, listening to prospects, and to make sure that the product lineup we have, that the way we're deploying our investment IP aligns with their particular challenges and their needs.
Delivering on focused solutions is a key driver, and I think we have a number of alpha sources here at City of London Investment Group. Most obviously is the investment side, and I think we've got a great track record on that front. But we can also deliver in terms of our distribution, in terms of how we execute on the operations and trading side, and also how we share our perspective that can be very useful for global allocations to our global clientele. I think that perspective is something that we'll look to build out in our communications and really leverage our investment IP in a more open way. Finally, building enduring partnerships. I think it's a very subtle idea, but it's a very meaningful one.
How do we move from being a vendor, being selected to manage against a certain and specific benchmark, to being a partner? To being not just providing, to being in a situation where we not just provide excellent investment results to client, but we also help to think through their challenges, help to think through the scenarios that may be coming, the challenges that they'll be facing, and to be there for the long- term in solving their issues.
Let me leave it there right now. Courtney, I'll turn it over to you, to talk about some new initiatives, and then we'll hear from our two CIOs and what they're seeing in the market.
Great. Thanks, Cooper. Yes, we're really happy today to be able to share some of the recent work that's helped showcase the strengths of our firm and teams to a broader audience. You've heard the word commercial a few times today. By being more commercial, more proactive in how we engage, we've increased visibility and brand awareness while reinforcing trust and relevance with our partners and stakeholders. Over the past nine months, CLIG has built greater recognition through thoughtfully curated high-quality events like the Investment Round Table, along with other strategic partnerships in targeted content-driven forums. We've also expanded our digital presence, sharing more market and macro insights through LinkedIn and our website, which has broadened our reach and resonated well with clients.
At the same time, we've refreshed key brand touchpoints, including email signatures, year-end videos, client mailings, and the way that we distribute thought leadership to ensure consistent, modern, and professional experience across all channels. Looking ahead, we're adding more direct feedback loops into client interactions and continuing to enhance the client portal to make materials easier to access. All of this is supported by stronger data collection and analysis, helping us to become more insight led by spotting trends, measuring impact, and better supporting the firm's growth strategy. We've laid a strong foundation and are excited to continue to keep you apprised of the many efforts happening across the firm every day. I will now turn it over to the CIOs to talk about the investment results section. Mike, over to you.
Thanks, Courtney. As Cooper's alluded to, you know, we are an active manager and active management is in our DNA. You know, there's obviously been a lot of talk about passive investments, and passive investing has grown significantly over the last couple of decades. In some ways that's been understandable given the performance of the U.S. market, which has obviously been led by the mega cap technology companies that feature strongly in the indices. We are a proudly active manager, and we believe in active management as a source of returns for clients, and that by generating outperformance, that can compound over time for very strong investment results. We are active, as Cooper's alluded to, in many ways.
This is across both CLIM and KIM for the most part, with some nuances for different strategies. You know, some of the ways where we're active is asset allocation, allocating between different asset classes. We meet as part of our investment process with a lot of investment managers and due diligence. We get a lot of information from that, but it's also useful in our investment process and in selecting managers. Obviously, we're very involved in closed-end funds and discount, taking advantage of discount volatility, and that's a key source of return. We're active in that, and we're also active in the way we trade these securities on a daily basis. That is also an important source of return.
Governance, we engage with boards of our investment vehicles all the time to improve results for clients. Again, that is an active component of our strategy. Just on the CLIM side, specifically for equities, we also look at, you know, size and style factors within our portfolios and actively allocate to them. Country and sector allocations within our equity strategies, we actively allocate to those as well. I know this is also common from the KIM side. I'll hand over to Dan just to speak to that.
Thanks, Mike. Yeah, I guess where we have another lever to pull on the Karpus side is we're also active in our use of closed-end funds. We will tactically use them when they are attractive and move out of them when they are less attractive. That in itself not only allows us to add value that way, but also risk mitigation and helps us manage risk on the credit side and duration side. As fixed income closed-end funds tend to be a little bit longer duration, when we're adding exposure, we're putting on risk when we should be, right? When discounts are wide, when the asset class is beat up, but also reducing exposure, reducing risk when discounts narrow. You know, well, there's a lot of similarities here.
The main thing is that both firms really use the inherent advantages of closed-end funds and have an expertise around adding alpha with them. I think as Mike said, active management and alpha is in our DNA, and it's a really great story. Next slide, please. Our founder, George Karpus, believed strongly in managing money, having the investment team in one room. I can certainly say that that is a huge advantage in terms of, you know, in some firms you'll have the, you know, trading on one floor, the PMs on another floor, the analysts on another floor. There can be quite a bit of bureaucratic delay in terms of getting an opportunity from generation to implementation. At Karpus, we don't have that.
We can go from an idea to opportunity to implementation within seconds. Our analysts, our PMs also do the trading. Once we have an idea, obviously, we're not gonna miss a trade because we need to run it through all the appropriate channels to get the trade done. We're gonna get that done right away. Also having everybody in the same room, there's a free flow of ideas. You know, we do have set investment meetings, but essentially every day is an investment meeting. When you're all in the same room, you're all generating the same idea. The different ideas, running them through each other, you know, vetting them through that process, it's a really advantageous way to manage money, and I think that really shows in the results.
I’m happy to see that City of London not only does a similar thing, but they also do it in different time zones and kind of pass the ball from zone to zone. They have a very similar way of looking at the world. I’ll let Mike go into more detail on that.
Yeah. Thanks, Dan. I mean, I think with City of London, we kind of started off in a very similar way with the firm in London. As we've kind of expanded to other offices, we've kind of effectively replicated the model in different centers. We kind of have that Karpus situation where we're kind of talking together, but we do so also across time zones, and that's been. We have always done it through either, you know, conference calls or that type of thing. Now we, you know, with video conferencing and Microsoft Teams, it's very easy to engage with our colleagues in different time zones. We are very much geographically spread.
We have investors in U.S., London, and Singapore, and that global presence is really important in terms of executing our investment process. We have investment vehicles we can access that trade on different markets in different time zones. Having that global presence and being able to actively trade those funds is really important and is a competitive advantage versus other managers in this space. It also helps with kind of manager due diligence. We're on the ground in the various centers where these managers are based, and so we can get a lot of insight from that. It's about developing those local relationships either via the closed-end funds or via the brokerage community there, and that's very advantageous in executing the investment process.
I think probably the most important thing is that within all of the firm, we have a very much a global mindset, and it's very deep and global experienced team. If we go to the next slide, as we kind of think about that kind of global mindset and what's been going on in portfolios recently, I mean, obviously markets, there's been a lot of headline volatility, and that has also led to market volatility. That is a great environment for our strategies, because there is definitely, as we've mentioned, an element of trading within our strategies. The more that we're available to generate returns from that trading, it definitely helps our strategy, and that's reflected in some of the performance results during the recent periods.
I think, you know, geopolitics continues to be an important source of that volatility. Obviously, we've got the U.S.-China relationship, particularly related to the race to develop AI. That's got a little bit quieter this year as there's been kind of less confrontation there. But it continues kind of in the background and also supports the AI CapEx cycle as there's two global powers competing with each other to develop in that area. Obviously there's been the situation in Venezuela that's added volatility. We've got the Iran situation right now that is also a focus of geopolitics. Obviously, the conversations within Europe around Greenland has also added some volatility to the markets.
So overall a good environment for our active strategies. When we think about the global economy, we're pretty positive right now. That's led by the U.S., which is supported by the fiscal measures within the One Big Beautiful Bill that's recently been introduced and also kind of some of the tax cuts that were comprised of that. Fiscal policy is generally supportive. We've got the lagged effect of monetary policy easing over the last year or so, and the potential for additional interest rates cuts as well as the inflation environment has become more benign. Also within Europe, there's obviously a little bit more fiscal impetus there, particularly from Germany, where they've loosened the fiscal brake.
Overall, a positive economic background. In terms of market performance, while the growth is strong in the U.S., we've also seen outperformance from international equities and emerging markets. In international, Japan has been an interesting focal point, and they've had an election there where we expect more of a kind of growth policy environment, which we think will continue to be positive. Emerging markets have been the star performer, and that has been led by Korea and Taiwan and some of the LatAm countries, whereas China and India really haven't performed in that environment. Potentially if they do start to perform, that will help emerging markets as well. The weaker dollar has also been supportive.
Overall within portfolios, this has also resulted in very strong performance, particularly from our emerging market strategy. We're continuing to see increased interest in those strategies. You know, when we think about what we're excited about on the CLIM side right now, I think it's very much the broadening out of equity performance, both from a diversification perspective, but also sector rotation. It's been for a number of years, very technology-led, and we still have that, but we are seeing other sectors also performing well. Energy and resources have performed particularly well, resources last year, but energy is also an important component of the AI story. We expect that to continue. The fiscal expansion will also support other areas in the market.
Overall, very positive about the sector rotation that's going on. I would also say, you know, we have a decent amount of exposure to mid and small caps. Those are starting to perform reasonably well after years of not participating in the rally. We think that's gonna be a strong component of returns as well. I think on the closed-end fund side, the final thing I'd kind of say is, we've seen lots of improvements in U.K. corporate governance in particular, and that has resulted in tighter and improved discount controls. Continues to be a lot of discount volatility around that, so continues to be a great environment for our strategies. Overall, we see that improved governance as a positive thing.
That's what we think on the CLIM side. I'll hand over to Dan to talk about KIM.
think you're on mute.
Sorry, Dan. I'm just requesting control there. Thank you.
Oh, got it. Sorry. Yeah, on the fixed income side, you know, if you look back to 2020, the ten-year U.S. Treasury was below 1%. So when you're projecting out returns, you know, what's fixed income gonna do the next 10- years, it was 1%, give or take. That's not a great environment for fixed income and, you know, lo and behold, over the last five- years, most fixed income indices are negative. We fared much better at Karpus at managing it in terms of, you know, moving in and out of closed-end funds, allocations to other value add products that we have. But what I'm...
I guess what I'm most excited about now is with the yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury being 4%, it's a much higher base to be working off of in terms of generating both, you know, absolute returns and, you know, higher relative returns as well. That's something that we're very excited about going forward. You know, if you look at what's attractive in my eyes right now, the boring, stodgy world of municipal bonds, you know, especially longer term, 20- to 30-year paper, is quite cheap, especially on an after-tax basis. You can right now lock in returns in the investment grade anywhere from 4%-5%, and invest in the highest tax bracket.
That is a taxable equivalent yield of about 7%-8%. You know, very attractive given the level of risk there. Also you have a lot of investors who have been hiding out in money market funds and rolling over T-bills and CDs over the last couple of years, where their expected returns have gone from, call it maybe just north of five to maybe down in the low 3s now. They probably, you know, especially after tax, not really a great return for them. We have a product that we invest in pre-acquisitions SPACs where we can still do close to that 5% return on a floor basis.
Given the same level of risk that the SPACs own, their only asset is a T-bill with six months to maturity. To be able to still offer the people who want that safety with a reasonable level of return, we have a nice product there that I think is gonna grow in popularity and we'll gain some AUM there. Those are the two things I'm most excited about on the fixed income side. Next slide, Deep. Really all the things that Mike and I have talked about, both firms have, you know, we use a vehicle in closed-end funds where, you know, there are just inherent advantages in that.
We both build a disciplined process of investing in those where we add alpha through different levers. The results really, you know, the proof is in the pudding. You know, almost 90% above median return over a three-year period. I think if you probably went out five- years, it'd look even better. It's just really both firms have, you know, this value add, this disciplined process in our DNA, and it really just shows in the results. We're very proud of these returns and look to translate that into, obviously better client retention and more AUM in the near future. Thank you, and turn this over to Deep for the financial results.
Thank you, Dan. We announced our results this morning. Some of you must have already picked this up, but just to highlight some of the key metrics. Our AUM was $11.2 billion as of December end. We also mentioned earlier that it was about $11.9 billion as of last week. Average AUM for the six months period was also higher, about 8%, which resulted in higher net fee income. As you can see, our net fee income was higher by about 6% as compared to the same period last year. Based on...
As a result of better cost discipline during this six months, our underlying profit after tax is actually higher by about 9.5%, so we ended up with $12.3 million of underlying PAT, which translated into a higher similar underlying EPS as well, which was 19.5 as compared to about 17.8 in the same period last year. Rian touched upon our balance sheet, cash balance. We had almost $33 million of cash as at the December end, and this is over and above of about $7 million of investments we've got in SPACs and some of the seed funds as well. We are well-capitalized and have a strong balance sheet with no debt.
The board has declared an interim dividend of 11p, which was touched upon, and that's a maintained dividend from previous years, and the current dividend yield is in excess of 8.5%. Finally, I'd like to highlight that our total return since 2006 has been about an annualized return of about 11.8%, and the total dividend which we have declared since listing is more than 530p, which is more than 2.8 times our listing price. They had some historical information of some of the key metrics, and as you can see, net fee income, underlying profit before tax, as well as EPS are all highest for the H1 of the year in the last four- years.
Like since 2022, we are running on the highest number at the moment. Finally, Rian already touched upon this slide about our dividend history. The only thing I would add is that you'll see that we've increased our dividends over this period about eight times, and there was only one instance where we had to reduce our dividend, which was during the financial crisis. Otherwise, we've tried to at least maintain dividend or increase over the period. I will stop here, and I will hand it over to Cooper for his last comments.
Thank you very much, Deep. You know, as we look forward here to the immediate future, I guess there's a couple elements I would just like to highlight. The first is high quality, highly active, and that describes, I think, City of London Investment Group in a nutshell. You know, we are uniquely active. There's a lot less research in the marketplace going on, which makes the unique capabilities that our CIOs just outlined even more rare, more precious, with the ability to have more opportunity to generate alpha. I think we have strategies that actually do well. We benefit in many ways from volatility, and it shows in our investment results. From a firm standpoint, the quality is clear, and we've been a cash generating business historically since inception.
We've been very consistent, and we have a conservative cash on the balance sheet position, which then opens up, I think, some very interesting growth opportunities, many of which are within our own control, relying on execution, but also some others that can be a bit more opportunistic. I think we are starting to see some changing of investor sentiment. Investor sentiment for our asset classes, emerging markets, fixed income, international, global is starting to improve. We're seeing in early-stage RFPs, we're seeing it in DDQs, discussions with consultants and sophisticated investors. This was not the case five- years ago or three- years ago or even two- years ago.
As people are seeing the performance, as people are understanding the risk characteristics, we're seeing early stages of what could be a reduction in headwinds, and that will be very positive for the asset classes that we are managing. As touched on, we already have a diverse set of revenue streams. If you think about the way we are balanced between Karpus and City of London, between fixed income and equities, that's an interesting position to be in. If you look at the Karpus and the strong high net worth book of business they have, combined with the institutional and consultant-driven nature of City of London, that's a nice diversifier. We have clients and consultants who really like us, who really trust us, who do see us as those as partners, and we can do more business.
There's a lot that we can do to expand the types of groups that are using us. We've talked about some of those in terms of the RIA wealth management platforms, just deeper penetration in terms of the markets that we are already in, those types of channels. Down the road, I think we've certainly got plenty of opportunity for geographic expansion, looking at thoughtful product extensions as well. The final thing I will just leave you with is this concept of being scaled for growth. We're not the biggest asset manager out there by a long shot, but the qualities we have, the investment IP that we have, I think does set us apart.
The ability to be active, not just in our portfolios, but in the way that we manage our business and the way that we grow our client relationships, that's an element that I'm gonna look forward to talking with you about in the coming months, quarters, and years. We've got an awful lot here to be proud of and to build from. The investment IP, as you've heard from both of our CIOs, is unique, it's distinctive, and it generates very strong results. We have a very good backbone. Our operating core is very strong. We have opportunities to continue to enhance that, and that then sets the basis for execution and what I think can be a very interesting growth trajectory and growth story that I very much look forward to being on the journey with everyone on this call.
With that, let us, in the time remaining, open the dialogue up for some questions.
Okay, great. Thanks, Cooper. We've had some questions come in, so we wanna be able to get to these. The first one, Cooper, I will pass to you. The question is, it's great to see an increase in funds under management, but that's to be expected with rising markets, especially EM, over the last 10 months. There is an ongoing net outflows. How will you address these net outflows?
Yep. Yep, I think that that's a good observation, and I think it's not just a City of London Investment Group issue, it's really a investment management dynamic. We participate in that, and I think we have some unique approaches to that. You know, anytime you have an established book of business, there's gonna be a certain amount of half-life in client accounts. People will reallocate, they will take drawdowns to execute on their financial plan, for the endowments and institutions that we work with to deploy those monies in terms of their corporate and business objectives. So there's a certain amount of withdrawals that you can expect to see. That's just the nature of the game. I think we have a couple of ways to address that.
One is to better understand the nature of those outflows, and that's where some of the analytics that we're putting in place give us some insights in. You know, it's a very different dynamic, for example, to see an outflow as opposed to a cancellation. We wanna understand from the client's perspective, from a consultant's perspective, what is driving those so that to the extent possible, we can better address those. I think there's also an opportunity to restate, to reinforce our investment proposition. I think historically, some investors have looked at City of London Investment Group, City of London Investment Management, and Karpus on a more tactical standpoint. Certainly, discount volatility is a part of our alpha source, but it's far from our only one.
We've heard both of our CIOs talk about how you think about allocation, how you think about security analysis, how you think about engagement and activism, how you trade these and actually take advantage of discounts, and the volatility around them can be a source of longer term alpha. I think there's some messaging that we can address. Then the final element is just, as we've talked about earlier, to continue to grow and to diversify our client base. You know, we have put an awful lot of energy and effort in the investment side of the business, and we will absolutely continue to do that. I think we've had a real focus on this operating core, which is now at a very strong position and strong scale.
We have not necessarily been as distribution-oriented as we could have been. I think on a selective basis, there's opportunities to expand that. In the channels that we're in right now, those are probably the most immediate opportunities, but also to look at new channels, new geographies, and to think about how we can get some of our products that are relatively small in scale, but I think very compelling, more into the knowledge base.
Great. Thanks, Cooper. If we sort of stick with you for this next question. We've had a few come in that relate to AI. Do we see AI as a threat or an opportunity, and how are we using it within our business?
Sure. We can open up to the rest of the team here. You know, I think AI, there's a couple elements to that question, I guess I would say. You know, we could have Mike or Dan could talk about what it means for markets and some of the volatility that we're seeing created right now in terms of white-collar employment, et cetera. At the group level, we do see it as a potential enhancing tool to what we do. We think it can be helpful on the science part of investments, but not the art. You know, ultimately, this is still a skill that requires a lot of investment experience. It's not just the numbers, it's not just the math, it's also sentiment, human behavior.
There's a lot of things that we do that actually are absolutely could not be replaced by artificial intelligence. We will actually come through whatever evolutions are going in that cycle, I think much stronger, because of the resilience and because of the unique aspects of our investment process. Operationally, we definitely see some efficiencies. We also think that it can be an interesting way to distill down and filter out some of the really high-quality, global in nature content that our investment teams generate. We can put that in ways that can be more easily resonating and communicated to our clients. For us, I think it's a-
A leverage factor, we're actively exploring and actively using it on a select basis within both organizations.
Great. Thanks. Rian, this one is for you. Many companies do a capital markets day. Why don't we?
We are planning to do a capital markets day in the next several months. It's been something we've looked forward to. We thought it would make a lot of sense to do it once Cooper was in seat. We're gonna give him a few months to calibrate, and we'll be having our capital markets day in London. We'll also probably be doing outreach in the United States. Watch this space. We will announce it with good, you know, headlights and, we look forward to, welcoming you there, to continue the conversation.
Great. No, thank you very much. Excited to hear. Let's go to, "Congratulations on the record funds under management amount of $11.9 billion. Has that extra amount been generated by outperformance or new funds being invested?" This is probably Cooper and the CIOs.
I'll just mix it up. Mike, why don't you take that one?
I mean, I think, as has kind of been alluded to, a lot of that increase in AUM has come from market performance, markets being strong. Obviously we've had some outflows on the business, and partly we're slightly a victim of our own success in that our performance has been very strong. It is natural that you know clients will take a little bit off the table when that occurs. It's similar to how we think about when we're investing in a closed-end fund. If it you know goes through a kind of very strong period of performance, we're probably gonna take a little bit off the table, and I think that's probably prudent.
What I think will offset that is that we are seeing increased interest, particularly in the international and emerging market strategies, and so increased kind of conversations with consultants and clients kinda allocating to those areas where, you know, obviously the U.S. has been the main game in town for an extended period. That means that people are generally under-allocated to international and EM. I think as we talked about at the AGM, it's very rare that people allocate right at the bottom. They wanna see some outperformance occurring before they increase those allocations. We are seeing that increased interest. For now, it's been investment performance that's been increasing the AUM.
We think going forward there's gonna be opportunities to grow assets through increased client interest.
Thanks, Mike. We are coming to time, but let's try to do one more question and then we will obviously follow- up with anything that's not been answered after the presentation. This is again, CIOs. What are expected growth drivers given the strong performance in 2025?
Yeah, I mean, just on the CLIM side, I think I just kind of alluded to it, you know, we're seeing increased interest there. I think one of the things that we've kind of emphasized as well is that given our very strong performance over, you know, multiple time periods, you know, we have a right to win when we're competing for business. So, we think we're in a pretty strong position, given increased flows to these areas. You know, in emerging markets, we've been doing this for over 30- years, and so there's not too many managers that have been doing that, and we've got an enviable track record in that area. So, we think we'll be able to be in a good position to compete.
We've also got, I haven't kind of mentioned, we've got our Global Equity strategy that's got a very strong three-year track record. Our Opportunistic Value strategy, which is multi-asset class, has a very strong track record. Our listed private equity also did very well this year, and there continues to be very wide discounts in that area. There are opportunities for growth there. I think on the CLIM side, Dan, there's additional interest in your strategies as well.
Yeah, I mean, I would say that just looking at the performance over the last five- years when fixed income's been very out of favor, we've posted results that are you know not only you know top performer in the category, but you know like strongly positive when the indices were negative. We made it through a really tough time for fixed income, very well performed for our current clients. Like I said, going forward, I think the opportunity set is much different now on a go forward basis. Fixed income starts to make sense again when you have you know you can get 7%-8% taxable equivalent yields on munis. Specs essentially cash management or short-term fixed income substitute, we can do close to 5.
You know, conservative investors who finally get sick of hiding out in money markets, who are, you know, seeing their earnings go from over 5% to down to 3% are gonna be pushed out to take a little more risk. I think we're in a perfect spot. We're a great home for those investors, right? We have a great track record of, I would say, a superior product and really a flavor for every investor that they want it. You know, we have taxable fixed income, tax sensitive, short-term fixed income, cash management. We're able to really meet any need any conservative investor has on that end. I think we're well positioned for this shift out of running and hiding in money markets to taking a little more risk.
I think we're right on the precipice of being a great option for that. That's where I think the growth is gonna come from in the next, call it six-12 months.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, presenters. We are at time. So we just wanna thank everyone for your time, for our listeners attending the presentation. We were so happy to share these insights. For more information, please visit CLIG's website at www.clig.com and follow us on LinkedIn where you can find a copy of our latest results and other resources, including recent thought leadership pieces. Have a good rest of your day, and we appreciate your time.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed to you all for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.