All right. Okay, okay. Great. It's my pleasure to introduce our next speaker here today, Mr. James O'Sullivan, President and CEO of IGM Financial. James, welcome. Welcome back.
Yeah, well, thank you very much, Phil. It's a pleasure to be here, and good afternoon, everyone.
So I think at your recent Investor Day, you provided, call it, a five-year midterm EPS growth target of 9%. And maybe it's appropriate. Why don't we start our conversation mapping out that objective?
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So, I mean, just to set the table, IGM Financial has two divisions, Wealth Management and Asset Management. Three businesses in each of Wealth and Asset Management. So on the Wealth Management side, we have IG Wealth, obviously, with CAD 130 billion of client assets. Then we have Rockefeller Capital Management, as you know, Phil, which is now CAD 140 billion in client assets. And we have Wealthsimple, which is CAD 45 billion in client assets. We own all of IG, and we have partial interests in each of Rockefeller and Wealthsimple. A similar story on the asset management side, three brands, three businesses. Mackenzie Investments, CAD 200 billion of assets. China AMC, CAD 400 billion in assets. And Northleaf, the alts business, which is CAD 30 billion in assets.
Again, we own all of Mackenzie. We have partial interests in each of China AMC and Northleaf. And so, Phil, when you kind of look at the assets on a look-through basis, giving us our proportionate share of the assets of each of those six, you know, we're sitting today at, or we were sitting at quarter-end, at about CAD 430 billion in client assets. So, I mean, this is, this is a very substantial enterprise. Those client assets on a look-through basis are actually up 15% year- over- year. And so what we said at Investor Day was, you know, a very kind of active period of M&A had drawn to a close. Between 2020 and 2023, we deployed CAD 4 billion in acquisitions and divestitures.
That's how we configured these two divisions and those six businesses, and we said we're done. Certainly done for a period of time. But when we look at those those businesses, Phil, what we see is, you know, we think IG and Mackenzie conservatively can grow at 7% a year over the medium term. That's not swinging for the fences. That's market growth, net sales returning, some positive operating leverage. And we said the so-called strategic investments could grow at about 15% a year. And, you know, when you look at a Wealthsimple, whose assets are up 87% year- over- year, that obviously starts to resonate. So we said 7% for the two core businesses, 15% for the strategic investments. The sum of those two is 9%.
So that's, you know, that's what we've built, and, you know, that's what we see 9% as the medium-term growth in EPS. That's what we're working hard towards. Year to date, we're at about 7%. Reasonable markets, good control of expenses, but not a great environment for flows.
Okay. And taking a bit of a step back then, I mean, what do you see as the most significant midterm growth opportunities for IGM?
I mean, I think it has to be to grow earnings. I mean, it just has to be. I've said on multiple occasions that the path to a higher share price for IGM Financial is through higher earnings, and that's what we have to deliver. And again, with that CAD 4 billion of M&A behind us, I'm confident we've got the configuration that can deliver that. But that has to be. That is the big opportunity. That's the focus. It's been a while since we've raised our dividend, as you know, and I think what we need to do is to grow earnings, get that payout ratio down, and that's something we're very committed to doing. So, really, the focus is on earnings.
I would say, you know, because we don't pull the earnings through for all six of those businesses, we don't pull the earnings through for Wealthsimple. We fair value that through OCI. Rockefeller, as a result of purchase accounting and the business model, shows a very small loss now, but, you know, the earnings power in those businesses, I can assure you, is very substantial. And so the big opportunity, near and midterm, is to unlock, unleash, and demonstrate to our shareholders, the earnings potential in those businesses.
Okay, we're going to shift gears a minute and talk about some of the operating environment, but maybe before we get into that, just to help set up strategically, can you just give us an idea of kind of some of the strategic priorities for the year ahead?
Yeah, so I would describe our strategic priorities right now as rather unglamorous, and I'm pleased to be able to say that. It's not big M&A. It's not a big kind of rethink in capital allocation. It's not kind of wholesale rethinking of technology platforms. Much of what we're doing, you know, Peter Godsoe years ago would have described as blocking and tackling. We have a long list of projects underway across IGM, IG, Mackenzie, and the corporate functions, and frankly, they're all. You know, the theme of them, I would say, is building resiliency. Building resiliency. You know, each of those two businesses is currently operating with very attractive EBITDA margins. You know, Mackenzie has an EBITDA margin of about 42%, IG Wealth is about 37%. And so-...
You know, in an industry that has faced now for fifteen years no shortage of headwinds, and you know the headwinds better than I do. You know, investing to sustain margin and maybe even growing margin is very much a priority. But it's a lot of small stuff. It's blocking and tackling. It's not kind of big headline stuff, but I can tell you we're, we said what we were gonna do is go away here for a two- or three-year period, put our head down, and strengthen IG, strengthen Mackenzie, and just kind of invest in the core. And that's really, you know, what we're doing now. We think we've got the big picture right, so it's heads down, turn it into earnings.
Excellent. Again, so shifting back now to the operating environment, obviously, it's been a very challenging sales environment, despite relatively solid market performance. What factors do you think need to align before we see more typical conditions and industry-wide inflows?
So, I mean, what's great about this industry is that generally, you have markets going for you, you have a net sales opportunity going for you as the economy expands, and you certainly have the potential to generate positive operating leverage. When those three things are all working for you, this is a great business. You know, but right now, we don't have all three working for us. The industry very clearly is in an outflows or redemptions situation. And I had thought originally that we needed to see peak rates, and then I thought, "Well, it's not just gonna be about getting behind peak rates. We need bond markets to settle down." And, to be honest with you, I'm thinking that's not enough either.
It's not just about getting beyond peak rates, and it's not about kinda reduced bond market volatility. Phil, this is gonna take some time, and it's not months, it's quarters. I think this has been a shock to Canadians, the higher rate environment. You know, we talk about inflation coming down, and that's great, but the cost of living is permanently higher. You know, the historical inflation increases don't go away just 'cause the inflation rate is going down. So Canadians are faced with a permanently higher cost of living. Many, no doubt, are sitting on mortgages that they know will renew at 200-300 basis points wider than the current contract rate.
And so I think, you know, you're seeing elevated savings, you're seeing redemptions to support lifestyles, you're seeing Canadians adjust to what has truly been a shock to their household income statement. And so, you know, we're seeing the rate cuts, and that's great, and more is needed, and maybe risk-free rates will settle at two and a half to 3%, and God knows that'll be very helpful, if, as, and when that happens. But I think the final thing that's gonna need to come and happen here is confidence. You know, whenever something like this, there's a lot of people that thought rates could never go up again. Well, they did. You know, and then, and they've been shocked by this, they've been impacted by this.
So the question isn't just, when do risk-free rates get back to 3%? When does bond market volatility settle down? It's also about when does household confidence return? And so I think, you know, we're prepared for quarters. It's not months, but it does get better from here slowly, would be our sense of it. But I wouldn't... I wouldn't assume that 2025 turns into a great year. Certainly, when you look at on a trailing twelve months or LTM basis, this is just gonna take some time.
Okay. Part of your growth target assumes market share gains. How would you rate your relative sales performance relative to that market? Probably gross sales is probably a better metric in this context.
Yeah, and gross sales have been a little bit messy across the industry recently as a result of the, you know, the tax changes, the change in the inclusion rate for capital gains. There's been a lot of kind of money in motion. I would say to you that flows have been better at IG than they have been at Mackenzie. And look, I'm feeling confident as the industry recovers about both platforms doing well. Investment Executive Dealer Report Card ranks IG number two, second on the Dealer Report Card, which I think is a testament to all of the work that Damon Murchison and team have done to transform that business over what's now probably seven years.
Fully, a third of the flows coming into IG now are from truly kind of high-net-worth households, so I really feel good about how we've repositioned IG to participate as we come out of this current environment, and I feel very good about Mackenzie too. Mackenzie, you know, is purpose-built with sixteen boutiques. We recognize that not all the boutiques are gonna be firing at all times, but what's important is to always have several boutiques that are doing very well, and that's very much the case now, so I feel good about our competitive position. As I said, IG is number two in the Dealer Report Card. In twenty twenty-three, in the Environics Advisor Perception Study, Mackenzie was number two.
These franchises, you know, I think are well-positioned. IG is 98 years old, will celebrate its centennial in 2026, so it's an important part of the financial fabric of this country now. Mackenzie was founded in 1967. It's well-established and an outstanding brand. I'm feeling good about our. You know, as things improve here, even if slowly, I'm feeling very good about IG and Mackenzie's ability to participate. Along the way, I have no doubt that Rockefeller will move from currently CAD 140 billion in assets. Their medium-term target is CAD 400 billion. They will get there. Their assets are up 25% year- over- year, while Wealthsimple's at CAD 45 billion, up 87% year- over- year. Watch Wealthsimple.
China AMC, notwithstanding a huge correction in the Chinese equity markets over the past 18-24 months, their assets are up 25% year- over- year. Northleaf's assets are up 15%. Northleaf raised CAD 1.8 billion in fundraising last quarter. So I think, as I say, I look at CAD 430 billion of client assets on a look-through basis, up 15%. We've got the foundation here of something that can generate substantial and growing earnings.
Excellent. So IG Wealth, I think, has embraced a holistic approach to wealth management. Are there any new areas that you might look to expand into, or product offerings you think are under-penetrated, that could represent significant growth opportunities?
Yeah. So the offering now is-- So the answer is yes, and, and I'll tell you what it is. But first, let me say, you know, the offering now, of course, is financial planning. That's the heart and soul of IG. Everyone talks about financial planning. Everyone says they do it. Trust me, not everyone does it, not everyone enjoys doing it, not everyone builds their practice around financial planning. IG, at its core, is financial planning, and that's just extremely valuable. That truly creates sticky client relationships. So you've got financial planning, we've got investment management, we've got mortgages currently, we've got insurance.
We've stood up a private company advisory business that helps advisors go to small, mid, large towns across the country and say to clients or potential clients: "You have a small, medium-sized business, we can help you sell it." We've hired a team that provides tremendous market insight now to our advisors, and through our advisors, to our end clients. We struck up a JV on the whole wills and estate planning side, because that remains one... As someone who is currently executing executor on an estate, I can tell you that remains one of the hardest, messiest, most labor-intensive aspects of anyone's financial life. Getting that right is a tremendous service and a tremendous value add, and so we're very, very focused on that. Damon's also investing in tax insight.
So we're at the point where I know Damon and I were speaking to our Quebec advisors yesterday. We're at the point where we're just deeply proud of the overall client value proposition and how it gets delivered through advisors to clients. But where is there room to do more? So we do mortgages, we do HELOCs. We're in those businesses. But our clients have lending needs beyond that. So I think selectively, you know, I think our advisors would say, "You know, James, how about investment loans?" Or, you know, "are there other types of lending products that we could that you could stand up?" And so that's something, you know, to be thought through, but thought through very, very carefully. I mean, banking is not a risk-free or easy business.
Mm-hmm.
But that is clear. If you asked our advisors, they'd say, "give us more opportunity to extend credit to clients." That would probably be the number one thing.
Excellent, and I think kind of at last year's conference, I think you and I had a conversation, and we talked about democratization of alternatives as a key growth opportunity for IGM. And kind of digging in my own work, I think this is an area where the Canadian industry is really lagging behind U.S.
Yeah.
So what do you see as a catalyst to maybe, you know, to get that penetration accelerated?
I think if you look at this industry, you know, the banks are big players in this industry, both on the asset management side and the wealth management side. I think we're at a point where the banks have taken their time properly, and they've thought through what they want for their clients and what they want for themselves, in terms of alternatives on the wealth management side and the asset management side, and I think they've been very thoughtful about it. They've been doing this, you know, at the very same time that there have been some pretty significant blow-ups in this space, right?
And so, but my sense of it overall is that we're not more than 12 or 18 months away from the whole of the industry, including the banks, really getting in front of clients and saying: "Here's how we view alternatives. Here's our offering, here's the offering of others, and here's why we think this should be some portion of your portfolio, whether that's 2% or 5% or 10%." So I think it's coming. It's taken a while, but I think along the way, I think work has been done that needed to be done.
The final thing I'll say on that, Phil, is, you know, advisor education is very important, and it's just a very different conversation, because for so long, everyone believed that they needed liquidity in every position, twenty-four/seven. And, I mean, I never understood that, but, you know, now you it's a conversation about illiquids and about, from a portfolio perspective, how much of your portfolio do you really need access to on a given day, week, month, quarter, or year? And so, you know, advisor education is an important part of it. But I feel the whole industry is getting ready to unlock this, and I think the entire industry-...
IGM has approached this in a very responsible way, even if we've been a little bit behind the Americans.
How big do you think that could be? Like, how big an opportunity is this for IGM, do you think?
I mean, IG is, IG's, IG has CAD 130 billion of client assets. There's no reason at all why you can't think of that as 5% of that. And if you segment it between mass market, mass affluent, high net worth, I think the further up that scale you go, there's an opportunity for alternatives to be an even bigger portion of that. Northleaf, you know, is a leader in Canada. And CAD 30 billion of assets, as I said, CAD 1.8 billion in flows last quarter, private equity, private credit infrastructure.
I expect them to participate, not only within IG and not only in partnership with Mackenzie, but they are today selling, you know, product across the industry, including, within the bank-owned dealers, and I think it's a large opportunity. But it will, it's like so many other things: it will unfold slowly, but there will come a day where those who aren't in it regret not being in it. And I don't think that day is too far away.
Okay. I'm gonna circle back, and we touched on a little bit on strategic investments. You got CAD 5 billion. It's roughly what, CAD 21 per share in these investments. You mentioned it's an area where you're targeting around 15% growth from. Just again, high level, I mean, which investments are expected to be the primary growth drivers, and which ones, or how should investors think about which ones have the most strategic value to you?
Well, let's start with strategic value. They're all strategic. None of these were purchased with a view to making a buck, although we wanna make a buck. They were all purchased or invested in because we feel they have long-term strategic value. And indeed, for each of them, whether it's Rockefeller, Wealthsimple, China AMC, or Northleaf, there's really kind of powerful horizontal connectivity between those investments and either IG and/or Mackenzie. So there's business being done in both directions, okay, across the board. So in that sense, they're very much partnerships. They're strategic in the sense that we want to own them long term. I'll have a board off-site in early October, and I'll be sharing with my board that, you know, I...
If five-seven years from now, our wealth management lineup was IG Wealth, Rockefeller, Wealthsimple, I'd feel great about that. I want them all. If five-seven years from now our asset management lineup was Mackenzie, ChinaAMC, and Northleaf, I'd feel great about that. Like... So they're all strategic. I think about each of them from a long-term perspective. But clearly, our ownership in each of them, you know, could shift with the passage of time, depending on opportunities. There will no doubt be an opportunity associated with Northleaf, a further opportunity with Northleaf, and there might very well be an opportunity with Rockefeller. But it's all gonna have to make sense. In the interim, as I say, we've got that horizontal connectivity.
We've got, I think, good diversification, with a growth engine now in the U.S. and a growth engine in China. And so, you know, I think they, they're gonna contribute a lot because they are, as I said, they're fast-growing. Each of the four is fast-growing.
What do you think about as probably, like, the best avenue to see more value from the strategic investments reflected in the stock price?
I mean, that's a really important question, because I don't think... I mean, you know better than me. They're not in the stock price, certainly not fully. If they're in fully, then IG and Mackenzie are free. Not free, but they're trading at very low multiples. So I do think there's a discount. So what can we do? I think what we have to do is incrementally work towards more disclosure, incrementally work towards more transparency, incrementally give this audience, the investment community, more exposure to Greg Fleming at Rockefeller, and Mike Katchen at Wealthsimple, and Stuart Waugh at Northleaf, and Yimei Li at China AMC. And hopefully, you know, as we do that, and as we see the earnings come through, then it will be better reflected.
I don't fault the market for this. I think we've got to, given that they're not wholly owned, we need to make a real special effort to increase disclosure, increase transparency, and build confidence in the potential of these businesses.
Excellent. And so our time's running out here, so maybe in terms of closing thoughts, what do you think IGM needs to do to raise, well, The Street's conviction on that growth rate and, again, get that reflected in the stock price?
I think it's on us. It's earnings. I mean, I don't think it's complicated. We can debate whether we should be trading at, you know, nine, 10 times earnings, and we can debate whether the strategic investments are properly reflected in our share price. But I, you know, there's things we control, and there's things we don't control. I don't control sentiment towards this industry, and sentiment ain't great. I don't control the indices and the sub-indices that we're a part of, and I wish we were in more indices 'cause God knows the passive can move stocks. I don't control any of that.
But over time, I think I control and I'm accountable for the earnings, how we configure IGM Financial and the earnings power of it, and I think we've just got to deliver more earnings out of IG and Mackenzie. And we have to, if again, if we increase the transparency and on the strategic investments, I think in combination, those are a path to a share price that starts to close the gap to what you might view as a, you know, as sum of the parts NAV. So we'll get there. There's work ahead, but the pieces are there.
All right. Excellent. Well, listen, James, great conversation. And again, I'd like to thank you personally for taking the time out today to make this happen. And again, on behalf of Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets, also thank the whole IGM organization for your continued support. Thank you.
Thank you, and congratulations to Scotia on the 25th anniversary of this. I did not realize this had been going on for twenty-five years. That's quite an accomplishment. Well done.
All right.
Thanks, Phil.
Thank you.