This is Broadridge. Joining us is Doug DeSchutter. He's the Co-President of Investor Communication Solutions. So welcome. Thank you.
Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having us.
A lot of people in this room are probably using Broadridge Financial Solutions and may not even know it. Can you give us a brief overview of the company in total?
Yeah.
The ICS unit.
Good. Yeah. Happy to do so again. Thanks for having us today. Again, my name is Doug DeSchutter. Thanks for the time today. Just a bit of background on me, and then I'll get to Broadridge.
Sure.
I'm co-president of our ICS division. I've been part of the executive committee at Broadridge since we spun off in 2007 from ADP. I've run a number of businesses: our post-sale business, our proxy business, our Customer Communications business. I've been responsible for our overall digital strategy at Broadridge as well. It's a pleasure to be here today.
Thank you.
Let's talk about Broadridge. In doing that, I'm gonna talk about what we do. I'm gonna talk about our growth plans a little bit, talk about our execution model, how that translates into numbers and return. In terms of what we do, you know, we are a leading provider of technology infrastructure to the financial services industry. We have roughly a $28 billion market cap. We have $4.5 billion a year in fee revenue. That $4.5 billion is against a $60 billion addressable market, so we think we have a long runway left. The clients that we serve are primarily in wealth management, asset management, capital markets, and corporate issuers. We service 28 of the 29 globally systemic important banks around the world. We do that through providing technology, operations, governance, and communications.
The ICS business is a pretty unique network, and sometimes people think the ICS business is complicated to learn, but think about it as a, as a network linking corporate issuers to investors through banks and through advisors. Think issuers, investors, banks, and advisors, and the network and Broadridge just sitting in the middle of that. In the GTO business, we have a capital markets business. We have a wealth management business. Capital markets is providing front, middle, and back office systems for capital markets. In the wealth business, you know, we are a leading wealth provider to the industry. It's about a $600 million business there as well. Just in terms of what that translates to in terms of volumes, you know, we processed almost 900 million equity positions last year. That translates into 7 billion communications that we send out to investors.
We clear and settle $10 trillion a day in fixed income settlements. We do that on behalf of 20 of the 24 primary fixed income dealers in the United States. We're the primary back office platform, and I think we're the primary back office platform for 11 of the top 15 equity houses across North America. We're increasingly doing all these things as a platform company. You know, we will probably talk a little bit about some of the things we're doing in wealth management and some partnerships that we've done to create the next generation wealth platforms. Increasingly, as a platform company, we're doing this across common data ontologies, common data mapping language, common APIs, and just other ways to make it easier for businesses to do business with Broadridge.
Okay.
That's who we are. In terms of our growth plans, we'll break it down into three different things. We'll talk about our governance franchise, where we are democratizing and digitizing governance. We have capital markets, where we're simplifying and innovating and trading in capital markets. Of course, we're modernizing wealth management. Let me talk about each of those in turn. In terms of our governance franchise, you know, we've got a clear power around that business from the democratization of governance and investing. We'll probably talk about position growth in a little bit, but we've seen in FY2025, mid-teens position growth in equities and mid-single digits in terms of funds. We're investing a lot to make those communications more engaging and more effective for shareholders. We are doing a lot with funds.
You know, we just rolled out a Tailored Shareholder Report platform on behalf of the industry about a year ago, which is the next generation disclosure for fund companies. We are helping asset managers and funds better engage with the underlying shareholders and passive funds through something called passive voting. Passive voting is an increasing trend. We supported eight funds in that in 2023. We had about 100 funds last year, probably 400 funds this year, and that continues to grow in terms of things we're doing. In the customer communication space, in the ICS world, we have a huge effort around a print to digital migration, helping our clients digitize communications, investing in next generation digital communications platforms around that as well. That is around the democratization and digitization of governance.
In the capital markets, which is about a $1 billion business, capital markets, again, it's about simplifying and innovating and trading. We have a class-leading, global post-trade, books and record system in the back office.
Mm-hmm.
We made a pretty meaningful acquisition in Europe. It got us into the front office with a global leading SaaS platform for front office trading capabilities in capital markets. You know, we're really doing a lot of innovation in capital markets right now. We're doing real things around AI. You know, a lot of people are talking about AI and how they're experimenting, exploring. You know, we're executing, we're implementing. It's driving real revenue for us. I think we just announced, there's a press release this morning around Bond GPT, and the rollout of Bond GPT. We have real platforms and real revenue around distributed ledger repo. All these things are basically helping speed execution, lower execution costs, lower execution risk. A lot going on in capital markets. Wealth management for us is very much around modernizing wealth management.
You know, back in the day, a wealth management back office conversion was a huge big bang. We've really extended to creating modular solutions that you can use at various different point solutions. We talk about transforming on your own, transforming on their own terms, transforming on your own terms. The firms now can think about modernizing back office and back office capabilities using these modular solutions that we've been spending the last five to six years investing in. That's kind of our growth strategy. Just quickly, Matt, I'm sorry.
Just about the, about the execution and like, so what does that mean to you guys and how does that translate?
Around execution and returns. If I go back to the last 10 years for Broadridge, we've had 10% recurring revenue growth, 13% adjusted EPS growth. We've had dividends growing in line with earnings. I think we've had a double-digit dividend increase for 12 of the last 13 years. Over the last 10 years, a 19% TSR, total shareholder return. We're a pretty unique company in that we hold an investor day every three years. When we do that, we provide three-year guidance. At the last investor day, we talked about, you know, that guidance, 5-8% organic revenue growth, 7-9% revenue growth in total, with a point or two coming from M&A, 8-12% EPS growth. We're just over halfway through that three-year period, but, you know, we're on track to achieve that.
Overall, I would say, as you think about Broadridge as an investment, you know, we target low double-digit TSR returns with high defensiveness and low volatility. We think that's relatively boring, and we think boring's exciting in that context. That's my line, and I'm sticking to it.
Okay. I wanted to drill down a little bit. You mentioned democratization.
Yeah.
There's this theme of democratization of investing. You mentioned the position growth.
Yeah.
Can you kind of unpack the trends that are underlying it? Maybe first, what do you, what is it? And then.
What is it? If you say democratization of investing.
Yeah.
Took me a while to be able to get those words out consistently.
They're tough as back.
What does that mean? That means more people are transacting in the market, and that brings in more positions. Generally, our revenue trends are tied to the number of positions that we process. You know, this trend around democratization isn't new. Going back to, I'm, I'm going way back. There are some of the older folks in the room, right? The, you know, ending, you know, the end of fixed commissions and the, you know, decimalization. There is a point where, you know, you could get a managed account if you had a $250,000 balance. Now the balance for managed accounts is, like, you know, way down. Then you had the advent of, you know, app-based investing and digital brokers and robo-advisors.
You have model indexing and all these various different things where you see underlying broker-dealers that are basically innovating, thinking about new, new ways to make it effective for investors to participate and enter into the market. All those things are continuing to drive position growth. Let's step back. What is position growth? 'Cause this is, this is a core driver for Broadridge in the ICS business. Position growth is if, if you own Edings, if you own 100 shares of Amazon, or you own 1,000 shares of Amazon, that's just one position. And generally speaking, we could pay for processing, you know, positions. Position growth over the last decade, Matt, has grown about, high single digits.
Mm-hmm.
The way to think about that is through, you know, two primary factors. There are more investors coming into the market. That's been of that, call it high single digit. That's been two to four of that, two to four points of that high single digit. Of course, for folks in the market, more positions per investor. That's been worth about five to seven points. On a combined basis, it's been high single digit growth. Again, we talked about where we are in fiscal year 2025. Year to date, we've been at mid-teens in terms of equity position growth and mid-single digits in terms of fund growth. In terms of where I think that's gonna, you know, is that trend gonna continue? You know, for me, I think positively, it will.
There are certain demographic drivers behind that, more investors in the market. Of course, there is the innovation that our clients are doing around creating more product for investors to invest in, and that will continue to drive growth. Even things where the regime has yet to been set in terms of, you know, digital assets or private assets and how those are gonna come to the market and investors participating in that, you know, all those things will need investor information and investor disclosure and ways for investors to engage with those underlying assets. I think all those things will build well for Broadridge. The democratization of investing is all these things, and it has been a positive trend for us.
You talked about it impacting the ICS business. How do you think it's impacting the GTO business in terms of capital markets, wealth management?
The, you know, the GTO business, I go back to the strategy, is, we've been creating a multi-asset class front, you know, on the front end. Of course, we have leading capabilities on post-trade on the back end. Innovation is a common theme around all those different things. It is simplifying operations, creating scale, and around the innovation. I think Broadridge plays very well in that space. You know, we're, you know, going back to being a $28 billion market cap company and $4.5 billion of revenue. I will, you know, at some point, I do not know if Dan's in here. He's like, you guys always talk about your capital model because it is very interesting to investors.
You know, the first thing in the pecking order for our capital allocation model is investing in attractive internal growth opportunities. We have the balance sheet and the capacity to be able to do that. We are innovating at scale. Whether it is things like Bond GPT or Ops GPT and things like that, you are seeing that. In the wealth markets, you are seeing the investments that we are making. We had a big partnership with a client going back over the last five years where we created the next generation wealth platform and invested in that. All these things are so that our end client can reduce the cost of operations, make it more effective, and provide tools so they can continue to innovate. Innovation, everybody is innovating, and we fuel that innovation, and that is a good trend for us.
Okay. Can we drill down on the, on the digitization that you also talked about?
Yep.
Is that simply replacing paper with digital communications, or is it more involved than that?
A good question. Is it more involved? It, it's a lot more involved. Let's just talk about what digital is and what that means. You know, the financial services industry has been doing digital for 25 years, and digital started off as email. Where we are right now is a financial services industry, and you think about the things that we do and the communications that we provide. 85-90% of regulatory communications, so think of it as a proxy or an interim or a prospectus, 85-90% of those are already suppressed digitally. There's about 10-15% left in paper. In terms of the transactional communications, like the things that we do in the customer communications business, 50% of those have gone electronic, and 50% of that is paper.
We've been partnering with an industry for the last 25 years to drive that electronic, to drive those rates up higher. It's not something that we're concerned about in protecting a print business. It's just the opposite. We are actively investing and engaging to help our clients go from print to digital. It's to drive, yes, it is around cost savings, but it's also around client engagement and deeper engagement with clients in a digital way. When you think about digital, Matt, I'd ask you to think about not just email. That's the simplest way to think about it, but that's just a fraction of what it is.
The digital ecosystem around digital communications ranges from data ingestion to composition to e-delivery to SMS texting, providing personalized HTML microsites on behalf of clients, the preference management process around that, the e-fail delivery process around that, around that, archiving all those communications. There is a compliance layer that goes across all those different things. There is a whole vertical stack of capabilities tied into digital, which is attractive for us. You know, when you step back and you say, you know, Broadridge, you know, you are still doing print, are you concerned about print going away and that driving digital? I think about it just a mirror of that. I think about the 50% that is not yet digital. I think about that as the opportunity.
I'm not concerned about the print, the 50% of print that exists because of all the different things in that value stream around what is digital.
You mentioned the Customer Communications business.
Yes.
I mean, I think most people think of Broadridge, they think of the proxy business.
Yep.
What is the customer communications that you're talking about?
Customer Communications. So think of it, so it is a $700 million business. It is about 85% print today and 15% digital. That digital business within there, I think, is a, is a terrific business. You can do the math on what 15% of $700 million is. You know, that business grew double digit in 2023, double digit in 2024. We are on track to be, you know, solidly double digit this year in 2025. It is a pretty meaningful business growing, you know, double digit because of all the different things that I just talked about. Our typical client could be a, you know, like somebody you are familiar with. Think of a large financial services firm that is consumer-facing and has to send out really important communications like a customer statement or a trade confirm or a letter and various different disclosures and things like that.
What a firm like that would be looking to do is to essentially optimize that overall program across print. They really like to streamline and reduce the cost of providing print. They want to provide, and they want to create better digital experiences so they have a better digital interaction with their clients. They are looking for our help to help convert clients from print to a digital relationship. I think that's a win-win. That's great for our clients. It's good for us 'cause we're going from a low-growth, low-margin print business to a high-growth, high-margin digital business. There is a good synergy and a very good fit there. That is our typical client.
Mm-hmm.
You know, for us, we are a leading Omnichannel platform, which is pretty unique. You know, there are, if we were to get into competition, there are a number of folks out there doing purely print. There are some folks out there doing email. There are some folks out there that can provide the technology stack to do archive. We have a fully integrated suite where the whole set of next-generation digital experience is tied to all those things. We actively work and partner with our clients to drive print to digital. I think it's a pretty unique value proposition for us. That's why you're seeing this double-digit growth and the digital business, like, underneath within customer communications going, you know, pretty attractive over the last several years.
Okay. You've mentioned a couple of times recurring revenue.
Yeah.
Where you also report event-driven.
Yep.
Distribution revenue.
Yep.
Can you kind of explain the differences and how should investors sort of think about them and the drivers?
You know, recurring revenue is, you know, revenue under contract for more, you know, for multiple years. It's a pretty simple concept. Event-driven revenue is something which is not recurring. It may happen, you know, one year and not again for another few years. It may just be a one-time, one-off or something like that. That's event-driven revenue. Examples of that could be a proxy contest when there's an activist. It could be a mutual fund complex having to go out to a board vote because they have a new CEO. You actually saw that in 2024 and 2025. In 2024, we had a Disney contest. It was pretty active and pretty public. You know, we, of course, we were doing communications on behalf of Disney, but there were also two activists in there.
You know, our job is to be, you know, the fair middleman in there helping everybody do a, you know, effective communications and to manage the overall process. You saw a big event in 2024 from Disney. This year, you've seen a large mutual fund complex. They have a new CEO, a CEO at the top of the house. They added a board-wide complex to put them on the board of the various different funds. On average, I think we range from $240 million-$260 million a year on average in terms of event-driven revenue. That generally should grow in line with position growth, something like that.
Okay.
distribution revenues, about $2 billion.
Yep.
Think of it as, you know, things like postage tied to, you know, physical distribution and physical output. It's just a pass-through. I would say, you know, long-term, the trend on that is that will dissipate as we continue to execute on digital strategy. I think in the, in the medium term, you know, we're still winning a lot of print business because we have such an effective digital strategy and customer communications. And a lot of times the print comes with it. so we've got between position growth and customer communications, I'll call it low single-digit growth in distribution revenue because of that, maybe add a couple of points on top because of postage rate increases. I think in the mid- in the medium term, you'll see mid-single-digit growth in distribution revenue.
You know, long, over a long period of time, though, I would see that seeding away as we continue to drive more digital.
Okay. You mentioned medium term. Maybe we'll move a little more short term. That's.
Okay.
What are you seeing in terms of demand? Does market volatility help or hurt the business?
Yes.
Sort of a very open-ended question.
I think part of that side is sales. Let me just break that question down into maybe, maybe sales and then demand of what I'm personally seeing in the businesses that I lead and I'm involved in. In our Q3, we talked about sales. Excluding our Tailored Shareholder Report rollout last year, which is kind of a one-off, we've grown sales 9% year over year for Q3 and actually for year to date. You know, at that time, we were seeing some slowing in the pipeline for the full year, just because Q4 is such a big sales quarter for us. We ended up revising guidance, which is why we did that.
You know, the demand in terms of solutions that we have tied to anything cost and operation efficiency related, you know, every one of our clients needs to get more efficient and save money. There's not a director of operations in the industry that doesn't have a goal every year to save money and take cost out. You know, we're a big mechanism and partner for them to be able to do that. You know, we continue to see very strong demand for those. In my particular business and the things I'm doing, in areas that we're investing in heavily, data and analytic solutions, really strong demand. Our digital solutions like Wealth and Focus, very strong demand.
even some things where, you know, proxy reform and some of the things that are happening there where you see, you know, there's a lot going on with proxy advisors right now. Now, we're not a proxy advisor. We don't advise in the vote. You know, we're just the, we're the processor making sure that it all happens the right way. But fund companies are looking for ways to reduce their reliance on, on proxy advisors. And we provide tools and technologies for them to be able to do that and the data and analytics for them to be able to do that. So we're seeing some really strong demand for a lot of things in the governance space.
Thinking about position growth.
Yep.
If I think about the history, what does it tend to do when markets are up and then when markets are down? Is there any?
It's interesting. It's since 2007.
Mm-hmm.
We've had some pretty big swings and cycles since 2007. I think about, for those of us, you know, Broadridge, we spun off in 2007 right into the face of a hurricane, which was 2009. You know, and then we've had some other periods and we've had COVID and various different things. Since 2007, stock market growth and mutual fund growth on a combined basis has never been negative. There is some pretty good, you know, pretty strong defensibility in there. I think that's because the underlying drivers are still pretty strong around population and things like that. You tend to see, you know, there's probably a couple of effects. These are not statistically modeled out, so they're just kind of, you know, hypotheses.
When markets go down, what you end up seeing is people not getting out of positions, which by the way would trigger tax in a lot of cases. You see people looking at it as a buying opportunity and getting into more positions. You know, we saw that during COVID, and even during the most recent uncertainty, you know, you've seen over the course of this year where our stock market growth has increased. There was some uncertainty that got introduced right around the January, February timeframe, tied to tariffs and things like that, and you still saw stock market growth increasing.
Can we switch gears and talk about the competition?
Okay.
I mean, your proxy business seems like it has a nice moat, but there are competitors.
Yep.
Seems like it's predominantly U.S. Can, you know, can you compete internationally with the business?
A couple of things. The proxy, the regulatory business in ICS was about 45% of the revenues in ICS. The fees around proxy process, the fees that a broker can charge an underlying issuer tied to proxy and related communications is actually set by the New York Stock Exchange and the SEC. Those fees have not changed in over a decade. We have a large share in the beneficial market, which is the market for where shares are held through broker deals. It is about 80% of the market. We have competitors in the space like Proxy Trust and Mediant. We have competitors in that space. We do have a global proxy business as well.
That is where individuals outside of the U.S. are holding shares in non-U.S. or non-Canadian businesses, and they are doing it through global custodians, global brokers, global custodians. We are actually starting to see an increasing phenomena where you have got global investors buying shares held directly in U.S. securities. We think that is a new growth opportunity for us as well, actually.
Okay. I'm going to open it up for any questions from the audience. I still have plenty, but if there's any. Nope. Okay. I'll give you a chance in a little bit. You mentioned that the pricing is set by the SEC and the New York Stock Exchange.
Mm-hmm.
How is regulation a tailwind or a headwind to the business?
Let's talk about regulation holistically.
Yep.
You know, and I say, you know, the things that, and the, in the current administration, and, and the things that the current administration is really focused on are kind of top of the mind issues, tariffs, taxes, immigration, social issues. You know, by and large, those do not impact our clients' business or, or Broadridge business. You know, we are service businesses. So those top-of-the-line things that the current administration is focused on really are not, not impacting us. I think the next set of potential priorities for the administration could be pretty positive for us. So digital assets. You know, we, the administration is looking to think about what the, what the overall disclosure and investment regime is going to be for digital assets. Probably would not surprise you to know that we have already come out with a disclosure solution for digital assets called Clarify, which we are pretty excited about.
Digital assets, I think for us will be an opportunity. We touched briefly on proxy reform.
Mm-hmm.
That's a pretty hot topic for the SEC. I think that's an opportunity for us because we, when they talk about proxy reform, they're not talking about what we do. They're talking about proxy advisors and potential conflicts of interest and various different things. What that translates into is that our clients on the asset management side and the fund side are looking for different ways that they can get informed decision-making on how to vote their shares. We have tools and technologies that enable them to do that. We have tools and technologies that enable them to actually pass that vote back down to the underlying shareholder in a passive fund.
If you own a passive fund and you have retail shareholders out there, like all of us could be a retail shareholder, you can actually allow that underlying shareholder to indicate, you know, how they would prefer to have their votes presented and shared. Again, we are not processing for 400 funds. Digital assets is an opportunity, proxy reform is an opportunity, and then, of course, digitization and continuing to drive digitization for the industry. That is a win-win for the industry and a win-win for us.
What about ESG?
that's gotten more complicated over the last,
Exactly.
You know, but that's, you know, if you look at it on a global basis, there are, you know, ESG continues to be an important topic for different countries and different regimes, on a global basis in Europe and APAC and things like that. You almost have to answer that differently depending on where you are and the time and things like that. In some countries, and some pension funds overseas, that's why they're thinking about pass-through voting as a way to pass that through the underlying institutional shareholder and things like that. You know, it's more around the governance piece of it is where I focus on the opportunity, but that's, you know, we play very strongly in the governance part of that.
Okay. It's a bit of an unfair question because it's more of a broader question.
Got it.
How does Broadridge think about its capital allocation? You got steady business growing nicely.
That's actually, that's a layup for us. That's a layup for me to answer. Thank you for ending on that one. We, you know, look, we have a low capital-intensive business. We have, you know, pretty strong, we have very strong free cash flow. This year we've given guidance of, you know, 95%-105% free cash flow conversion, you know, for this year. Again, I've been on the executive committee since 2007. We have a very clear pecking order in terms of how we think about money and investing. The first is we look to fund and prioritize, you know, attractive internal growth investment opportunities. That's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, continuing to provide a dividend that continues to grow in line with earnings. You know, that's a good way to give cash back to shareholders.
The third is around executing, you know, attractive, you know, tuck-in M&A opportunities that support our growth strategy. After those three, you know, returning excess cash to shareholders through buybacks. Think about it as internal investment, dividends, tuck-in M&A, supporting growth strategy, and then buybacks. We do all that in the context of maintaining an investment grade credit rating. In any given year that may change a little bit in terms of the relative mix, but over long cycles, you know, it has been pretty consistent and it has worked out very well for us. For those of you that have been around with Broadridge long enough, you know, we have a saying, you know, we are stewards of investments and the money because after all, it is your money. We really do believe that.
Excellent. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Good. Thanks, Matt.
Thank you.