All right, are you ready? Okay. Before we get started, for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. The taking of photographs and use of recording devices is not allowed. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. With that out of the way, thanks, everyone, for joining us at the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference. I'm Michael Cyprys, equity analyst, covering brokers, asset managers, and exchanges for Morgan Stanley Research. We're excited to have with us here this morning, Ali Dibadj. Did I pronounce that right?
Right.
All right. CEO of Janus Henderson. As many of you know, Janus Henderson is a leading global active asset management shop, with $310 billion of assets under management across equities, fixed income, multi-asset, and alternatives. Ali, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks, Mike.
Thanks for returning in your new role now.
Pleasure.
Which we'll talk about. Let's dive right in. It's been about a year since you've joined Janus as CEO. Can you talk about some of the actions and decisions that you have made so far and what your priorities are for the business today?
Sure. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having us. Here, we'll get to have you get to know our company a little bit better, and certainly investors in the room and on the call as well. You're right, it's been about a year, just under a year, that I've joined Janus Henderson, and I just feel really fortunate to be part of this team. This is a great team at Janus Henderson, with enormous potential. Potential that we have to bring to bear to both our shareholders and to our client base. You asked me a second ago whether I was traveling a lot, and just to give you a nugget of the potential that we have as a firm, I was, last week, in London. We have something called the London Knowledge Exchange.
There were, I don't know, 100, 200 people in a room in our offices, talking to our PMs of the balanced fund, talking to our PMs on technology, on healthcare, going through some of our flex bond businesses, et cetera. When you think about who was in that room, it was $1.5 trillion of assets under management, potential assets under management. We had less than 1%. Less than 1% market share of those folks. They were in our room, in our offices, being quite impressed by the opportunities that our investment teams bring to bear to them. That is some of the potential we have to unlock.
I'm meeting later this week with our U.S. equity analysts, for example, who, bar none, I'm sure you've experienced this as well, know the investments that they make, the companies, the securities they invest in, better than anybody else out there. There's an enormous amount of potential. Now, to your question, what are our priorities? How are we going to unlock some of that potential? For the past year, we've been quite busy. This team has been quite busy trying to help unlock the potential for the firm. The first thing that we did is we came up with our strategic direction. We had to develop our thought process in terms of what our strategy for the firm is.
The way we did that is we brought together about 40 people from across the firm, different parts of the organization. Half of them were from investments. You know, they invest in asset managers as well, so let's bring their thought processes in, from corporate, from distribution, et cetera. We spent a good amount of time coming up with what clients want and matching them up to what Janus Henderson is good at and not good at. There's some things we just won't be to some of our client base. We layered those on top of each other to come up with our strategy and our strategic direction. The shorthand for us is three prongs. One is, protect and grow our core businesses.
Two is amplify our strengths, and three is diversify where clients give us the right. We set up that framework of a strategy which we're now implementing. What we realized, I guess, the second thing that we did, is that we had to invest back into the business. There were some areas where we had underinvested, in particularly client-facing, particularly technology. What we did is we found Fuel for Growth. You might remember we were a little bit earlier than most in the industry to go after some efficiency savings, what we called it was Fuel for Growth, because we're developing fuel to invest back in the business. That's what we said publicly, $40 million-$45 million of cost savings to put back into the business to grow in a client-led manner for our business.
That's a big transformation. There will be continuous improvement, but that was kind of the big bang, that we're looking at continuing doing. Then what we did is, using some of that Fuel for Growth, we invested in our people. We brought in people from external. We promoted people internally, part of creating blue sky for this Fuel for Growth, opportunity. Folks who are really good within the firm, but just were kind of stuck in lack of progression, and we gave them more blue sky.
We selectively, surgically improved the talent within our firm, both bringing people externally, whether it be our head of North America retail, whether it be our head of ESG, whether it be our COO, who hasn't been that long, or Chief Technology Officer, and on down the line, Chief Operating Officer, et cetera. You go down the line, and we really brought in higher caliber people and promoted people internally who had high performance, high potential. The last thing that we are doing is we're changing the culture. You know, some of this strategy, some of this Fuel for Growth changes the culture. We took away layers of the organization, but we also developed our new mission, values, and purpose. What is our mission? What are our value or our purpose?
All of this under the umbrella of being absolutely focused on delivering for our clients. This mission value purpose is being ingrained in our organization. It doesn't happen overnight, as all of you know, who've looked at or been part of cultural changes, but certainly on the right track. It's been a busy year for the team. The team's done a great job, and you're starting to see some real momentum over the long term, start building for the firm.
You spent many years in the industry, and I'm sure you've had some views of Janus Henderson along the way. What surprised you since joining the firm? Now on the inside, what misperceptions remain on the outside, and how do you address that?
Yeah, it's a great question. Let me take you down the journey a little bit in terms of kind of how I saw things externally than what I saw when I was inside, or am inside. I guess I'll break it up into three pieces. One is from an investment acumen perspective. My experience, being similar to you in your chair for some time, I interacted a lot with Janus Henderson. I interacted a lot with the analysts and the portfolio managers in the U.S. equities business, in the European businesses, the European equities business. I knew the intellectual prowess was there. I knew the kind of disciplined investments, the differentiated insights from a research perspective. I knew that was there, at least from the equities perspective.
I'd like to think our clients see that. I'd like to think more and more people will see that over time as we expand and as we grow. What I didn't know, a little bit of a surprise, was how broad the skill set is. It's not just in the U.S. equities, core of our business, but think about what we have in fixed income. Think about what we have from a securitized element in fixed income as well. It's driven JAAA, it's driven JMBS, other things that are out there for us as well. Think about a topic we focused on one of our earnings calls that many of our clients don't know about, many investors don't know about, which is our multi-strat funds that we have.
We have tens of billions of dollars, where we run in effectively, fundamental and quantitative pods, to deliver better returns, effectively, bond-like volatility with equity-like returns. No one talks about that. No one talked about that. We're gonna talk about that a lot more. The investment acumen throughout the firm, we are an investment-led firm, is clearly there. It should be obvious externally. Internally, it's much broader than I would have expected from the outside world. Second thing is, look, I competed against Janus Henderson quite a bit. I knew it was really tough to pull a client away. I didn't really know why. What I found is internally, our client service people are literally, and I hope I say this in a positive way, obsessed about their clients. They literally work with them.
Some folks are sitting at clients, working with them in their locations, and that relationship is extremely strong. On the flip side, what I was disappointed in or surprised, I guess, from one sense, is how much broader we could be from a client-based perspective. I just described the London Knowledge Exchange a second ago. Less than 1% share of people who are sitting in our offices, listening to our portfolio managers and analysts and experts talk about our business. That's enormous potential. We're investing in that potential. We're investing in frontline client folks. We're investing in technology to help that, to make sure that, again, that investment acumen can be broadened out from a world-class service perspective that we have.
The third thing, which was a surprise, and to be fair, I didn't really know, it was a little bit of a leap of faith, was whether the team, whether the organization was willing to put the effort in to win. What was the aspiration and ambition of this organization? I mentioned mission, value, purpose along the way. When we looked at talking to our 2,200 people within the firm, my colleagues in the firm, I didn't have to tell them that we want to step it up and win. They told me. That energy was there, and that was a very positive surprise. The energy, the dedication of this team is clearly being manifested. People want to win. People want to win because of our purpose, which is investing in a brighter future together for that client.
That's really been a very positive surprise for the firm.
Great. We've seen Janus take some actions in recent years to exit some less profitable areas. Is that done at this point? How do you think about the mix of the business today, whether it's along products or distribution, compared to where you'd like it to be as you look out over the next three to five years? Maybe talk about some of the steps there.
Sure. You're right. We've gone through several stages of, as part of Fuel for Growth and otherwise, being focused on the right activities on behalf of our shareholders and our clients. It is a responsibility we have as a firm to continue to do that, so it's actually never done. Are some of the larger things like an Intech or what have you done? Yeah. I mean, we don't have big chunks like that left, but it is our responsibility to make sure that we continuously improve our portfolio, again, on behalf of our clients and on behalf of our shareholders. You know, when we do it, going forward, in terms of reducing some of our portfolio elements, it will be very surgical. It will be very deliberate.
It is not great for a client for us to have a portfolio that is subscale and not delivering performance. That's not good for anybody. That's not good for our shareholders either. If there are those types of things, we will go after that for sure. It's not good for our shareholders if we're not making as much profitability as we could be. Typically, that goes hand in hand with not delivering for our clients. We will continue to, yes, absolutely look at our portfolio and make sure we're right-sized in the businesses. Now, you know, what does our business look like in the future? You know, we talked a little bit at the outset about our strategy, protecting, growing our core businesses. That's still gonna be the core of the business. This is our U.S. equities business.
This is our European equities business, et cetera, our fixed income core businesses. Those will still be the core of the business for sure. We're gonna, to the second part of the strategy, amplify some of our strengths. Think about our healthcare business, and particularly our biotech funds and our biotech hedge funds. Again, things we haven't amplified enough. Those have enormous amounts of potential. Those should grow as a % of the business. The multi sector hedge fund business that we have, I described a moment ago, that should grow as a piece of the business for sure. The amplified piece should be bolstered on and help out the growth of the protect-and-grow buckets. The last one, remember, is the diversify, where we have the right business, and you've already seen some examples of that.
We brought on board our emerging market debt team, for example, in September. That's already crossed the $1 billion AUM mark for us. In September to today, crossing $1 billion, to your earlier question, one of the surprises I had, is the fast-moving ability of this organization to pivot and deliver on something for our clients. We just did, for example, a joint venture with Privacore to take advantage of the democratization of private alternatives into the retail channel. We believe that will be a bigger part of our business going forward. We have a great foundation. The heartbeat and the engine is very, very strong. We want to build on top of that, and both of those together will drive us to be a world-class organization in the asset management world.
Why don't we shift, talk a bit about the industry? Many money managers have struggled with poor performance for some time. We've also seen changing customer preferences. In your view, what is the future of active management, and is there actually a better opportunity now that we've kind of ended this decade of financial repression?
Yes, and yes is the short answer, and let me kind of break that out a little bit. The first part is absolutely there are many asset managers who have not performed, and to be fair, many of them have been weeded out. The good news is for Janus Henderson, again, at our core, we pick between good companies and bad companies, good securities and bad securities. That's what we do for a living. That's what we're very good at. Look at our performance over long periods of time, we do extraordinarily well because that is what we do from our core. The challenge, right, has been that over the past, pick a number, 10, 12 years, there was no cost to capital. You know, money was free, effectively. I remember doing my own models.
I didn't really know what the risk-free rate was, so what multiple do you put on things, right? We've been extraordinarily disciplined. I am not an economist. I don't really know what the interest rate will be going forward versus what it is today. I do know it's not going to be zero. I do know there will be a cost to capital. I do know that picking haves and have-nots will be a big driver of creating alpha for our clients, and everybody's listening as clients, and that's something that Janus Henderson does extraordinarily well. To me, that's an umbrella shift in the marketplace right now, that is going to be happening for the asset management business. We think about things a little bit more thematically as well.
If you think about the big themes that impact in that context, let's talk about maybe three of them. One is geopolitical realignment is certainly happening right now. The U.S. is less involved externally to this country and other parts of the world, whether it be Russia, whether it be China, are more involved in other parts of this country. There's a huge geopolitical realignment that's happening, while as investors, Janus Henderson and others, have to think about what that means. For example, our emerging market equity business has to think about what that means for supply chains breaking apart. Similarly, our global real estate business has to think about what they do when supply chains break apart and where the CapEx will be put into place.
You have to think about where scale may not be as much of an advantage from a global supply chain perspective, where innovation plays out. Our emerging market innovation fund is something that could be quite interesting. Our small cap prowess around the world is something that should certainly be brought to bear and thought through. We have a big presence in Europe. I think there's going to be a lot more nearshoring and onshoring within Europe. All this within the umbrella of geopolitical realignment is how we have to think about things on behalf of our clients. We're in this, you know, theme number two. We're in this post-COVID world, post-COVID demographics. You know, you look at the demographics around the world, they've shifted quite significantly over the past several years.
Our emerging market equity team has to think about that. Our U.S. equity team, more broadly, has to think about where they invest from that perspective, on a demographics perspective. I mentioned healthcare. We have a great healthcare franchise, that has to think about that. Our sustainable franchises, our technology franchises have to think about that. We have a Sustainable Future Technologies Fund, for example, which is in its nascent stages, that has to think about, again, the post-COVID demographics world as well. The last one is again, this kind of return of yield, so to speak. That supports all of our fixed income franchises across the board. It also suggests that there's an opportunity between privates and publics. I'd argue that historically, the private markets, particularly on the private equity side, has been overvalued.
We can talk about the deal that happened today, perhaps in some sense, in the news, but certainly broadly speaking, the private equity markets has been somewhat overvalued relative to the public markets. Where is that manifested? Well, you can see that in real estate for sure. You can still see that in the small cap world for sure. Those are things we want to take advantage of, in that world, let alone our broader fixed income franchise that we have across the board. Big themes, big opportunity for asset managers like us and like many who are listening on the phone, I'm sure, in the room, who really understand the assets they invest in and can create alpha from the haves and have-nots within these themes.
You've mentioned three prongs to your growth strategy, kind of growing the core, diversifying and amplifying the strength. How do you think about aligning your distribution to capture that opportunity set, whether it's from channels to vehicles? Where do you see the biggest opportunity?
Yeah. Okay. Let's take that in a couple of parts. Take, for example. Well, first of all, broadly, we're investing in our distribution business. We're investing in our distribution business to make sure that we can, to your point, grow the business by bringing to our client base and potential client base, a set of categories, a set of investment capabilities that we are unique in. That's really what we're going to be focused on. We're not going to kind of fight within the beta landscape. We're really unique at developing alpha, and that's what we're going to be doing. Now, if you take some examples of that, for example, our U.S. intermediary business. Our U.S. intermediary business is, I guess, about a third of our assets right now.
We are investing in upgrading some of the talent, upgrading some of the technology to be able to deliver for our RIA, wirehouse, independent broker-dealer partners who are looking to this new world, the world of change that we just described a second ago, and trying to understand how to do better for their end clients. You know, not just our clients, but our clients' clients is what we think about all day. We're investing in a lot of those areas to deliver for them. Significant portion of that, and a vast majority of that, is in the protect and grow category. The categories where we have extremely strong prowess. Think about our classic fixed income business. Think about our U.S. equities business, for example, our European funds profile. We have enormous opportunity to, again, gain market share there.
There are also opportunities that we have, for example, in the ETF business that we've developed. Think about our JAAA business that we've grown quite significantly, AAA CLO business, that meets the needs of our clients. The good news is, within the U.S. intermediary business, we have CITs, and we have VITs, and we have the other alphabet soup of vehicles that we can provide. If our clients want it in pink, we'll deliver it in pink. If they want it in purple, we'll deliver it in purple. What we're delivering is our core investment acumen in that business. That's just on the U.S. intermediary side. Think about institutional for us. Institutional globally is a big strategic focus. It's about 1/5 of our AUM right now. We do expect that to grow quite significantly.
We've had great, great activity among consultants, among institutional investors around the world, very sophisticated ones, entrusting us with their assets for their end, and beneficiaries. We're seeing that continue to grow for our business quite significantly. There, too, we're investing on frontline from a salesperson perspective and technology perspective. All this fits very much with the Protect and Grow, the Amplify, and the Diversify. Our core will remain Protect and Grow, but we do think we have enormous potential to cross over the organic growth line with the other two elements as well.
You mentioned ETFs. You have a few billion dollars, I think, largely in fixed income.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe you could talk about the ETF strategy. How do you think about running that out, and is there any appetite for mutual fund to ETF conversions, and how you think about that?
Sure. Yes, you're right. We do have, call it $6 billion in ETFs right now. It's growing quite rapidly, as you've seen from some of our results. The way we think about it, a little bit of what I was saying a second ago, we think about our expertise being delivering investment outcomes and investment strategies. That drives the firm. We're an investing firm. We can package it in ways to deliver to our clients in a way that's more palatable for various reasons, depending on the client. That's what we did from a fixed income ETF perspective. You're absolutely right. JAAA, I mentioned a second ago, it's a AAA ETF franchise. Think about us from a short-term duration perspective.
There's JMBS, a little bit more core, so, mortgage-backed securities ETF. There's VNLA as well, more on the short-term side. You put all those together, and in particular, look at the skill sets that we have on the securitized side, on fixed income. That's a unique skill set that we have, a unique set of portfolio managers and analysts that we have in that business, and we wrap that in a way to bring that to our client base. Will it grow? Look, knock on wood, we certainly hope so. We think we have several investment strategies that can be brought to bear and can be amplified to bring to a broader client base.
And mutual fund ETF conversions, any thoughts on that?
We're not there yet.
Okay.
I think the industry has to think through, to whom would an ETF fit versus to whom would a mutual fund fit? A mutual fund is a very, very valuable vehicle for a large part of our clients' clients. We wanna make sure that we deliver what our clients need, that's right for them. Over time, could it be something we think about? We're not very focused on that at this point.
Okay. Retail SMAs, can you remind us how many strategies you have in the SMA side today, where you'd like that to be? How do you think about broadening that out?
Sure. there, too, making sure we deliver for what our clients and our clients' clients need. It's about $5 billion, I wanna say, in AUM, growing very, very rapidly, you know, high single, low double-digit type growth. It is 14 strategies that we have right now, 11 model placements within that. Again, we think that that is something that, particularly with some of our more sophisticated client base, they want to have that accessibility to the underlying assets, underlying securities. We are gonna continue to build that. We're investing as well from a specialist perspective to make sure we can support our advisor clients, as well as from an institutional view as well in some instances.
Why don't we shift, talk about the institutional part of the business. Maybe talk about some of the changes that have taken place across the institutional distribution that led to such strong first quarter flows that I think caught people's attention across the industry. How would you characterize the institutional pipeline today versus year-end and kind of what the composition looks like?
Yeah. As I mentioned a second ago, we are investing significantly in the institutional distribution force. It is a great team, the team has not been here for very long, most of them. We have great traction now with consultants. We're having significant consultant meetings. Our head of, for example, global consultant relationships, extraordinarily strong. Our U.S. head, who I just met with not too long ago, is very, very strong. You're seeing that consultants are realizing and opening their eyes a little bit and saying, "Oh, wow, I didn't know Janus Henderson had all of these things," which are actually very, very strong from a performance perspective. We have to then, obviously, translate that into vehicles and translate that into forms that those consultants' clients can use. We're investing heavily on it.
You'll see more people come in from a headcount perspective, again, being client-facing in that business from an institutional perspective, particularly in the U.S. As I mentioned, institutional is about a 5th of our business, more broadly. What you saw happening in the 1st quarter, I would not project linearly for the firm. There's no question that things will not be linear from a net flows perspective for us, but I think it was a very clear indication on the quarter that consultants and investors, our clients, were saying that we're on the right track. Now.
A lot of what you saw come in in the first quarter was funding that clients were sitting around and waiting to see whether we were on the right track, waiting to see whether the changes we were going to bring to bear were client-led or not. Indeed, they are client-led, they are client-focused and shareholder-focused, and that allowed them to fund those mandates. It took away, to be fair, a significant portion of our late-stage funding, because again, clients were kind of waiting to see what we were going to do, and they were pleased with what they saw.
What it also did suggest is that some of the most sophisticated institutional investors around the world, you know them, we know them, some folks on the phone and in the room may have them as clients, they effectively put their badge of trust with us, as we're improving the business going forward.
Let's shift talk about fixed income. With the increase in base rates, it seemed like there's a major opportunity in fixed income today, that's now offering yields for the first time in many years. First quarter flows were quite robust for you guys in fixed income. Just curious what you're hearing from your customers, what strategies could see more demand on the fixed income side, and how you think about the positioning of Janus Henderson today?
Yeah, we are absolutely seeing more demand for fixed income, as we were talking about a moment ago. Yield is back. There actually is a reason to own fixed income, not just diversification, not just, you know, lower capital charges if you're an insurance company or something. There are real reasons to own it, which is yield. That's quite beneficial to us. It's quite beneficial to anybody in the fixed income category. I would argue that not all clients are seeing it the same. Some are waiting and seeing a little bit. Some folks are looking at kind of short duration versus longer duration, type assets to try to understand what's actually going to happen with rates going forward.
For us, the good news is that we have a panoply of offerings that actually perform quite well for our shareholders. If you kind of bucket it into three buckets, one is from a short duration perspective. There is demand for short and ultra-short yield. Think of some of the ones we were talking about before, VNLA, which is, think about it as a cash plus 2% or 3% type return, and cash actually has a return now, so that's meaningful to folks. Think about JAAA as well, the CLO AAA ETF. Think about some of those offerings that we have to folks. If they want ultra-short and are not quite sure, but they want to be in the short-term yield area. We have those with great performance that we can deliver to our clients.
We have obviously things in the core fixed income buckets. Think of flex bond in that instance. Think of another one we talked about, JMBS, in those instances, the Mortgage-Backed Securities business, Developed World Bond, as an example. Those are kind of core businesses that are, you know, areas where people who may have a little bit more of a medium-term conviction in the fixed income markets will go to, and we can provide that for them. Of course, there's the higher-yielding areas as well.
There, too, our performance is quite strong, particularly if it's an unconstrained, really rely on the portfolio manager and analyst team to decide where to go to, whether it be our multi-asset credit business, whether it be our multi-sector income business, or emerging market debt business, I was mentioning a while ago. A little bit higher yield, a little bit more conviction there. We're seeing a broad interest in fixed income, to your core question, from our clients, but differentiated views about whether they want to participate in the short side, short-term side of things, more the core or the higher-yielding areas, all of which are obviously much better yield than they had been over the past several years.
Okay. I believe you commented at the last quarter's call that over the next two years, you expect to achieve only one or two positive quarters of inflows. Is that right? Why is that when you just printed $ five and a half billion of inflows in the first quarter, and we look at the Morningstar flows, yes, they're outflows, but that pace of outflows is improving remarkably?
We've clearly improved our pace. That's correct. Our market share losses have improved quite significantly. You see that in the U.S. intermediary channels, you see that in European intermediary channels, you can see that quite publicly. We want to be very, very conscious of turning a ship, and asset management takes quite some time. There's clear momentum shifting here, but these are large, long-term relationships, large, long-term mandates to win, especially on the institutional side of things, and those have to take quite a bit of time to change. We want to be very realistic about that. I mentioned, for example, in the first quarter of the year, we've used up a lot of the later stage flows that we had from clients. Again, clients were waiting to see what we were talking about and what we were doing.
They were pleased with the trajectory, they funded. But now, we have to fill in that bucket, so to speak, yet again, and that takes time. You can't just flip the switch and get assets in the door. It is correct. We still expect one to two positive quarters of flows over the next one to two years. We just had one. We'd like to continue down that path. I think you'll see improvement. Again, I think, we're not in a stage just to be particularly direct, and people who get to know me, they know I'm pretty direct. We're not at the stage from a firm-wide perspective to promise consistent net flows at this point.
Okay. Final big picture question for me, and then I'm going to open it up to the audience, so get your questions ready. Big picture, AI.
Mm-hmm.
A lot of discussion across the industry. Just curious, your views on what role can artificial intelligence play within asset management? Is it more of an expense play? Is it a revenue opportunity? To what extent is Janus Henderson experimenting with that today?
Yeah, look, it's a great question. It's one of these themes that ebbs and flows, but I do think it'll be with us for quite some time, and the form of AI will change. Look, from a purely, you know, high level, simplistic perspective, if you think of what the asset management industry does, right? It ingests a whole ton of information, a whole ton of data. It tries to take that and pattern recognize, turn that into an insight they can invest in. It executes on that investment, trades on it, whatever it does, and then it communicates that and delivers that to a client base, whether it be vehicle or whether it be interactions. That's effectively the value chain of an asset management business, right?
If you think about where AI could be the most useful and is starting to be useful, it's frankly on either end of those for the most part right now. It's ingesting significant amount of data and hoping to create insights or pattern recognition out of that data. I think you're starting to see that play out. I think that's one of the most potentially fruitful areas from an AI perspective in the shorter run for all of us as asset managers and Janus Henderson, hopefully, being part of that improvement cycle from AI on the ingestion of data side and the insight part to it.
Then, on the other end of the spectrum, working with our clients, to really understand what our clients think about how we can serve them better, and kind of getting that feedback loop of what they like and what they don't like from our perspective. Not just our clients, but ideally our clients' clients. Be the end investor, the end person who wants a brighter future from retirement, wants to travel more, et cetera. I think those are the ends that are going to be the most fruitful in the short term. Will there be tools for sure from a trading perspective? Will there be tools somewhere in the middle of that value chain? Yes, probably. I think those two ends will be where we're going to be focused on in the asset management industry overall to start.
Great. Why don't we see if there's any questions in the room? What about brand? You've mentioned that that actually does matter, in the industry today. Maybe you could describe what Janus Henderson's brand is currently?
Mm.
What you want the brand to stand for.
So, we have a story to tell. Hopefully, you've got that from the past few minutes as well. We have a story to tell that's actually quite exciting, quite energizing. The people inside the firm, my colleagues, see that now. There's a little bit of a spring in our step, a little bit of a pride there. Not that it's going to be easy, but we know we can get to that destination of being world-class in everything that we do. We have to tell that story externally, and that's why brand matters. For us, our brand, at this point, is very focused on our purpose statement. Again, in this mission value purpose, which is a bottom-up exercise to talk about what Janus Henderson stands for. Our purpose is investing in a brighter future together, with particular emphasis on two words in that clause.
One is investing, and the other one is together. We are an investment shop. The experts at our firm, in terms of investing, is what delivers outcomes for our clients and their clients. We are an investing shop, and we do that together with you, the client, together internally as a firm. That's our brand, investing together. We've put together a brand campaign, reminding people about both that brand and also what we stand for, that we've been around for 89 years, that we have 340 investment professionals, that we've gone through portfolio construction services for 15,000 portfolios for our advisor friends. That's something that we have to remind people externally about. We know about it, but we have a story to tell.
We're very proud of our story. Over time, it'll translate into really consistent growth for us. Not overnight, but over time.
Great. Well, why don't we leave it there? Thank you very much, Ali.
Great. Thanks, Mike.
Great. That's great.