Ashmore Group Stock

Ashmore Group, Tom Shippey, Group Finance Director. Some of you know us -- hopefully, most of you know us. Thank you for coming. We're going to update you on our results for the financial year ended 30th of June 2026. This is an overview, high-level. I'm sure many of you have already got through this. Market has been pretty good for us in the year. We've delivered outperformance much as we usually do. Emerging markets itself, the equity indices were up nearly 50%, 44%, and fixed income anywhere between 7% and 12%. So a nice backdrop for an investor.

Our outperformance stayed pretty good. One year is up to 77%, and we're 68% and 67% over 3 and 5. Performance is fine. There are strategies we'd like to have been doing better, but performance is fine. Subs have, basically, started to increase. We've come through the cycle since the '22 panic, oh dear, the Russians are revolting. We kind of got through that. And people now are starting to think about where they should put their money given they've got an awful lot in the U.S.

Our subs are up, basically, nearly 100%, so -- which is good. Lower redemptions as well. The redemption number down -- has dropped by 20% year-on-year. So we -- in the assets under management space, bottoming and increasing. So up 13% overall, the $54 billion assets under management. So exactly what we'd expect to see this time in the cycle after a big redemption cycle, subscriptions start outweigh, redemptions drop, and you go back into growth. Net inflows of $2.7 billion, half of fixed income, half of equities and a little bit into alternatives. In terms of our strategy, in terms of diversifying our product set, that's been working. So the equity business has continued to grow, is up 1/3 this year. It's now 19% of the group's assets. We'd expect it to be much larger over time.

Alternatives growing as well, a little bit, up 1/4, now $2 billion. And the local offices continue to grow. There's a suite of local offices. There will be others over time, continue to grow as a part of the money that we manage. Great thing about local offices that when people panic and want to go home, the local office, they're already home. So we've seen net inflow all the way through since '22 in our local office businesses. About $1 billion -- just under $1 billion of inflow. So now local offices account for 16% of our assets. Seed has done well in the year. We made some money on our seed, and we're happy with that. Our profits have increased as a result of it. Our adjusted revenues are down 7%, however, due to lower performance fees on the core assets under management.

Investment returns have been pretty good on seed, $80-odd million of gains on seed capital. That's worked, and we've been recycling seed. So we've been taking money off the table as well, which means the subscription process is working. So seed capital is a good story. We realized life-to-date gains of nearly $62 million. So we're happy with that. Profit up 17%, $127 million. Diluted EPS followed it to 15p. We're maintaining the dividend per share at 16.9p. From here, macro is some good stuff going on as well as some less good stuff. But for EM, we feel we're going to be net beneficiaries of people saying we've just got an awful lot in the U.S.

Our growth rate in EM is pretty strong, forecast to be twice as fast as DM. And finally, what we do, which is be active, trying to stay out of trouble as well as get on the back of good things, is pretty important when we've got complex global world out there. A little more detail on that. So on the right, we give you emerging market and developed market index returns. This is not our returns, this is indices. I mentioned equities for EM up 44%. MSCI World was up 21%. So EM outperforming the world as a whole. EM small cap, the same as the world. And then on the bond space, Bloomberg Global Ag was up 1% as global bonds index. The 3 indices in emerging markets are all up more than that from 7% to 12%, 7% in the corporate space and 12% in the sovereign bond dollar space.

So that was good. It's been a good performance here. [ Election ] results generally across EM have been pretty strong and investor-friendly. There's been a decline of, I guess, you'd say, the extreme left and something more market-friendly has come into place generally across EM. And we're seeing our allocations increasing. We've got much, much more inquiry now from clients who have been with us for a long time and who take money out when they don't love the world in EM, and put it back when they do.

Clients thinking of topping up and doing some topping up, but also a lot more consultant-driven searches looking for places to put money. And this is just a bit more detail on the investment performance. Pretty much everything is performing fine over the 1 year. Three year, we'd like to see corporate a little better and certainly 5-year. And yes, we've got to keep our local market performance, our local currency performance going because that's actually one of the things that's attracting people to invest, is non-dollar exposure.

So how are we doing? This is our strategic plan that we tell you about every year. Phase 1 is get people to allocate. EM has been a net inflow year, which is good as a backdrop. For us, that turned into $2.7 billion across fixed income and equities in particular, and a big increase in subs to $12.2 billion. Phase 2 then is diversify what we're doing of our strategy, and that's growing the equities, the alternatives, and the local businesses. Equities is growing well, up 1/3. Alternatives, a reasonable percentage, but still not a big enough number. We'd like that to be in a bigger absolute number.

Retail itself starting to increase again. So retail can be the stuff that falls the first -- fastest first and then increases again. So retail now up to 5% of group from a low of about 3%, I think. And finally, emerging market capital moving. We're now up to $21 billion of assets from emerging markets. So 38% of group assets under management, and our local offices grew 13% to $9 billion, principally from Colombia, Indonesia, and India. I'll hand you over to Tom for some more detail.

Thanks. Okay. So a bit more detail on the movement in assets under management. The 13% increase to the $54 billion was the product of both positive investment performance of $3.7 billion and $2.7 billion of broad-based net inflow. Consistent with the positive markets and the alpha that Mark has just described, Ashmore delivered positive investment performance across all of the investment themes.

Subscriptions of $12.5 billion almost doubled in the year, gaining momentum as the year progressed with subscriptions increasing by approximately 20% in the second half. The flows have been both a mixture of new mandates and additional allocations from existing clients as well as being geographically diverse with interest in emerging market investment from U.S. clients now seeing a notable pickup. Flows in Europe were particularly strong, where subscriptions increased over 120% year-on-year and accounted for more than 30% of the total with the demand focused on equity and investment-grade fixed income product.

In March, the group announced a strategic partnership with Japan Post Insurance, who committed to invest an additional $1 billion. Over the period to June, approximately 1/3 of this commitment has been invested. The redemption profile also improved, reducing by 20% versus the prior year and marking the fourth consecutive year of reducing outflows. Overall, therefore, the group reported a net inflow of $2.7 billion, marking a turning point in this flow cycle.

Fixed income, equities, alternatives in both the global and local businesses generated net inflows, demonstrating the breadth of activity across the group's locations and products. In terms of current activity, in equities, client engagement is global, particularly for the All Cap product and includes now the U.S. Demand for fixed income strategies is currently stronger in Europe and in Asia with a continuing focus on investment-grade product. Since the year-end, Ashmore has continued to perform across both fixed income and equity and is therefore well-positioned as interest in the asset class continues as evidenced by recent industry mutual fund data.

Looking at the local offices. These provide increasing revenue diversification and generate an increasingly significant proportion of overall profits. Over the year, assets in the local offices grew 13% or $1.1 billion to approximately $9 billion, representing 16% of total assets. This growth rate is consistent with that of the global businesses, but varies by location, reflecting the diversity of the local markets and the stage of development for each of the local platforms.

Looking now at each in turn, Ashmore India saw particularly strong net inflows following consistently strong investment performance across domestic listed equity strategies. These subscriptions were a combination of significant top-ups from existing institutional clients combined with net inflows into both the onshore and offshore Indian equity mutual funds. Ashmore Colombia's listed equity strategies benefited from local index returns of over 40% in the year following the presidential election and an improvement in the outlook for interest rates.

The team in Bogota now manages $1.3 billion of listed equities, is delivering strong performance for both domestic and international investors, and has recently launched a regionally-focused LatAm mutual fund. The private equity and private debt infrastructure teams have continued to deploy capital and are now in the early stages of launching additional fund vintages. Across all strategies, Ashmore Colombia now manages $3 billion.

In a challenged domestic market, Ashmore Indonesia achieved asset growth of over 20%, driven by net inflows of $0.7 billion and delivered an increase in profit. The local team's focus has been on maintaining relative outperformance for clients, broadening onshore distribution channel access, and further development of the product range.

The Saudi business currently offers 2 core strategies: firstly, local thematic private equity vehicles such as education, health care, and industrials. And second, listed Saudi equities, where the team has a strong long-term relative performance track record, but experienced some net redemptions as local investors recycle capital in support of domestic projects earlier in the year. While the continuation of the regional conflict in the second half has not yet appeared to be a catalyst for further outflows, it is apparent that investment decisions are being delayed in the region.

Ashmore Mexico obtained regulatory approval in May, enabling the company to develop an onshore equity product to benefit from the forthcoming pension reforms as well as advising on Ashmore's existing Mexico equities mutual fund. In aggregate, the average net management fee margin of the local platforms is slightly above 50 basis points. And given the benefits of operating with centralized support functions and a uniform IT structure infrastructure, collectively, they achieve a relatively high operating margin of 44%.

Over time, the group will continue to look to expand the network into new markets with attractive demographics, accessible regulatory frameworks, and supportive macroeconomics and savings industries. So in terms of the key financials, while assets grew 13%, this growth was more than offset at the net revenue level by a weaker U.S. dollar and a lower level of performance fees, resulting in a reduction in adjusted net revenue of 7% year-on-year. As noted, returns across EM were strong, notably in equities, but also in fixed income with Ashmore delivering outperformance.

These index returns drove an aggregate 28% investment return on the group's seed capital and delivered profits in the year of GBP 82.5 million, notably from equities and in external debt. In keeping with the group's consistently applied approach of redeeming seed capital once the scale or performance objectives have been delivered, a high level of recycling was achieved, realizing life-to-date gains on the seed book of GBP 61.8 million. Operating costs, therefore, increased 7% in the year, largely driven by the increase in variable remuneration generated by the seed gains.

While the VC accrual rate was reduced from 35% to 30%, given the seed gains, the P&L charge increased by 15%, broadly consistent with the growth in profit before tax. Therefore, as a result, adjusted EBITDA reduced to GBP 35.7 million and the operating margin compressed to 26%. Excluding the impact of seed capital, the underlying operating margin increased from 40% -- sorry, to 40% from 37% year-on-year. Ashmore's cash balances provided GBP 11.4 million of interest income, lower than in the prior year period due to lower prevailing rates and lower average cash balances. In aggregate, profit before tax increased 17% to GBP 126.9 million and diluted EPS up 28% to just over 15p per share.

The group has continued to maintain a substantial financial resources of approximately GBP 610 million, significantly in excess of its capital requirement. And given the momentum in the business and the continued strength of the balance sheet, the Board has recommended an unchanged final dividend of 12.1p per share to give a total DPS of 16.9p for the full year.

Looking at revenues. Average assets increased 4% in the year, but the impact on net management fees was offset by U.S. dollar weakness and a 1 basis point reduction in the group's net management fee margin compared with the prior year period. As usual, a number of factors were behind the move in the margin, including a positive mix impact with inflows and asset growth in equities and across the local market businesses, offset by higher average overlay assets, which naturally increase in a period of strong underlying asset class performance.

Higher margin private equity realizations in the prior year impacted alternatives. It is, however, noticeable that the group's average fee margin over the last 12 to 18 months has been relatively stable with the entry rate, average rate, and exit rate all being approximately 34 basis points. Industry-wide pressure on management fee margin remains, however, but the group's strategic growth objectives in higher-margin products such as equities and alternatives, including across the local offices, together with an increase in intermediary retail channel assets provide support over the medium term.

Performance fees reduced to just over GBP 1 million in the financial year, consistent with guidance. The reduction was the result of fewer asset realizations from alternatives compared with the prior year. Including alternatives, which are inherently hard to predict and based on current market levels, I would expect performance fees for the current financial year to be no more than GBP 5 million, broadly consistent with the average of recent years. And finally, other revenue doubled in the year to GBP 5.8 million, predominantly due to a high level of transaction fees.

Total operating costs increased by 7% given the variable compensation consequence of the seed capital gains with limited increases in the other operating cost lines. Operating costs before VC increased by just 2% with a 3% increase in salary costs driven by a rise in average headcount, largely from expansion in the local offices and a 13% increase in depreciation, predominantly owing to the London office move. I'd expect the forward-looking depreciation charge to be broadly consistent with the current year.

In recognition of the improvement in the group's performance, the delivery of net inflows, strong ongoing investment performance, and the realization of profits from the seed portfolio, variable remuneration increased to GBP 45.6 million. As a proportion of profits, this represents 30%, down from 35% in the prior year period. Looking ahead to FY '27, we'll continue to maintain a strong focus on controlling expenditure globally while investing in key medium-term growth and efficiency initiatives, including the use of AI where appropriate. Overall, I would expect non-VC like-for-like operating costs to increase at approximately 2% to 3%.

Ashmore's well-established seed capital program has been supporting growth in AUM and delivering investment returns for shareholders for over 15 years now. To-date, it's delivered nearly GBP 300 million worth of investment gains, of which GBP 225 million have been realized. And the program has helped to establish new products and distribution channels, which have added over $6 billion to assets. Mark-to-market profits in the current year were GBP 82.5 million, twice the level achieved in the prior year. And consistent with the broad-based investment performance delivered for clients across Ashmore's themes in the period, there were positive seed returns across all themes.

Equities delivered approximately 40% of the mark-to-market gains while representing approximately 30% of the group's seed capital exposure. The remaining gain was split across other investment themes with meaningful contributions from both external debt and alternatives. As usual, once seeded funds meet their return on scale targets, we look to recycle the seed back onto the balance sheet to make the capital available for future growth initiatives. Over the first 6 months, the value of the seed increased to almost GBP 400 million with mark-to-market gains of GBP 55 million and new investments of GBP 38 million, offset by GBP 47 million of recycling.

In the second half, given the continued strong returns and the increase in client subscriptions, a further GBP 126 million was able to be recycled, meaning in total, almost 50% of the opening value was redeemed over the 12 months. This represents an increase from the historic average levels of approximately 30%. Approximately 40% of the total recycled came from equities, consistent with the increase in client flows. And the higher level of recycling crystallized GBP 61.8 million of gains versus GBP 5.2 million in the previous financial year. As at 30th of June, as yet unrealized gains totaled GBP 69.8 million.

Looking into FY '27, I'd expect the level of recycling to return to closer to the historic average of 30%, obviously being dependent on factors such as continuing performance and third-party client subscription levels. The group will continue to use its balance sheet to support strategic growth initiatives, notably, as mentioned, into private equity investment opportunities in support of growth in alternatives, such as health care. I, therefore, expect the alternatives allocation in the overall seed book to continue to increase both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the whole.

Finally, now in terms of the other P&L items, the interest earned on the group's cash was GBP 11.4 million compared with GBP 20 million in the prior year. The reduction was the result of a lower interest rate environment, coupled with lower average cash balances. Current deposits are only just over 4% with sterling term deposits being placed at a similar rate.

The group's effective tax rate came in at 15.4%, below the U.K. rate of 25% and lower in the year owing to an increase in the value of deferred tax assets relating to share-based remuneration and certain of the seed capital gains not being taxable in the U.K. In terms of guidance for the current financial year, the geographic mix of profits continues to imply a tax rate of approximately 22%.

And finally, a quick recap on the balance sheet. Ashmore continues to be well-capitalized with total financial resources increasing in the year to approximately GBP 610 million, significantly more than the assessed capital requirement of GBP 88 million, implying excess capital equivalent to 73p per share. The group's financial resources remain liquid with approximately GBP 355 million of cash and deposits. And of the GBP 323 million of seed capital investments, more than 70% are in funds with at least monthly dealing opportunities.

In terms of the cash flow, the group's cash balances increased by approximately GBP 15 million over the year. The group's operations, including interest and net of tax, generated approximately GBP 42 million, while realizations from the seed capital portfolio generated cash of GBP 109 million. And the EBT bought shares worth GBP 14 million to satisfy employee equity awards.

In summary, therefore, Ashmore's continuing financial strength enables investment in support of the group's strategic objectives underpinning future AUM and profit growth. So with that, I'll pass it back.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. So outlook. Nothing particularly revolutionary here. We talk about the debt and the equity piece on the right. The global investment cycle is going to carry on. It's going to be AI, maybe at different pace, energy security and defense, big-time and supply chain resilience. So yes, that's all going to happen. EM has parts that will benefit and parts that won't. But broadly, there are places to invest in EM that benefit from all of that, be it critical mineral provision, be it need for manufactured goods, et cetera. So none of that is really changing for us.

The macro, I say EM growth is going to be double DM. We're still at a big equity index discount to developed market indices. You can argue the developed market is too expensive, but still a 52% discount is a big gap. Real yields, substantially higher than DM and less indebtedness generally on average. And so there's more upside available in the fixed income space from spread compression as well. The third point is obviously what the hell is the U.S. going to do? So everything looks better relative when things look a little bit crazy in terms of the U.S. leadership or not.

Very interesting time in terms of what happens to the U.S. dollar from here. U.S. rates need to go up, mass -- big and growing political pressure not to do that. So extremely important to see what the Fed, what policymakers in the U.S. do to maintain credibility and what that will do to flows, which have been massively pro-U.S. for the last 10, 15 years. So that's important. Obviously, geopolitics, fighting people, is kind of a big issue, too. So we all want what's going on in the Middle East to settle down.

It will be nice if the Russia-Ukraine thing did as well. but we're kind of dealing with it. But the Middle East is a very important factor that none of us can really judge other than it going on. It's painful in terms of inflation globally, and that gets reflected in the U.S. and puts U.S. under pressure and eventually puts U.S. equity assets under pressure as well as U.S. bonds. So very interesting next 3 months.

The next 3 months is going to be about being a relatively good outperformer. It might be quite hard to be a massive upside performer if markets are difficult, but being relatively good, holding on to your outperformance. It does mean that you get some interesting opportunities that genuinely diversify from that, and EM tends to be a place to do that. So we think there's 1 or 2 things we can be doing in EM that are uncorrelated except in a crisis to the U.S.

So there we go, we talk about upside from spread compression. There's some room there. And EM equities has done pretty well relative to over the last 18 months. We think if anything, that might continue to improve. That's quite a big number here. It's quite a big amount of outperformance against the S&P. So we've done well in the market this year, absolute and also relative. So tick, we're okay with that. wearing our Ashmore hat. Yes, okay. Subs are up as we would hope they would be. So we seem to have hit the bottom in terms of the sub cycle and lower redemptions is showing net inflows across all 3 sets of what we do. Great.

Strategically, our equities business is growing as we had hoped it would. We could always do better in it. I'd love to see all 3 core components of it growing as the local businesses are growing. One of the 3 core business is growing nicely, the other 2 not so fast. We'd like to see that do better. The local office network, I think, will continue to expand. We're always keen to do that in a way that makes profits, though. So we don't go piling into places unless we feel we can raise assets and make money pretty much straight away. So we'll have other things to do there.

Seed capital has been great this year. Thank you very much for that. That was good. That's been an increase in profits. And -- but we have lots more to do as we grow the core business. And relative macro should underpin further what EM does. I like where we are relative macro. And I think that's about it, unless there are any questions.

I'm hoping there are thousands -- Q&A. I'm hoping there are thousands of them. Yes, please.

I do have two questions, if you don't mind. First, I guess you said you want alternatives to be a big factor. I was just wondering if you have anything in the pipeline and what you're doing to kind of invest into that platform? And then second, I know summer months are typically slow in terms of client conversations, but any color on what you're getting from clients over the past 2 months relative to previous summers?

So in terms of the alternative space, I mean, obviously, we have a balance sheet that we use for seed, and we have used and we'll continue to use that for alternative assets where we see opportunities to build things, particularly focusing in the spaces that we like, which tends to be build out, the infrastructure, within that power, education, health care, all those kinds of things. So we'll use our balance sheet to do that.

We're looking at how else we might bring other assets in to help us there. But initially, let's say, balance sheet is the main driver of that. And then in terms of summer flow or summer conversations, I would say the conversations there's kind of 2 things going on. The -- obviously, when the activity in Iran happened, everybody sort of stopped and started staring at the wall going now what? And so that kind of conflict lowers activity generally. So Q1, the first thing people do is they either panic and dive behind the sofa and take all their money home. And if they get over that moment, they then tend to do nothing for a bit.

In terms of conversation, I would say we're kind of seeing 2 things. The people who are already invested in EM, and not all of whom are our clients sadly, that's a market to chase. But we're now having much more dynamic conversations with them about doing more in EM. And as a precursor, what tends to happen when people are thinking about that is the first thing they do is they look at their existing sort of slate of managers. So we're seeing a lot of institutions sort of refreshing their slate, saying, "Let's do a new set of comparisons. Are all our managers great? If we're going to commit more capital, are we sure we got the right managers to do it?"

So what we tend to see in that situation is if we're doing well, we get some switch money, somebody fires somebody and hires us. That's the first stage. And then the second stage, they add more capital probably across the whole slate. I would say the switch stuff was behind some of our equity assets this year. And I would say those kind of conversations are ongoing. So I think that's -- it's sort of -- for me, that's kind of a leading indicator of people wanting to put more money to work. But we, with a small market share, say, in equity can be a beneficiary of that.

Fixed income, we have a larger market share, it's harder. But even within fixed income, from Europe and Asia, we're seeing interest to put more money to work. The U.S., not much. They're kind of -- the Americans are mostly equity investors anyway. And so if they're thinking that way. And the good thing for us is that we're now in a very good place, vis-a-vis the U.S., and we've now got a track record. We've now got the product available. So I would say conversations versus other summers, it's just a different time in the cycle, different time in the cycle. So pretty good conversations.

Of course, what will help us massively is everything settles down in the Gulf. That will pick up things really quite quickly. But we are -- still, we are seeing inflow despite that for people who are already in emerging market investing. And the more sweaty things get in the U.S., the more we're seeing a bit more interest in increasing EM allocation. So the sell-off in tech helps. U.S. rates might not initially help the bond space, but might not make much difference because it just encourages people to think, "Christ, if they're so indebted and if the interest costs are going up so much, what does that mean long term for the dollar, even if it's short-term positive, a rate rise?" So I think we're in a -- we've got enough U.S. It's annoying people are fighting. Let's get the right EM managers space. I don't know if that answers the question.

It does.

It's Hubert Lam from Bank of America. Three questions. Firstly, I just want to clarify what Tom said on Japan Post. Is there another -- you think there's $1 billion mandate, right? There's another 2/3 coming. Is that -- I just wanted to check if that's correct.

Yes. So they committed to invest an incremental $1 billion over 12 months. They've invested just under 1/3 of it by June. So there's another -- you can do the math, $600 million and something.

And just remind us where -- which asset classes is that?

It could be in anything that we do.

Okay. Got it. A couple of other questions. Firstly, on -- you mentioned retail, bouncing from the lows of 3% up to 5% now. Can you just tell us where the flows are coming from in terms of like type of product? I assume it's mainly in the U.S. or your clients as in the past? Or is it different?

It started a little bit in the U.S. in equity product. U.S. tends to buy equity. But otherwise, Asia, a little bit in Europe, a bit here, actually, U.K. to be fair. Actually, U.K., we've seen some flow in retail.

In equities or?

Across the piece. A bit of equity, a bit of fixed income.

Okay. And the final question is on the U.S. because Americas today is, what? 15% of your total client base, is that...

Probably. Do you have the number?

Yes. It's at the back of...

I believe -- thank God somebody knows.

You're saying you're seeing increasing interest from U.S. investors, but...

For equity.

For equities, okay. But fixed income, still...

Not much. I mean I say that somebody will shoot me later, but not much. Not much. Much more equity, which is fine. I mean U.S. is obsessed with equity. So at least we have equity product, which 10 years ago, we didn't really have to sell them. Now we have it.

And they are the main drivers of their inflows in equities or just...

No. I think it's -- no, they're not. Not yet, no. But we've seen inflow in equity across the piece here and Europe and some in Asia, less in Asia at the minute. U.S. a little bit, yes, but we would expect to see more inflow in U.S. equity in the next 12 months in this financial year.

But not as optimistic on the fixed income side despite...

I just think -- well, the numbers will probably be relatively reasonable sizes. I just think the U.S. is an equity market. They like to buy equities. Lady behind you.

I just have a couple of questions for Tom. The first one is the fee margin of equities. Would you mind reminding us what was the decrease that we saw there, year-on-year, the effects on that? And also, how should we think going forward about the variable comp ratio? Because it was 30%. Last year it was 35%. But of course, this year, you had all these seed capital gains. So how should we think about this going forward?

So the equities revenue margin, the move there is the scale effect coming through. So as we're building momentum, what we're seeing is larger allocations in segregated accounts alongside the existing mutual fund business. So the new capital is being priced on the size, basically. So that's what you see in terms of the movement. And then in terms of the VC percentage, look, it's -- we're a couple of months into the year. So we accrue at the half year and adjust in the summer. I would assume a reasonable rate is between 30% and 35% for the -- on the operating profit.

And then hopefully, I've given you enough data points to think about what might happen in terms of the life-to-date gains for the rest of the year, if you think about the typical recycling percentage and the value of life-to-date gains that was accrued in the books at the June balance sheet date.

Anybody else? Please.

David McCann from Deutsche Bank. Just one very quick question. Just on the less than GBP 5 million performance fee guidance that you gave, Tom, any reason that's not ticking up a little bit with improved certainly nominal returns that you're making in a reported improvement in the investment performance? I appreciate it's a relatively small part of the book now that can generate them, but still a relatively small number. I just wondered why you're more optimistic there?

So a relatively small overall proportion of the book. The funds that can generate performance fees tend to be alternatives-focused rather than liquid assets-focused. So while the liquid asset performance has been strong, an even smaller percentage of that book of business can generate performance fees. And of those that can, they're not necessarily just 12-month simplistic 20% over a hurdle rate type fee structures that were prevalent 10 years or so ago.

They'll have multi-period averaging high watermarks, et cetera. So the GBP 5 million is the max that I can see based on that proportion and those fee structures. Now the alternatives piece could move it. So if we are able to realize assets from some of the older alternative [ vintages ], that could increase that. So the GBP 5 million is just on the liquids book, but as a realistic guess.

Anybody else? Let me grab the mic. Any other questions from anybody? Great. Well, thank you very much for coming. Thank you for your interest. Thanks for listening to us. We much appreciate it. Look forward to seeing you again, I hope, in a few months. Thanks very much, everybody. Thank you.

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming. Ashmore Group First Half '26 Financial Results.

Anyway, so here's the overview. The market has done pretty well, and we've done okay as well. Generally, EM is doing really what we'd expect it to do, which is outperforming developed markets. We're at 82% of our assets outperforming in the 1 year, which is good. We're comfortable with that.

Our flows have gone up, which is great. So 10% increase in assets under management over the half, which gets us to about $52 billion. Net inflows of $2 billion. Subs up 35%, reds down 39%. So things moving in the right direction -- or the other way around, 39% subs, 35% reds.

Our statutory profits. Revenues are down year-on-year due to lower average AuM and reduced performance fees, which you would expect. We try and keep our costs as tight as we can despite inflationary environment. Our investment performance on our seed has been strong. That's delivered GBP 55 million of gains. PBT, up 64% to GBP 82 million. Diluted EPS, up 90%, basically, to 10p. Dividend per share, maintained at 4.8p.

Strategic stuff that we're doing is working, which is nice. Equities AM continues to grow steadily as it has throughout the last 5 years, up 17% to $8.8 billion, which is 17% of group assets now. And local offices are also growing, up another 8% to $8.4 billion, which is 16% of group assets. Those two trends we expect to continue. Steady growth in those places.

Macro for us is pretty good, and we think that will continue. So economic growth is pretty solid in the larger EM economies in particular, which is where we see the most interesting things going on. Pretty high rates and steady deflationary pressure being exported from China, we think, allows for further easing. Dollars, we don't think get any stronger from here.

Geopolitics are a drama, but they've often been a drama and in some ways quite good for EM. And a lot of opportunities across the piece. So we keep thinking active as a way to go. Sitting on an index, you guarantee yourself a problem at some point.

Update on the performance in particular. Obviously, dollar weakness -- dollar collapse isn't great, but dollar weakness is good for us. It's a tailwind. So good absolute returns in '25, better than DM, as I said.

The indices are on the right. So ignoring us, this is just the indices. So the dollar was down 10%; the MSCI World equity index was up about 20%; and EM Equity was 30%; and Frontier, 40%. So strong equity outperformance. And then on global bonds. Global bonds were about 5% or 6%; external debt was about 12%, 13%; and EM local currency was about 20%; and corporate was just a little bit better than DM. So across the piece, index, no judgment required. Better year for the 12 months on December '25 in EM over DM.

What else is going on? U.S. tariffs are what they are, generally inflationary and not positive for global trade. But what it has done is push intra-EM trade up quite a lot, and we see more of that coming. If anything, more intra-EM reforms and progress in terms of making stuff easier to do, which I think is great. Geopolitical risk has calmed down a wee bit until it hasn't. But a lot of the drama is out there and people are aware of it.

Currency generally has underpinned equity and local currency in particular, and we're seeing that in terms of client appetite, too, continuing appetite for local currency bonds and for equities. Spread compression helps. Developed markets, I think we all know the problem, right? Lots of debt, fiscal deficits, politicians trying to issue paper to kick the can down the road, valuation is expensive and policy uncertainty.

Just summarizing performance for you. We like to do this just to give you a sense. As you know, we split between global and local businesses here. These are the main themes. So the 1 year, we're up. 82% is outperforming, which is good. We're happy with that. The good news is we're also outperforming where we see most of interest in raising capital, which is in local bonds and in equities, both global equities and actually local equities. So that's good to have.

So overall, as a group, we're now up above 80%; 3 years at 70%; and 5 years at 58%. That's a very strong recovery from '21 drops out. But this is not an issue. This is all salable.

I think this is Tom.

Thank you. Okay. So starting as usual with a high-level financial summary for the period: characterized by strong investment performance, continued operating efficiency and, consequently, strong growth in statutory earnings.

Adjusted net revenue was 16% lower year-on-year, reflecting the impact of reduced average AuM levels and lower performance fees compared with a year ago given fewer asset realizations from the alternative vehicles in this half.

Total operating costs marginally increased by 1% as we continue to focus on operating efficiently across the group's global network of offices. And variable remuneration was accrued at 32.5% of pre-bonus profit. Consequently, adjusted EBITDA of GBP 20.9 million delivered an operating margin of 31%.

The combination of strong markets and Ashmore's investment outperformance mean that the seed capital portfolio generated pretax profits of GBP 55.4 million, leading to a 64% increase in profit before tax to GBP 81.9 million. Therefore, diluted EPS rose 89% to 10.1p per share. And excluding the seed capital returns, diluted EPS was 3.1p.

The balance sheet remains well capitalized and highly liquid with excess financial resources of GBP 480 million or 67p per share. And finally, as Mark mentioned, the Board has declared an unchanged interim dividend of 4.8p per share.

Looking at the local offices. During the half, we've continued to develop the network in key emerging economies. These businesses are exposed to high-growth markets and also provide real diversification. It's been demonstrated again in this period.

Looking at each office in turn. Ashmore Colombia delivered 16% growth in AuM, reflecting strong absolute and relative performance in its listed equity strategies. During the period, the business broadened its product offering with the launch of a regional LatAm equity strategy and has been investing the most recently raised private capital in infrastructure debt and private equity.

Ashmore Indonesia had a notable increase in new client flows as the broader market environment improved and retail distribution initiatives were implemented.

In Ashmore India, the team's high-quality, long-term performance track record continues and the near-term focus is on deepening onshore distribution access for retail investors.

And finally, while Saudi Arabia had some institutional redemptions early in the half, the business continues to diversify with the launch of a second private equity fund focused education and is also broadening its client reach through the use of digital distribution.

In terms of the two newer offices, Ashmore Qatar is now fully operational, supporting the group's investment management capabilities in the region and deepening local institutional relationships. And regulatory approval for Ashmore Mexico is anticipated shortly, allowing the team on the ground to exploit the growth opportunity arising from recent pension reforms.

Alongside continuing to build scale in the existing local operations, we'll continue to look for opportunities to expand this network over time.

In terms of the aggregated financial performance. Management fees were broadly in line year-on-year while performance fees were lower, reflecting the successful realization of alternatives investments in Colombia and Saudi Arabia that generated performance fees of approximately GBP 7 million in the prior year. While asset realizations from the older private equity vintages are ongoing, meaning that performance fees are possible, the timing of these is inherently uncertain.

The implementation of a consistent global operating model means that the local businesses achieved a 45% EBITDA margin and delivering increasing profitability as assets under management locally grow.

Looking at the group's assets. The total of $52.5 billion increased by 10% over the period driven by Ashmore's investment outperformance, which added $2.6 billion and net inflows of $2.3 billion delivered across both global and local businesses.

Subscriptions increased by 39% year-on-year to $5.7 billion, reflecting higher client engagement levels over the course of '25, an increasing recognition that EM is outperforming the attractive absolute and relative valuations on offer, and therefore, a realization that global portfolio allocations need to change.

The subscriptions was broad-based and includes both the funding of new client mandates, notably in equities, external debt and blended, and existing clients increasing allocations across the group's range of fixed income and equity strategies. Client demand was also geographically diverse with equity flows from European clients and Asian clients allocating to sovereign fixed income strategies. There are also encouraging signs that U.S. investors are now considering reallocating away from their home market.

Reduced redemptions also contributed to the net inflow with a 35% decrease year-on-year to $3.4 billion in the half. Indeed, this is the lowest half year redemption level since 2010 and reflects the latter stage of what has been a reasonably lengthy EM flow cycle.

Looking forward, Ashmore has started 2026 with a healthy client pipeline, reflecting the positive market environment of recent years, the outperformance being delivered by Ashmore's active investment management and a growing realization by investors that emerging markets warrant a higher allocation. The caveat as ever is that the timing of funding can be uncertain.

Turning now to revenues. The year-on-year decline of 16% is attributable to a 3% lower average AuM level and reduced performance fees compared with the level delivered from asset realizations a year ago.

Net management fees were 9% lower year-on-year at GBP 62.1 million with the movement attributable in roughly equal measure to the average asset level, an FX headwind from a stronger sterling and an average fee margin that is 2 basis points lower than a year ago. The year-on-year movement in the management fee margin is entirely due to the full run rate impact of flows in the prior year period, i.e., the 6 months to December 2024. The reported margin in this half of 34 basis points is unchanged compared with the 6 months period to June '25 and was broadly stable over the period.

Management fee margins at the investment theme level were also relatively stable with the exception of alternatives, where the first half margin was impacted by the return of higher margin capital to investors, coupled with the investment cycle of recently raised private debt capital that is not yet earning full run rate management fees. On a pro forma fully invested basis, the alternatives margin is approximately 110 basis points.

As mentioned, the first half performance fees of GBP 0.8 million are lower than the prior year period. I continue to forecast up to GBP 5 million of performance fees in the current financial year excluding any contribution from alternatives realizations in the second half. And finally, other income of GBP 4.6 million increased due to the generation of transaction fees in the period. I would expect this source of revenue to revert to more normal levels in the second half of the year.

In terms of operating costs. We continue to operate an efficient business model globally, and total operating costs of GBP 48.3 million were broadly consistent with the prior year period. There was a modest increase in salary costs to GBP 16.1 million, primarily reflecting recruitment in the group's local businesses, including the establishment of the new office in Mexico. Other operating costs were reduced by 2% to GBP 10.9 million notwithstanding the preparations for moving to a new London head office at the end of fiscal Q3.

The VC accrual of 32.5% is consistent with the prior year range of 30% to 35% and in absolute terms means a charge of GBP 19.8 million, 1% higher year-on-year. As in previous years, realized life-to-date seed gains of GBP 14.8 million and interest income of GBP 6.8 million are included in the calculation of the VC accrual. Given neither life-to-date gains nor interest income are included in EBITDA in this period, this has had the effect of reducing the operating margin by approximately 10%.

Looking to the second half, there will be a slightly higher noncash depreciation charge reflecting the cost of the new London office lease. But overall, I expect full year non-VC operating costs to be approximately twice the first half level of GBP 29 million.

The group seed capital program is now well established and has meaningful scale to support the diversified AuM growth and deliver attractive through-the-cycle returns to shareholders. Seed investments now have a market value of GBP 391 million with mark-to-market valuations in the period benefiting from both positive markets and Ashmore's outperformance.

In addition to the GBP 391 million, the group has made commitments of GBP 81 million to funds in the alternatives theme, which are likely to be drawn down over the next few years to facilitate growth in Ashmore's thematic private equity and private debt strategies. Given that many of the current seed investments have delivered positive returns and provided appropriate scale to funds, I would expect the successful realization and recycling of existing seed investments over the coming periods to largely fund these additional commitments.

While the primary goal of seed investments is to support growth in third-party client AuM, over time, the program has also delivered meaningful profits to shareholders. In this period, the impact was a GBP 55.4 million gain, of which GBP 9.6 million was realized in the 6 months.

In terms of new investment activity, a total of GBP 38 million was invested in the period to support growth in private equity strategies, notably in the Middle East, and to establish new funds, including the regional LatAm equities product I mentioned at the beginning.

Realizations of GBP 47 million were achieved principally through matching client flows into ceded equity strategies and following the return of capital by alternative vehicles. On a life-to-date basis, these realized investments have delivered GBP 14.8 million of gains.

Finally, on the P&L. Interest income of GBP 6.8 million reflects lower average cash balances, in part, reflecting the incremental seed investment activity in recent periods and prevailing short-term interest rates compared with the prior year period.

The effective statutory tax rate of 13.6% is relatively low compared with the guidance of approximately 22%, largely due to mark-to-market equity gains on the seed book not being subject to U.K. corporation tax. On an operating basis and taking into account the geographic mix of the group's profits, the effective tax rate remains around 22%.

Turning to the balance sheet. Ashmore has total financial resources of GBP 573.6 million, which compares with its total capital requirements of GBP 93.3 million. That means that the group continues to operate with a meaningful level of excess capital, equivalent to 67p per share. The balance sheet remains highly liquid with GBP 261 million of cash at the period end, and approximately 2/3 of the seed capital investments are in funds with frequent dealing opportunities.

The group's cash position is, however, relatively low with the recent levels given the seed activity. And from a cash flow perspective, the first half typically see significant payments related to the prior financial year, namely, the final ordinary dividend paid in December and employee variable compensation paid in October.

Additionally, in the last 6 months, the EBT has purchased shares worth approximately GBP 14 million. Operating cash generation tends to be stronger in the second half of the financial year, and total cash will continue to depend on the balance of seed capital investments and recycling achieved.

And with that, I'll pass you back to Mark.

Thanks, Tom. Thank you very much. So outlook from here. I think things are pretty supportive actually from what we're up to. Absent some global war, I think things look pretty good.

So on the right, we just talk a bit about bond yields and also how equities are doing. And if you look at the bond space, those 3 lines are CPI, so inflation, real yield and actual yield. And as you can see, real yields are really pretty good in terms of EM. You've got positive real yields, inflation low, if anything, declining, but let's say, worst case, flat. So there's plenty of room for EM to cut rates. But even if they don't, you've got nice positive real yields. And so we're seeing that in terms of client demand to buy local currency and local currency bonds in particular.

And then on the equity side of things, after about May, June in the year we've just had, significant index outperformance over the S&P, and if anything, started at the end of Q1. And we would expect that should be able to continue. Although there has been, as I say, a significant performance to this point, but the EPS story is still good and recovering in EM. So as EPS improves, share price performance tends to continue to follow it.

In terms of policy and things for the year ahead. Yes. China is obviously China and definitely going to continue to export deflation, which may give other challenges, et cetera. But that is definitely the game. So inflation should remain low in China and they should export deflation, so relatively stable growth.

They have one thing probably now that they still have to fix and they're struggling to fix, which is the property market and generating sufficient youth employment for these large numbers of people coming out of university every year. But it's feeling relatively stable in terms of their outlook from here.

This is one of those years that's a big election year for EM, which tends to provide reasonable opportunities for us. Everybody lies to get elected and EM is no different from anywhere else. And so I'm looking through the noise. It tends to be quite a good time to take some risk through the first half of this year. The trick is don't get carried out in a lot of bad headlines and start acquiring risk -- subject to price, of course, but start acquiring risk at pretty good prices midyear with a view to election tending to usually be back end or mid- to back end of the year or late half 1 through to late December time.

So a lot of LatAm elections. And that tends to be, as -- as I say, we've quite like years like this. We tend to get a little bit of negativity around headlines and then you tend to get a chance to buy risk. So we quite like years like this. This tends to be a good time for us to add risk to make quite a lot of money in the year after. The only thing against that is if nobody lies or nobody says anything controversial. But I think we are going to get some noise around LatAm elections in particular.

Monetary policy, I think, is going to get looser. As I said, high real rates and inflation under control, so I would expect to see rates continue to get cut in most places. I don't really see dollar strength being a drama. You're going to get moments of strength but you're going to get generally a selling trend. Just huge net liabilities in the U.S. and everybody is so long on the dollar.

And the way people are talking to us about what they want to buy, it's mostly nondollar assets. So it's noise around the edges, but it's the right sort of noise in terms of dollar softness. And the policy mix plus what the Fed is up to, I think, is going to continue to do that.

And then AI is going to be deflationary, probably. I suspect you're going to get bottlenecks around the ability to turn massive spending into actual productivity gains. You're going to get bottlenecks in terms of the kit being available when you want it, where you want it. But at the margin, you would expect it to be deflationary. So that's kind of the macro outlook.

Summary from where we're at. A reasonable half for us. It's a good market. We outperformed. Flows are better, so increased AuM. That's nice. Flows will be two ways for a while. It always happens like that. It comes down, then it kind of bubbles along, then it goes up. So we're at a point where we should see gradually drop -- this was a huge drop in redemptions. Redemptions never go to 0. So you'd expect to see redemptions fly around a bit but generally lower. The trend is lower. And subs, definitely, given what we're seeing in the pipeline, you'd expect to see that to continue to improve.

Staff profits have been up. That's good. What we're doing strategically in terms of growing the local businesses and equity businesses, that's continued since '22 all the way through. We expect them to continue to grow and to change and particularly those things. And then macro, I think, is pretty good for us. There's a relative value story but there's also an absolute value story.

So that's the broad picture. Very happy to take questions. I'll actually do that. I think that's right. I don't want to make -- I've realized I'm already standing up. Well, that was easy.

Thank you, Mike. Let me help.

Mark, just two questions, please. First, really good progression in fee margins over the past 6 to 12 months. Are you guys still guiding to on a like-for-like 1 to 2 basis point decline, I think, it's every 12 to 18 months?

And then on the second question. Really, as you mentioned, redemptions coming down, subscriptions up. How does that pipeline feel in terms of your ability to kind of repeat what we saw in Q4 in terms of flows of around $2 billion or so ex the liquidity?

Do you want to deal with the first one?

Let me do the first one. So yes, as you know, the basis point every 12 to 24 months is the best guess having taken out the things that we can calculate that have driven any other move in terms of mix or size of product, et cetera. That feels like it's about right, but it's still a best guess.

The market is still competitive. There is industry-wide pressure on margins. We think we're in a relatively protected part, but we're not immune to the competition or the margin erosion by osmosis. Where people get a good deal somewhere else, they tend to come to us and say, can we get a better deal?

So that basis point also feels about right. But as we've seen in this period, things can stabilize depending on mix and the retail flow and what we're getting in the locals, et cetera.

Yes, exactly. It's a best guess. I mean, as the local business gets larger and as the equity business gets larger as a percentage, that kind of helps because fixed income tends to be priced generally cheaper. Huge sweeping statement around the world. And alternatives tend to be priced higher, too. So as all those things are growing, that all helps.

And the other question was?

On the pipeline.

Pipeline, yes. The pipeline is, I think, the last time we spoke, it's probably better than the last time we spoke. There are more people -- it also tends to feed itself a bit. As people see this happen, they tend to sort of start saying, oh, maybe we should do better than that. Unfortunately, everybody follows somewhere.

So pipeline, I would say, is better than the last time we spoke. If the pipeline was 10 at a screaming raging bull market, everything is fantastic, and it's 1 when the Russians invaded, it's probably 5. And last time we spoke, it was probably 3. Again, I'm hoping I said it. I meant to say that if I didn't.

Reds will be -- fundamentally, they're trending lower. There's no question. But individual clients will have things they want to be doing. So you can't really -- that's a huge drop in reds. And so we thought, well, isn't that nice? But I wouldn't guarantee that drop every time.

Yes, looking at the mic. Great. Self-help, I love that.

This is Laura Gris Trillo from Jefferies. So I guess on the back of Mike's question, I'm just wondering in terms of the differences you're seeing in the pipeline for institutional versus intermediary channels and also in terms of new client mandates in EMD versus top-ups. As I understand, top-ups are normally like easier to come around because clients need to do due diligence.

And my second question is on the local platforms. I've seen you have had a drop in revenues year-on-year and also a decrease in EBITDA margin. So any context on that would be very helpful.

Do you want to do the second one?

Should I do the second one? So yes, that's entirely...

I might forget the first one.

Yes, okay. I'll remind you when you're ready to go. So on the locals, the drop in revenue and the margin, entirely due to fewer performance fees. So we realized some assets in LatAm and in the Middle East at the beginning of the '25 financial year. It's about GBP 7 million in total. That's in the first half.

So underlying management fee is broadly in line. And the margin, that sort of mid-40s to 50% is kind of where we would expect the aggregate to be and growing hopefully from there as scale comes through.

And then on flow, I think you're talking about institutional over retail and existing client over new, and I guess, by product set. So in terms of institutional over retail, it's mostly, I would say, yes, we're seeing flow in retail kind of begin to move a bit. And retail is often ahead of institutional, but it's not dramatic.

I would say steady retail interest in equity, and that is a mixture of U.S. and other. Sporadic retail interest in local currency and some in investment-grade dollars. But if retail -- again, if 10 was everybody was crazy and happy and delighted and 1 was they never did anything, I think retail, we're kind of still 2, 3. There's a lot of retail still sucked into the U.S. market. Institutionally, it's definitely, I would say, a stronger pipeline.

And then I think the second part of the question around that was around the split between new clients, new target type things and existing top-ups. Using the last quarter as an example, it was about 50-50, I think. Is that about fair? But I would say the top-up clients are the ones you feel you'll -- again, fortunately, we have a bunch of clients who we've had for a while. And a lot of them are still at 1 out of 3, having gone in '22 or '23 from 3 down to 1, let's say.

A lot of them are still at 1 but we've just seen some of those start to go back to 2, just beginning, I'm talking about. So it was 50% roughly of what happened in Q4. And it was a few people going back to 2. But they're not in any way -- not that many people either.

New client activity is the rest of it. And I would say the pipeline is more new client than top-up at the minute, and it's more geared to equity over fixed income at the minute. But that's the kind of general statement that will be proved wrong in 6 months' time. But that's just my sense of the last couple of few weeks of conversation and RFPs. Does that cover all the questions?

Yes.

Great. Thank you.

Dave McCann from Deutsche Bank. A couple for me, please. So first of all, on the variable comp ratio, 32.5% for the first half. Would you say that's a good guide to be using for the full year and thereafter? Or if not, is there a sort of a better guide you'd have there?

Secondly, do you have any update on the performance fee guidance for this current year? Sorry, you may have mentioned it. I might have missed that.

And then lastly, one for Mark. Obviously, there's quite a lot of asset flow coming to the industry, as I'm sure you've observed. Do you think this is sort of realistically addressable for you as an active manager? Do you think there's a case that this money stays and can you address that? Or is this realistically money you can't really touch because they've gone passive. That's all they're ever going to be. Just curious on your thoughts on that.

Do you want me to answer the first two?

Yes.

So VC at the half year, always an accrual percentage. As we talk about every year, we top it up or we reduce it once we know what the full year result has been. So if we continue to deliver the strong levels of outperformance, we'll need to pay the investment team. There could be upward pressure on the 32%.

If it falls off in the second half and the 12 months has not been as good and the distribution team doesn't continue to deliver the flows that we've seen in the first half, maybe there can be some downward pressure. It's an accrual at the half year. It gets determined by the remco in July once the full year numbers are known and understood. If you want an estimate for the full year at this point, 32.5% is as good as anything. But it will change come July.

And then on the performance fees, I thought I made it clear. The guidance I gave in September was for up to GBP 5 million. The guidance I'm giving now is up to GBP 5 million, absent something being realized somewhere in the portfolio of private equity assets that delivers a fee.

And then the passive question. Some of it is permanent. I mean some of it, people will say, well, I'll just do passive. They definitely get a bit of that. Fortunately, for what we do, some of it isn't very well replicated by passive indices. But there are some people who are just obsessed with cost and will take sort of index drift from passive even if they haven't really thought it through.

Money through consultants tends to not do that because the consultants have done an enormous amount of work in this because their initial thing is we should sell passive to some extent. Although, of course, they want a business. So they don't want to completely kill active so they can choose between managers.

So some of it is permanent, I would say, particularly in the fixed income space, in the larger tighter spread stuff. Some of it is definitely a first thing to just throw the cash in before they find a manager. And I think that's always been true.

For us, that's more of an issue for us -- again, this is a big generalization, but more of an issue for us in fixed income, I think, than in equities. Not that there aren't indices in equities and passive things to do, but just what we're doing tends to lend itself better to active. And we're taking market share from other actives. So we are in a different place than we are perhaps in some of the fixed income strategies. I don't know if that covers it.

Rae Maile, Panmure Liberum. I suppose the only question that hasn't been asked about pipelines and flows is geography. Is there any sign that the Americans themselves are realizing they're a bit too long the dollar?

No, not really. I mean, well, that's not quite true. A little bit of retail. I mean Americans love equities. So we've seen a dribble now. I think I hopefully said this earlier. There is a bit of a dribble of American retail capital into the equity products. Nothing in bonds.

And then institutionally in the States, not really. Again, a bit of equity. I mean there is a bit of an equity pipeline, but the pipeline we have is there's some U.S. but it's mostly non-U.S. There's some but it's mostly none. So they haven't gone, it's time to have less America.

That whole story of getting them from 100% America to 90% America in the 90s, we're back in that game again. Nobody gets fired for losing a lot of money in buying the wrong American stock, but they will get fired if they buy Ukraine and Russia invades. But I think the conversations are still there, but the retail story is picking up. And the retail tends to be a leader. Institutionally some, but not a big wall yet.

Anybody else? Okay. Well, thank you very much for coming. Happy to chat, if that makes sense. And we're hoping to see you again in 6 months. Hopefully, we'll have even better numbers. You never know.

Thanks very much, everybody. Thank you.

Hi, morning. Thank you for coming. We're talking -- my name is Mark Coombs, CEO of Ashmore. This is Tom Shippey, Finance Director. And we're updating you on our full year results to end of June '25. So this is sort of a high-level overview. Performance has been pretty good this period, actually. We are an active manager. It's working. The last 12 months have been very good -- we've seen very good emerging markets returns full stop on the indices, and we have outperformed as well. So that's all been pretty good despite a lot of noise in the U.S. and elsewhere.

We're now -- our outperformance now is we're up to 70% outperforming over 3 years, which is the kind of place you want to be, 81% over 5 and generally in a good place for people to invest when they decide they want to get back to the marketplace. Our AUM is now at $47 billion, which is down 3%. Net redemptions have slowed down pretty dramatically. We're now in net inflow in equity, the local businesses and in investment grade. So the only shoes that we need to drop are in the high-yield space. In terms of our operating model, it still does what it's supposed to do.

So revenue is down 22%. We have less average AUM and less performance fees in the prior year. Our operating costs are down 14%. EBITDA is now at GBP 52.5 million adjusted, which is 33% down year-on-year. Our margins at 36%. Seed capital investments continue to contribute. We contributed GBP 40 million to profits this year. Our diluted EPS is down 13% year-on-year to 11.8p, and we're maintaining the dividend per share at 16.9p.

How are we doing strategically? We're getting the benefits of the diversification that we've said -- we've always said we wanted to be. Our local businesses are growing. Our equities business is growing and has continued to over the last 5 years. Our alternatives business is also growing. And our local platforms, we've established 2 more in the year, we'd expect to do more of those over the next 2 to 3 years. So we've got everything in place. Happily, people -- Liberation Day has liberated people from a lot of cash. And so people are starting to think seriously about whether it is so smart just to stay in U.S. rates and sit quietly.

So we're even having those conversations. We're having those conversations very actively in Europe and Asia. In the U.S., it's just beginning. The Americans are still what do we do here, and we're quite happy to be paid some money for cash in the short end. But the U.S. dollar trend isn't strong at the moment. The U.S. dollar trend is weaker. It won't be in one direction. They will move around, but it will -- if the trend is weaker, that tends to be highly supportive for what we do. So EM grow better, as you know, better policy now, frankly, and risk-adjusted returns are higher now. So we're in a pretty good place here to start capturing the flows when they come.

This is a bit more detail on EM performance. Once we got through the U.S. elections, it's performed pretty well. The top right bar, I point -- I can't point. The top right graph, bar graph has the different things that we have fun in. And in terms of index returns, this is -- these are financial quarters. So you'll see that once we -- once we got through to Q3 and Q4, all the index returns are pretty strong.

So people are pretty comfortable in returns. return isn't the reason that they aren't investing. Happily, we outperformed most developed markets, EM. EM is a very broad statement, but most of EM outperforms most developed markets. Dollar weakness is positive for us. It's been very good for returns in local currency. 15% returns year-to-date in local currency and equity is very good as well, which all helps. And as I say, we're definitely seeing allocation shifting.

The conversations are happening everywhere, beginning to happen in the U.S., which will be the last and actually happening in terms of investment, a little bit in Asia and Europe. Investment performance, this is a bar chart we show all the time just because it kind of make sense to us. So the fixed income businesses, as you can see, in the short term, local and corporate are performing pretty strongly. Our corporate business is out -- all our money is outperforming the index in corporate, which is good in the 1 year.

In the 3 and 5, everything is outperforming with the exception of corporate. So that track record is sort of improving from the front end, which will wash through. We've moved from 40% outperforming a year ago to 57% outperforming over the 1 year from 50% over the 3 year to 70% and from 62% over the 5-year to 81. These are the numbers that you sell, the 3- and 5-year numbers. So we -- our salespeople are feeling pretty good. They're feeling pretty good about the pipeline, which is good because they come out of a period where everybody was just diving into the U.S. and putting their head under the blankets. But yes, so I think that sort of covers that.

How are we doing strategically? We're a little bit back where we were sort of -- in terms of people thinking about investing, we're back to when I first started messing about we're trying to do an Ashmore. The conversation in the U.S. is a little bit like it was then, which is, listen, just to be clear, you know that having all your money in one market is risky, right, even if you live there.

And for the foreign investors, it's particularly risky. There's a huge amount of net liabilities from the U.S. now overseas. So the conversation in the U.S. is a little bit look, just if your global equity index is now at 2/3 U.S. weight, that's a massively risky thing to just slavishly follow. And the last people to lose that thinking will be the Americans. I'd say Europeans and Asians and Latin American even are now sort of saying, well, hang on a minute. We made a lot of money in the max 7, now what do we do?

So that is definitely happening. Our fundamentals are pretty good across most of EM. You get the old thing that isn't, but generally, they're pretty good, better growth, better -- pretty good real rates. And so that is attracting capital, certainly attracting crossover capital now. Increased dedicated capital is happening again, as I say, in Asia and Europe, not happening yet in the U.S.

So Phase 2 is okay, fine. First of all, teach people that we should do it. You get out of DM. That story is -- we're selling it again. Phase 2, which is diversified through a variety of things for us. Well, the equities business is now 16% of our assets and is continuing to grow. It's growing year-on-year. And feel very good about that. That will -- I feel very comfortable that is going to steadily grow and become a bigger part of our business and a much bigger business.

Investment grade is also growing, particularly driven by Asian clients in particular. Alternatives have increased. We've raised some new capital in alternatives in private equity and debt. We've got quite a lot going on in themes that we've done a lot in over the years in EM, which is in infrastructure and in health care, and there's a huge amount more of that to do. So we feel quite good about that. And we've done some new product launches and seeds. In the equity business, we've started to find people who want ex-China in the U.S. So we've set up ex-China product. Americans have decided they want ex-China. We've taken advantage of what we do in Frontier equity to do frontier debt.

We've also -- which is working pretty well. We've set up something in the impact debt space, and we've set up single country equity funds because people have begun to start thinking, I don't just buy EM, I buy India because I don't want the Chinese part of India or I do EM equity ex-China or I buy something dedicated like in Indonesia, where I see an opportunity that's specific.

And the final phase of our strategy, which is -- and the strategy doesn't change, is just where we're at. So we're now at 38% of our assets from emerging market clients. I see that steadily growing, frankly, as a number and as a percentage. Our local offices grew again. So now at $7.8 billion. So they're 5% -- 16% of group's assets. So that part of our strategy is working. And as I say, I would see more of that happening over the next 5, 10 years.

Distribution is getting deeper where we have domestic businesses, local businesses, because gradually build out relationship networks. So we're getting better at selling in those markets. And we've opened this year in Qatar in Mexico, and we'll plan to do further as we find the right people. It's really a people. We know the demographies are want to be, we have to find the right guys. We're very comfortable with the guys we find for those 2 markets. Leave it to you?

That's fine. Carry on.

No, no. Over to you. Thank you.

Okay. So just carrying on, on that Phase 3, a more detailed update on some of the local office businesses. As Mark says, total AUM across the network increased by 5% to just under $8 billion in the period, demonstrating the benefits of having a network of largely uncorrelated businesses in terms of investment performance, client behavior, capital flows and therefore, asset levels and profitability.

The net flow picture was notably strong in Colombia with top-ups into the now well-established listed equity strategies and capital committed to the second private debt infrastructure fund. India also continued to perform well across domestic equity strategies with additional capital committed from Ashmore's global institutional client base and also growth in both the local and offshore mutual fund products.

In Saudi Arabia, the team successfully exited education-themed private equity assets, generating a performance fee and returned the capital to investors, subsequently launching new private equity funds focused on the industrial and real estate sectors. Capital market conditions in India -- sorry, in Indonesia continue to be challenging, though for much of the period. Against this backdrop, the local management team focused on extending the product range, delivering investment performance for clients and enhancing distribution channels to increase client diversification.

All of the local offices benefit from using Ashmore's global technology infrastructure and thus a consistent global operating model. This means that in aggregate, as the local markets evolve and the offices grow, they're operating efficiently with a high EBITDA margin coming in the mid-40s and deliver a meaningful proportion of the group's profits of just over 1/3 this year. In certain locations, however, the standard operating model needs to be adapted to cope with local regulatory complexity.

In Saudi and Indonesia, recently introduced regulations prevent the transfer of certain types of data outside the country, and therefore, bespoke onshore IT infrastructure has needed to be implemented. Over the period, Ashmore has continued to invest in these local businesses. As mentioned, local product has been launched in Indonesia for local investors to complement its predominantly offshore institutional client base. And both Indonesia and Saudi are broadening their distribution channels to enhance access for retail clients.

As Mark mentioned, given the notable success in private markets across Latin America and the Middle East, the alternatives theme is now expanding across a number of EM countries through private equity investments in both health care and infrastructure. We'll continue to support these growth initiatives with appropriate resources, including centralized group support functions, IT infrastructure and seed capital investments to underpin future asset and profit growth. And finally, as Mark mentioned, the office network has been expanded with the addition of Qatar and the establishment of a new business in Mexico.

The former will initially provide local investment research to Ashmore's global investment teams as well as assist in developing local institutional client relationships. In Mexico, the process is well underway to obtain regulatory approval for a domestic investment management license, initially catering to both global and local institutional clients, including the domestic pension funds.

Looking at the financials. As Mark mentioned, the EM asset classes typically performed pretty well over the last 12 months with indices up between 8% and 19%, but investor appetite reflected the uncertainty of global geopolitics. While assets stabilized at just under GBP 50 billion, the higher opening level in the prior financial year meant that average assets were 7% lower compared with FY 2024.

Adjusted net revenue of GBP 146.5 million reduced by 22% year-on-year, given the lower average AUM level, coupled with a reduced performance fee contribution of GBP 10 million and a modest headwind from a weaker dollar. Ashmore's business model is designed to adapt to the revenue environment and our relentless focus on costs reduced adjusted operating costs by 14% year-on-year.

Notably, the VC charge reduced by 25%, demonstrating how the model aligns the interests of employees with shareholders. The resulting adjusted EBITDA of GBP 52.5 million represents an operating margin of 36%. Given the positive return environment, the group's seed capital program delivered mark-to-market gains of GBP 40.1 million across a range of strategies. Ashmore's cash balances and a consistent yield of around 5%, delivering GBP 20.1 million of interest income, lower than in the prior period due to an increased allocation to the seed capital program.

Noting that the prior year included some disposal gains, profit before tax of GBP 108.6 million is 15% lower year-on-year. This results in diluted EPS of 11.8p or 7.1p on an adjusted basis. The group continues to maintain substantial financial resources of just over GBP 600 million, well in excess of its capital requirement, and the Board has recommended an unchanged final dividend of 12.1p to give total dividends for the full year of 16.9p.

Looking now at the progression of assets under management. As I mentioned, they stabilized over the year with positive investment performance and an improving net flow picture compared with FY 2024, ending the period at $47.6 billion. Consistent with the market backdrop and Alpha delivery described before, Ashmore delivered $4.1 billion of investment performance over the 12 months with all themes contributing positively to this result. Subscriptions of 6.5 billion were at a similar level to last year with notable demand, especially in Europe for local currency and equity strategies from both existing and new clients.

There was also a continued focus on the growing IG space, particularly from Asian insurance companies. There was a marked improvement in redemptions, which declined 22% to $12.3 billion. As reported, a small number of institutional decisions increased local currency redemptions in the third quarter.

Now given Ashmore's local currency strategy delivering strong absolute and relative performance over 1, 3 and 5 years, these redemptions were the result of client-specific factors. And as such, we do not expect these decisions to be representative of a broader pattern of client behavior. In each of the other fixed income and equity themes, gross redemption levels declined compared with the prior year. Consequently, the net outflow for the year was 32% lower than FY '24.

Equities, alternatives, investment-grade strategies and local offices all generated net inflow consistent with the group's strategic objectives. And notably, in equities, progress has been delivered through a number of meaningfully sized institutional mandate wins. Given the positive market backdrop across EM and investors' increasing concerns about the direction of the U.S. economy and its markets, particularly post-Liberation Day, including the value of the U.S. dollar, we're seeing broad-based and increasingly positive engagement across the client base.

So to give a sense of those activity levels, in equities, there's increasing activity in the Americas, across Europe and the Middle East. Demand for fixed-income product is also becoming more widespread with the exception of the U.S., where investors continue to focus more domestically. And the attraction of investment-grade bonds is being broadly recognized by investors and leading to demand in Asia, particularly out of Japan as well as in Europe.

Encouragingly, the industry mutual fund data shows a pickup in net flows into EM over the summer and demand is now shifting to actively managed product. Since the year-end, Ashmore has continued to deliver alpha across fixed income and equity and is therefore well positioned as momentum and interest in the asset class build. Looking now at revenues. Adjusted net revenues were 22% lower versus the prior year at GBP 146.5 million. The main component was a 19% reduction in net management fees to GBP 129.7 million as a result of lower average AUM levels, a 2% headwind from higher average sterling dollar rates and a net management fee margin of 35 basis points.

On a like-for-like basis, excluding the positive effect of catch-up fees last year, the management fee margin came in 2.5 basis points lower year-on-year. As usual, there are a number of predominantly mix-related factors underlying the headline move, including a positive impact from investment theme mix with inflows and asset growth in equities, offset by higher average overlay AUM, which naturally increases in a period of strong asset class performance.

Higher-margin private equity realizations impacted alternatives and other factors such as the ongoing competitive environment. I expect that the broader industry environment will continue to exert some downward pressure on the reported margin, but also that the group's strategic initiatives to grow in higher-margin products such as equity and alternatives, which, together with the growing contribution from the local offices will provide some support to the margin over the medium term.

And finally, given the positive returns delivered, performance fees of GBP 10.2 million was successfully achieved across a range of both liquid fixed income themes and also in alternatives following the exits in Colombia and Saudi Arabia. While such fees are inherently difficult to predict, particularly given the lumpy nature of the fees generated from realizations, based on current market levels, I would expect performance fees for the liquid themes in 2026 to come in at around GBP 5 million.

Turning now to costs. The business model continues to operate efficiently and, importantly, has the flexibility to adapt to the operating environment. In this period, operating costs were reduced meaningfully to mitigate the impact of lower revenues on profitability. Overall, adjusted operating costs of GBP 97 million declined 14% year-on-year. Costs before variable compensation were reduced by 6% with a 2% reduction in salary costs based on broadly stable average headcount and a 12% decline in other operating expenses, primarily due to lower premises-related costs and third-party fees.

In recognition of the revenue environment, variable remuneration was reduced by 25% to GBP 39.5 million. As a proportion of profit, this represents 35% at the upper end of the range signaled previously, given strong ongoing performance, high client activity levels, improving flows and the continued realization of profits from the seed portfolio, which totaled GBP 5.2 million on a life-to-date basis.

Looking ahead to the '26 financial year, we'll continue to maintain our strong focus on controlling expenditure globally while investing in key medium-term growth initiatives. Overall, including the impact of moving to a new head office in London, I would expect only a modest increase in non-VC operating expense somewhere around the current U.K. inflation level.

Looking at the seed program. Since 2010, the program has supported growth in assets and delivered returns to shareholders. To date, this has contributed approximately GBP 200 million of investment gains, of which 3/4 have been realized and added $5 billion to assets under management. Mark-to-market profits in the current year were GBP 40 million, approximately double the prior year level with GBP 7.5 million of the gain being realized. Consistent with the investment performance delivered for clients, the seed capital returns were spread across a broad range of underlying funds.

The total seed capital program value increased to GBP 350 million over the year, primarily due to new investments of GBP 113 million. These were made to facilitate the launch of new funds and to support them while establishing their track records. For example, Ashmore launched a Frontier debt product, as Mark mentioned, to provide clients with exposure to this subset of smaller, higher growth and uncorrelated countries.

Seed capital was also invested in existing funds to add scale and thus facilitate access for intermediaries as demand for EM increases. And finally, investments were made to support the development of funds in the local offices, including the GP commitments for the alternative products. The seed capital continues to be actively managed and GBP 46.6 million was recycled in the period, predominantly as a result of client flows, notably into investment-grade product and following the realizations from alternatives.

We'll continue to use the balance sheet to support our strategic growth initiatives, for example, as mentioned, into private equity investments, building on the group -- sorry, and I would expect the alternatives allocation consequently to increase both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the whole.

Finally, on the P&L, the interest income on the group's cash was GBP 20 million compared with GBP 25 million in the prior year. The yield achieved was consistent at around 5%, but the average balance was lower and starts the current year at GBP 340 million compared with the GBP 505 million at the end of financial year '24. While market yields have fallen recently, the book overall is still earning a rate of around 4.7% and new sterling term deposits are being placed at approximately 4.5%.

The group's effective tax rate for the year was 21.6%, which remains below the U.K. rate of 25% due to the geographic mix of profits and also the impact of revaluing deferred tax assets relating to share-based compensation as well as the treatment of seed capital gains and losses. In terms of tax guidance for the current financial year, the geographic mix today implies a tax rate of approximately 22%.

And finally, before I hand back to Mark for his thoughts on outlook, a brief summary of the group's financial resources. We continue to have a well-capitalized balance sheet with total financial resources of GBP 604 million, significantly in excess of the assessed capital requirement of GBP 93 million.

The balance sheet is not only well-capitalized, but remains highly liquid with GBP 340 million of cash and a similar value of seed capital investments, of which more than 70% are in funds with at least monthly dealing dates. In terms of cash flow, the group's operations generated approximately GBP 75 million after having paid tax. This funded the bulk of the ordinary dividend. And additionally, the group invested a net GBP 66 million in the period in seed.

The Employee Trust bought shares worth GBP 35 million, taking advantage of lower share price levels during the year to acquire shares ahead of granting employee equity awards. In summary, therefore, the financial resources of the group continue to enable investment in our strategic objectives and help underpin future asset and profit growth.

With that, I'll pass you back.

Thanks, Tom. Thank you. So outlook. Yes, the macro is volatile. People are worried about wars, wild politics, all that good stuff that keeps life interesting, but that actually gives you opportunity. And if people eventually notice consistently strong absolute returns and alpha on top of it, eventually, the capital starts to flow.

In terms of EM, a couple of slides, little graphs we put on the right. One is about rates, which the basic message there is that you've got pretty high real rates on the top right. And that tends to give you 2 opportunities: one, a sensible carry, but also the opportunity for rate cuts. And we think that, that is a nice backdrop to be sitting on, looking out a year to 3. In terms of the bottom right graph, basically, earnings momentum is positive for EM equities. And we see there's more upside in terms of earnings momentum there than there is in terms of the S&P.

I think people really are focusing on how biased cap-weighted benchmarks can become. And especially in Europe and Asia, every conversation is we don't know what else to buy in -- we've done the big stuff. We've done the trendy stuff. We've done the -- is it another Internet bubble? We don't -- we've now done a lot of U.S. private credit.

And even we -- even I'm talking about what people are saying to us, are thinking there is no mark-to-market in private credit, there's a huge amount of cash sitting there, so that keeps refinancing it. But where do we go from here? So there's a real challenge for people, and they're looking to figure out what they should be buying.

And certainly, in Europe, that's pushing people towards local currency in particular, I think, in investment-grade dollars in what we do and some equity. And in Asia, ditto, probably more investment-grade dollars than local currency at the moment in equity, but equities -- sorry, it's more investment grade and equities than local currency bonds in Asia in terms of conversations we're having.

We're also having people who are going, well, maybe I really do need to focus on other than just buying EM. If I think India wins, I need to buy India. So do you have an Indian product? And of course, the answer is, of course, we do. So we're getting a lot of interest in that kind of thing. Dollar is under some pressure.

The domestic policy suggests it should be. Things look better for Europe in terms of the fiscal expansion than they have done for a long time. Look, what we do, this is a pretty good environment for us. So where are we at? We've done this for a while. We keep being specialists. We have a team-based culture. we're delivering alpha. We're 81% over 5 years. People can see that. That includes all the little crises they can think of. That includes what's been going on and that includes the COVID action, that includes Russia, that includes Trump, left, right and center.

So people can see that and begin to focus on that. The model works. We have a decent amount of financial resources. We don't have any debt. We don't plan to have any debt. We believe our interests are pretty well aligned with shareholders and clients. We still own 38% of the company. And we see pretty significant opportunities to grow. So when the reallocation comes, if your performance is good and if your salespeople are still talking to people, and one of the things we do, as you know, is invest in people.

So we don't fire 1,000 salespeople and they don't sell anything for a year or 3. We invest in them and we say, okay, we're keeping you going. So let's make sure when people think about what we do, you guys are front and center. Intermediary retail AUM will -- very volatile. It's not volatile so much as it's directionally -- it's quite slow in the -- well, is it that slow? It's medium slow in the way it adds to asset classes and then sells them. It's at a cyclical low for us, intermediary retail AUM at the moment.

So that will -- and the retail tends to knee-jerk react quicker in both directions. So one of the places that we're seeing a little bit of interest in both EM equity, Frontier equity and EM ex-China is the American market. It's very much an equity market, and we're seeing a little bit of interest there in terms of the 40 Act product. And one of the challenges for us there is to make sure we have the right conduit to attract that capital. So we'll be thinking about the structures of how we take money there.

We have a few targets in terms of where we'd like to be in the local markets if we find the right people and our alternatives business will naturally grow. We see there's a big opportunity there in terms of long-dated assets with long-dated opportunities.

Summary, we're outperforming. Our flows are getting better. The operating model is working, mitigates the impact of less money. We have some progress against strategic objectives. The fact they've been strategic means they've helped us in terms of growing the equity platform, growing the local businesses over the last 5 years. We're pretty much everything in place for higher and allocations. So that's it for the formal talking bit.

Happy to have questions, take any questions to me or Tom. Tom's answers will be much more interesting.

It's Angeliki Bairaktari from JPMorgan. We have been talking about increasing EM allocations for a while, but I do agree with you that now it feels like we're getting closer to actually seeing that being translated into inflows. In your opinion, you said you've seen some traction with European and Asian clients. In the current quarter, has that translated into inflows in some of the maybe debt strategies and as...

Since the year-end.

Yes. So July and August.

I understand.

And maybe just for the whole year, fiscal year '26, is that finally going to be the year where we have a plus instead of a minus in terms of the net flows?

So I'm holding my crystal ball here. We've seen this -- we've seen this a lot before. It all tends to be doom and gloom for a period of time and people think of what just happened, not what might happen. And every single time, in the end, outperformance as in absolute and relative is what starts the money coming. In the nicest possible way, the money doesn't always come at the best time for it to maximize its returns, but that's life.

So it feels to me like we're kind of at the bottom. But maybe -- I mean, we are seeing 2-way flow. So there were periods of time where we didn't see much of that. Obviously, in mutual funds, it's not very big numbers, but the fact you're seeing that, the fact that we're seeing a much better pipeline in the sales force, much more RFP action, much more final pitches.

We -- there was -- at the peak of what we did, we might have a couple of final pitches a month across the business. And then it became a couple of final pitches every 6 months. Now we're somewhere in between that. So things are beginning to move, not yet where we'd like it, but they're beginning to move.

So I'd love to say, yes, for sure, it's all going to be fabulous and going to raise GBP 20 billion of assets this year. But I can't quite say that without being incorrect. -- either we'll raise way more or way less. That's just how life is in the asset management business. What was the other part of the question? I think I was going to flip that to you.

I think there was a near-term flow and an annual flow question. I think you covered both bits.

Okay, good.

And I asked something on the management fee margin as well, which fell year-on-year. And you mentioned, among other things, competition. Is that coming from passive? Like are you seeing some substitution from active to passive, which is a trend that we're seeing in DM, we've seen it for the past 10 years very strongly. Is that coming from some of your EM active competitors? Where is the competition coming from?

A little bit of both. Probably not. I think in terms of our active competitors, probably not so much. I think we're very competitive there. I mean, but there is always active man. There's -- one of the things people always try and do is drive you down on price.

Passive is -- it's gone from none to some. So it's not in everything, but in the easier things to replicate, the indices that are easy to replicate, there's definitely some competition from passive. But what we've tended to find has happened to us in passive because passive has been around for a long time and what we do, too. It tends to be a first reaction to get something in.

So what we've seen -- so for us, it's a bit of a leading indicator. So when passive funds start to see flow in what we do, 3 to 6 months later, we do because they sort of -- I've got to slam the money in and then I go find a manager, unless you have an existing client relationship. So it tends to be a bit of a leading indicator for us. So we watch that quite carefully.

It's Hubert Lam from Bank of America. A few questions. Firstly, on -- you talked about flows going into IG and equities. And I guess high yield still remains outflows. Just wondering, is that due to your performance? Or is that just a general risk appetite not yet wanting high yield?

I think it's due to a whole series of things. I don't think it's due to performance now. People might have gotten very nervous around '22, '23 on that kind of thing. But now as you can see, the numbers are pretty strong across all the pieces. So I don't think it's -- I mean, maybe one, but I don't think so. I don't think now it's that.

It's about a whole series of things. So all the Americans panicked and ran home after '22. So some of them have just been slower at doing that, but they are kind of out now in terms of the way they think. I think they're where they want to be and their next allocation will be up. But in terms of the Americans, that can take a while, a, because they can be quite slow the institutions there, but b, they have this big home country bias thing. They're obsessed. It's just their whole life, they're thinking about that.

But it does tend to happen. And I think all the while U.S. rates are quite high, there's a tendency not to take much fixed income risk outside the U.S. because I'm getting paid, and I'm getting paid to be in the short end. And so it's a little bit hard. I can get fired for -- or you can get a whole -- I get in the press with the wrong comment from the wrong guy if I'm investing in the wrong place.

And U.S. is naturally an equity market. Americans like to buy equity. So I think we'll see flow from the U.S. And I say we're just tiny bit is beginning to happen in equity first, actually in this cycle because this time around, we have some very strong equity product. So we're highly competitive in terms of performance in the equity space, and we're bigger than we were.

So I kind of like that, actually for my U.S. optionality, but it's still got to start. And as I said, there's a little bit in the retail space, just beginning. We're seeing that in some of the wealth managers. They're beginning to put allocations back into EM. So we're beginning to pick up some EM equity money there. What was the rest of the question? That was it, wasn't it?

Yes, on high yield.

High yield. Why people are not doing it? Okay. The second part of it is it just reminds me of, again, 10, 15 years ago, there's this obsession with private credit. And it's an obsession all over the place. And happily, it's now got to the [ credit ] I've actually got quite a lot of this.

But for the last 5 years, it's all been EM's alternative.

So instead of EM fixed income and instead of other U.S. bond-related stuff with duration, why don't I do private credit, not least of which because it takes a long time for people to find out, it doesn't mark-to-market? So there's been a big allocation of Americans into private credit.

But actually, the Asian markets have gone into private -- the guys in the Middle East, they've got big private credit buckets. So there was definitely -- at various times, depending on where EM is seen, if it's seen as something a bit off the run, the other off-the-run thing can knock it out. And certainly, people have been redeeming not because of performance, but they say, I need to be in U.S. private credit. Is -- I think that wave is over as in the big wave, people will still allocate.

But I'm not -- it's not -- the conversation now is I've done private credit. What do I do, which is not with everybody, but with some -- which is great. That's okay, thank God. So a lot of people sold EM for private credit. And that's not just the Americas. Some people in Europe did it, some people in Asia did it. Some people in Japan did that.

And a couple of questions for Tom. Firstly, on the fee margin, what's the exit rate? And are you still expecting about a basis point decline per year?

Yes. So second half average was 35%. So that gives you, simplistically, an exit rate of just above 34%. And the comments I've made before, I'm afraid, hold, right? It's all dependent on the mix of assets and that can be influenced by performance as well as flow and a bit of erosion, the sort of 1 basis point guide every 12 to 18 months holds for the liquid side of the business.

But if I think looking over the medium term, there is some upward pressure or support to the margin, right, around equities, which is high margin, more alternatives capital and the local market business is becoming an increasing proportion of what we do.

And finally, on performance fees, you mentioned that $5 million for the liquid portion of it, how about the illiquid is...

That's a really difficult bit. So I mean, that all depends on the realization profile. We've been realizing assets in Colombia and Saudi. There's still a tail of those earlier vintage vehicles that we will realize over the period, but the timing for that is uncertain. So maybe there'll be a little bit of that on top, but I don't want to call it now.

Mike Werner from UBS. Just one question. We saw pretty good performance from your managers over the past 12 months and yet, obviously, due to the negative flows, we saw variable comp come off, I think, about 25%, which is, again, that 35% ratio is at the top end of your guide. Can you just give a little bit of color as to kind of the morale, whether there's going to be -- comp discussion is going to be a bit more challenging this year? Are you worried about a little bit more turnover? Have you seen any increase in turnover?

Morale is outstandingly good. People understand what we do, right? But we don't have -- we don't set ourselves up where we hire and find vast amounts of people at any one time. We try and progressively grow and make sure that we do things in a sensible manner. So the people who work with us understand that. They're there for a reason that tends to encourage longevity.

My personal view is you expect turnover to be higher after difficult markets for 2 reasons. One is the lights go out with some people, and they need to turn the lights on somewhere else, and that can happen. And the other one is you get opportunities to get value risk to buy some interesting people in.

So you get the chance to hire people that suddenly -- I'm not going to name it, but they're a very big shop that does lots of things. The salespeople don't sell anymore because it's hard. They sell what's easy. that's what young people -- that's what salespeople like to do. And that's good. That's what they should do.

But they're just not getting any airtime. So we usually find in dips that we find some pretty good people. And we found -- so we're buying people and people are being bought and sold. So turnover is going up on both sides. And that's happened this time, too. We picked up some people in some of the new products.

So we're happy to have done that. Yes, I mean, it is what it is. The business is what it is. We've seen these cycles before. We would expect the key people that want to stay and do that. The one for whom the lights are less bright than they used to be will almost certainly move on and new ones will come in.

It's David McCann from Deutsche Numis. Just to follow on to that question on the variable comp ratio. So obviously, 35% for the full year at the upper end of the guidance range, as you say, although quite a lot more than you accrued in the first half.

Can you sort of categorically confirm 35% absolutely remains the cap, obviously, bear in mind, it was only changed a couple of years ago. And is that -- should we still see this as a variable cost? Or is there sort of really an element of fixed cost that goes into that number in your way of thinking? That's the first question.

I've been here before again. So as the business shrinks, if you've got really good performance, you've got a high-class problem. And this is that time in the cycle. So if people are performing, we want to be paying them. So that gives us the flexibility to have that ability to go to 35%. I'd much rather that the problem continues.

And as we regrow the business, they're performing spectacularly, and we're still paying 35%, that would be fantastic. If they perform less well, we might pay less than that. It does move around. It's not set at a number permanently. One of the reasons we suggested that we would change it was we understand this is almost certain to happen this kind of thing if your asset base shrinks because people are off your asset class.

The whole point of our model is to have the flex to cope with it. And so we wanted to be sure we did have the flex to cope with insure enough. We've needed to use the flex to cope with it because a high-class problem, people have performed, but the business is a little smaller, so now we have to pay them. So it's not -- it will move around. It will move around.

But it won't go above 35%. That's the clear...

Not without telling somebody. We wouldn't do something sneaky and not tell you. It's very important to us to do what we said we were going to do.

Okay. Noted. Second question is probably for Tom. Just another more technical point on that run rate fee margin. The alternatives yield in particular looked like it dropped a lot in the second half. So at the fee level, is that the second half rate something we should extrapolate going forward? Or was there something unusually low in the sort of revenue number there?

There's a couple of things going on there. One is some of the realizations were at a higher rate. So those have come out of the margin as reported. The other is that the private credit capital raising in Colombia is a lower margin product than the private equity capital. So is that roughly GBP 400 million of committed capital gets drawn down and invested, that will drag the margin down a little bit.

Okay. So the second half does feel more like the run rate then rather than the first, okay?

There'll be a little bit more give as more of that private credit gets invested, but that's your starting point.

Just one question from my side. It's Laura Gris Trillo from Jefferies. I have noticed that your cash balance has decreased a bit year-on-year as you made some investments on the seed and also made the purchases for the EBT. I'm just wondering, in terms of balancing further seed investments and paying the dividend as your flows recover, how should we think about future dividend payments and future seed investments while your dividend remains uncovered?

Yes. So this year, assuming the dividend is approved at the AGM, it will use about GBP 35 million to GBP 40 million of cash. So that's the forward-thinking number. The future direction of the cash balance depends on how much we're able to recycle from the seed book basically.

So we will continue to invest in things like the alternatives initiatives. So that will draw down some incremental capital. But last year, as I mentioned, we put in GBP 113 million into seed to support and provide new growth avenues. I would expect to see a slightly higher recycling than the GBP 46 million that we got back this year as some of those strategies hit either the size thresholds that we've targeted for them or the time horizons for their track record. So we typically expect somewhere around 1/3 of the seed book to recycle in any given year. So we were a little lower this period. I'd like to expect certainly 12 months out that we'll be back closer to that 1/3 long-run average.

Thank you. Anybody else? No other questions. Well, thank you very much for coming.