Premier Miton Group (LSE:PMI) — 2024 Interim Results

0:01 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the PREMIER MITON GROUP PLC interim results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the investor meet company platform. Before we begin, I would just like to

0:33 submit the following poll. And if you'd give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from PREMIER MITON. Mike, good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our interim results presentation for the period ending March 2024. I am Mike O'Shea. I'm the chief executive of PREMIER MITON, and I'm joined today by Piers Harrison, Chief Financial Officer and Joffe Wilcox, Global Head of Distribution. Today, we will be running through our results for the period as well as highlighting the current trading environment and our outlook for the coming months. We will also update on the progress of our recent acquisitions.

1:19 We closed the period with $10,700,000,000 of assets under management. This was 9% higher than the level at the 10/01/2023 and reflects a combination of three factors: inflows from our recent M and A activity outflows from our funds largely driven by the poor environment for fund sales across the industry and positive returns from investment markets. We continue to have strong long term performance numbers, but I am encouraged that we are seeing strong short term performance for several of our key strategies. These include our European equity strategy, our UK value strategy, our main retirement income product, our fixed income funds, the new Telworth absolute return funds and several of our multi asset strategies.

2:12 The latter will of course be important in helping to drive our momentum in the managed portfolio service market later in the year. Adjusted profit before tax was CAD5.7 million and our cash balance was CAD30.7 million as at the end of March, which given the cyclicality of our cash balance is normally pretty close to the low point for cash during the year. This strong balance sheet provides us with resilience during the more difficult trading conditions we have experienced and of course it helps to support our dividend. The acquisition of Telworth is proceeding as planned and assets under management there are stable with impressive investment performance across the main strategies.

2:57 We have recently seen positive inflows into these funds, which is encouraging and I will update further on Telworth later in this presentation. As mentioned in our recent trading update, we have also completed the acquisition of a small Dublin based USIT structure, which can serve as a bridgehead for our international distribution activities. In terms of current trading, we are definitely seeing an improvement in the short term following what has been a very difficult couple of years for the funds industry. As of today, we have actually seen a return to small net positive sales during May, and we are building momentum within our distribution activity and have a significant sales pipeline, which Joffe will cover in more detail shortly.

3:45 Assets under management have continued to recover and stood at 10,800,000,000 as at the May 28, and the board has declared an interim dividend of 3p per share, reflecting the robust cash position of the company and confidence in the long term outlook. We are continuing with our plans to launch a small number of strategies within our Dublin U SITs, and this will help support our international and institutional distribution activity. We are also in the process of registering a small number of our funds distribution in South Africa, and we continue to make good progress with our distribution partner in Latin America. Finally, our plans for the launch into the managed portfolio service area are at an advanced stage, and we will shortly be announcing a senior hire into this space to support this development within our business.

4:41 The main highlights of the results are shown on Slide four and Piers will go into more detail on the numbers shortly. I think the key takeaway from this slide is the noticeable improvement in equity fund flows that we have seen during the last couple of quarters. This is indicative of an environment where investors are prepared to take on equity risk once more, which is encouraging for the future. Turning now to Telworth. This business has brought us a high quality investment team who are well regarded across The UK intermediary and wealth sectors. Importantly, we believe that their long short absolute return strategies will be attractive to investors in the current environment, allowing us to further diversify our business in terms of underlying investment strategies.

5:30 The business also allows us to broaden our distribution reach into the wholesale, family office, and institutional areas. I am pleased to report that investment performance across the Telworth funds has remained strong and that assets under management have increased slightly to £515,000,000 since we announced the transaction in December. I can also confirm that we have seen some small positive flows into the main Telworth funds during the current quarter.

6:02 This slide shows the strong performance of two of the key Telworth funds which are UK Select, their absolute return focused long short strategy and UK smaller companies as well as producing an attractive absolute return, I would highlight the very strong sharp and sortino ratios on UK Select against the sector and the all share. I would also highlight the strong relative performance and excellent risk profile of Paul Marriage's UK smaller companies fund over both the short and longer time longer term time periods. These are both funds which can attract significantly more assets under management. I'm pleased that the integration of this business is proceeding as planned and it will be fully integrated into the PREMIER MITON platform by mid June.

6:53 The business will be accretive to earnings in FY 2025 and that's before any performance fees that the team may generate and the PREMIER MITON sales team is now deployed in marketing these strategies across the combined business wider client base. Elsewhere, we continue to appraise strategic acquisitions that meet our three key criteria of either bringing scale to existing strategies, allowing us to access new investment capabilities or to access new clients. I believe that the more difficult trading conditions that we have seen during the last couple of years make such acquisitions more rather than less likely. And our experience of successfully integrating several acquisitions means that PREMIER MITON is well placed to take advantage of these.

7:46 In terms of the outlook, believe the tide is now finally turning in our favor. I think we're likely to see interest rates fall globally as we move through the end of twenty four and into 2025. Yes. We can debate on the exact timing of that, but I think there's little doubt that we will see interest rates trend lower. And I think this will force investors to reappraise their investment options after a period when leaving cash on deposit or holding short date government short dated government bonds, for example, made perfect sense. Economic growth is set to continue, I think that will create a favorable backdrop for both equity and bond investors and we believe that this will help mid and small cap stocks where active managers such as ourselves are overweighted.

8:32 And after a period where index investing has been so attractive, we believe momentum is growing for genuinely active strategies. And if passive is going to form the core of many investors portfolios, then active will be satellite and it will have to demonstrate that it is genuinely active and genuinely differentiated. That is a long way away from the underlying index in order to be able to deliver real alpha for investors. And as can be seen on the chart on the right hand side of this slide, PREMIER MITON's funds run with very high active shares. If your active share is a 100, you are not the index. If your active share is not, you are. And we run funds with active shares typically approaching 90% and we run with very high tracking errors against those underlying indices. That is we take a lot of risk away from the index.

9:26 And given that we are running high levels of risk against the index within our portfolios, it makes sense for us as a business to run a well diversified portfolio of strategies. So we don't have all of our eggs in a single basket either by manager or by strategy or indeed by asset class. Now inevitably this will mean that not all of our strategies are performing well at the same time and this is fine because we need to take a differentiated approach and we need to take risk against the index in order to deliver the long term alpha that our investors want. And the portfolio approach that we run means that our distribution team have strong performance in different areas at different times, them to build strong long term relationships with intermediaries, wealth managers and institutional clients.

10:20 And this is really important. And on that note, I would like to hand over to Joffe to update us on our progress in the distribution area. Many thanks, Mike. I just wanted to really give you all an update on the progress we're making in terms of raising our brand profile and visibility across the wholesale marketplace, and also how we're increasing our traction with wealth managers and advisers alike. Now apart from all the fund manager roadshows and third party and partner events that we do throughout the course of the year, we reach hundreds of thousands of IFAs and advisors and wealth managers, you can also see the progress that we're physically making with that contraction as I talked about by looking at the number of attendees who turn up to our flagship annual investment conference, which is aimed at wealth managers and advisers. In 2022, we had 70 turned up, 140 last year, and this year, 200.

11:10 And talking to my peers, you know, anecdotally, it feels that that was perhaps more than any other fund manager, so if not more, most other managers managed to achieve in terms

11:18 of attendance at their event. And the relevance of this is, it's all about relevance. Advisers and wealth managers would not turn up to our events if they did not feel that our events were relevant to them and their clients and their businesses, and you can see a couple of comments in the output at the bottom of this slide where you can see that the day clearly hit the mark in terms of what our advice and work plans were looking for. And not only that, on the right hand side of this we also surveyed those attendees and asked them if they plan to invest more or less or no change with PREMIER MITON in the next twelve months and you can see that almost two thirds of those attendees at our event in February actually plan to allocate more to the business over the next twelve months. So that's not just the service we do.

12:04 We also do quarterly research surveys with research and finance, where on the left hand side, they survey on a regular quarterly basis 120 discretionary wealth managers or fund managers, and they were all asked to name unprompted who were the best asset manager in their eyes. And in fact, the group of 120 wealth managers actually named 83 different fund managers, but interestingly enough, actually nominated PREMIER MITON as eleventh equal, with M and G as you can see on the screen. The point here, I think, is that if you look at those other asset managers, they're much larger in terms of PREMIER MITON, in terms of assets under management, which shows that we're punching above above our weight and really making progress in terms of getting deeper into that community as a recognized asset manager. On the right hand side, we're part of a syndicate of 15 other asset managers who go through this quarterly survey.

13:00 And again, the DFMs, especially fund managers were asked, would you like to best put more or less money with these fund groups over the next six months or so? And you'll see here that PREMIER MITON came out fourth. So again, there's a real intention to do more business with PREMIER MITON over the next six months to twelve months.

13:20 And I suppose the last thing I really want to focus on is talking about where do we see this core drivers now? Where is that interest coming from in terms of our fund rates? Clearly, income, which we picked up a team from MERRION, maybe now sort of three, four years ago. We've really started to build proper momentum there, almost, you know, 2,000,000,000 of assets under management now, and we're seeing a lot of advice in wealth management now using fixed income from PREMIER MITON as part of their core offering to take to their clients. We're continuing to see interest in US equities where we are seeing through its low exposure to some of the tech and magnificent seven stocks we've done a lot about over the last year or so, we're seeing as a natural complement to maybe passive providers where you actually have a much higher exposure to technology. I'll come back to retirement in a second.

14:06 European equity, one of the largest funds that we've had in the stable historically. Again, this fund is on almost all wealth manager and advisors by this many of those. So if we start to see risk appetite returning towards European equities as Mike referred to, then actually we'd start to see a beneficiary of flows coming back to European equities. Retirement income is very interesting. There's been a recent FCA thematic review into retirement income. And whilst many retirees have perhaps been going down the annuity route or the unit and cash route to try and boost their income in retirement, that carries all sorts of risks such as sequencing risk or longevity risk. The fact that is you might run out money before before you die, and one of the real things for us is is advocating the merits and the benefits of natural income.

14:51 We can take a natural income of currently on some of our funds, particularly one individual fund in particular, the 5% and just grow that income over time, so your capital can keep pace with inflation, your income can grow over time and therefore you you have a chance of a happier retirement. And that's going down particularly well as a campaign. We've we've had a number of individual investors saying to us, they haven't realized the power you can have natural income in retirement and in actual fact, it seems a good alternative to just buying an annuity or or unit in cashman. Now Mike's referred to Telworth and they've come together with us with two different strategies that have been really helpful. One UK Solar Companies with a great track record, but also an absolute return strategy. And I think we'll start to see increasing interest now in absolute return funds. We're getting it towards that peak of that interest rate cycle.

15:37 You know, in terms of international expansion, you might refer to it now, European Equity Fund has been a part of the key proposition that our Latin American distribution partner has been focusing on and we're in the middle of registering a number of our funds in South Africa, but there's been a real interest in our fixed income capability. And the last point to mention is perhaps MPS might refer to, you know, we've been talking out in the marketplace, recognizing the big growth in managed portfolio services and we hope to have a soft launch in the second half of this year and we've already got a couple of cornerstone investors who will be coming on board hopefully at the launch period. So probably I'll leave it there and Mike can hand back to you. Brilliant. Thanks, Joffe, very helpful. This slide actually covers investment performance. And as I mentioned earlier, our long term numbers do remain impressive. I think the key takeaway here, as I've said previously, is that short term outperformance creates opportunities for the distribution team.

16:28 Long term outperformance creates value for our investors. We run a well diversified asset management business and as you have seen earlier, we run portfolios that take positions that are often very different from the underlying indices against which our funds are measured. And we do this because we know that this is the best way of delivering long term success for our investors even though it may mean some short term underperformance. And the diversified nature of our business allows us to take these risks on behalf of our clients in the expectation of superior long term returns. Now this slide actually breaks down performance for a number of our funds since manager inception five years, three years, one year and six months because we know we have investors who look at various different time frames when assessing funds. But I think the key message from this slide is that Joffe and his marketing and distribution teams have plenty

17:28 of both q one for I. E. First quartile and above medium performances across our fund range over all time periods that they can focus on with our clients even for those who focus on the shorter term numbers such as one year. So we have multi asset, we have UK equities, we have global equities, we have fixed income opportunities to discuss with wealth managers and advisors right across the market. Our business, is well diversified. I think it is often underappreciated how important it is for a business like ours, given how we approach investment, to have this balance within our business with no overexposure to any one manager or strategy or asset class.

18:15 And to conclude before I hand over to peers to run us through the financials, I believe that PREMIER MITON is well placed for the recovery when it comes, and in fact, it may already have started. We are highly leveraged into the upturn. We have ample capacity across our fund range to grow from here, and we are capable of managing significantly higher levels of assets under management. Our back office platform is operationally capable of running three or four times the level of assets we manage today. Our distribution team has excellent reach and depth across all parts of The UK intermediary market and is extending its coverage into institutional and international markets all the time. Our investment performance is good, and we have a collegiate and supportive culture which makes PREMIER MITON a good place for talented investment managers to operate within.

19:11 Our balance sheet is sufficiently robust to allow us to weather more difficult periods in the markets such as we've been through in the last two years, and it helps support our dividend during these times rewarding our shareholders for their patience.

19:27 We are transparent in our aspirations to build a successful active asset manager producing outstanding investment returns for our investors, and we have the management experience to successfully execute acquisitions, allowing us to take full advantage of inorganic opportunities to build our business. I'd now like to hand over to Piers to talk us through the financial results for the period. Thanks, Mike. The group's revenue is generated based on the level of assets being managed by our investment teams. Now, the assets under management or AUM at the 03/31/2024 was 10,700,000,000, and this was an increase of 9% on the opening position for the period.

20:15 Now, over the six months, we saw net outflows of $486,000,000 from the strategies we manage, and these were offset by net inflows from fund acquisitions and disposals completed in the period, totaling $440,000,000. And positive market and investment performance drove the balance of the increase in our AUM. Now, the group's average AUM for the period was 10,000,000,000, and this represented a decline of 10% on the comparative period. And as noted in previous updates, it's the group's average AUM that is the key driver of revenue for our business. And the lower levels of average AUM have resulted in a fall in our net revenues and the resulting adjusted profit before tax when we compare it against the same period last year.

21:03 We saw net revenues decrease by 4,900,000 to 30,100,000 for the period and the net management fee margin was 59.3 basis points. This was down from 60.7 basis points achieved in the second half of twenty twenty three and sixty two point five in the first half of twenty twenty three. And now the fall reflects a change in the group's product mix and by that we mean the reduced levels of average AUM in some of our higher margin products namely the equities book of business drove that decline in the overall margin when we compare it against the previous period. Now, expenses decreased by 8% and we'll touch on those a little bit later, but the adjusted profit before tax for the period was 5,700,000 representing a decline of 28% on the comparative period.

21:57 The amortization charge was broadly flat at £2,500,000 and the share based payment charge fell by 19% to £2,100,000 The group incurred exceptional costs in the period relating to professional fees associated with the acquisitions completed during the six months and this resulted in a profit before tax for the six months of £600,000 Now looking at the admin expenses, these have decreased by £2,300,000 to £24,800,000 primarily driven by lower variable staff costs. As in common with most financial services businesses operating in our sector, our people costs represent the largest portion of our cost base.

22:43 Now fixed staff costs were flat at £10,800,000 but at the period end we had 163 full time staff that includes our non executive directors and it represents a decrease of four when we look at it against the comparative period. On 01/30/2024, we completed the acquisition of Telworth and that added headcount at the period end. The variable staff cost totaled £4,100,000 a decrease of 2,500,000 on the comparative period. And these costs move with the lower net revenues and the adjusted profit before tax. Overheads increased marginally to 9,500,000 for the six months and that's primarily driven by higher levels of sales and marketing activities that Joffe referred to earlier and this included obviously the group wide investor conference in February, which we noted attracted over 200 attendees.

23:37 Now, we always take a prudent approach to cost discipline and continue to do so as we move through the second half of the financial year whilst ensuring the platform we have built remains positioned for growth. Following the acquisition of Telworth, the planned migration, as Mike mentioned earlier, of its business activities onto the group's operating platform is on track to be completed in the second half of our financial year and that will remove some of the duplication in terms of rent and IT costs and so on and so forth.

24:07 If we look to the group's balance sheet, there are a couple of items just to flag on there. One is that you'll note the goodwill has increased by 2,600,000 which was recognized on the acquisition of Telworth and at the 03/31/2024 we had £30,700,000 in cash on the balance sheet and no debt and this was after a net cash consideration of 1,700,000 in the period for the purchase of Telworth. As a regulated business, we're required to hold capital and cash liquidity and if you look at the calculations on Slide 22, you'll note that we had a regulatory capital surplus of a short £15,000,000 and that's after accounting for the proposed dividend.

24:52 The Board has declared an interim dividend which is unchanged from the prior year at 3p per share, which will be payable on the 08/02/2024. Now the Group has a stated dividend policy that remains unchanged and it's to target an annual ordinary dividend payout of approximately 50 to 65% of the profit after tax adjusted for exceptional costs, share based benefits and amortization. And as noted in the Chair's report, the Board will remain pragmatic when considering the dividend for 2024 and the final dividend reflecting the balance sheet prudence, the market outlook and the overall position of the group. We continue to distribute twice yearly in line with our reporting calendar. And I think with that I'll hand back to Mike for the summary.

25:40 Brilliant. Thank you Piers. So in summary we are optimistic on the outlook for the business and we're encouraged by the recent improvement in both assets under management and the flow environment. As you have heard from Joffe, we've worked hard to build our distribution presence and this is starting to pay off in terms of our profile in the industry amongst advisors and wealth managers. As you have seen we have several key focus areas that we believe will help build our assets under management organically and we have the experience and skills necessary to allow us to take advantage of inorganic opportunities when they arise. It's said that bull markets climb a wall of worry and we have certainly had plenty to worry about in the asset management sector over the last couple of years, but it really does feel as if we are seeing signs of improvement and we do remain positive on the outlook from here. Thank you very much for your interest in the business today and we'll now move over to some Q and A. Perfect.

26:41 Mike, Pearce, Joffe, thank you very much indeed for your presentation this afternoon. Will just bring back up your camera there. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab that's situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Guys, as you can see there in the q and a tab, we have received a number of questions throughout your presentation this afternoon. And thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. But, Joffe, at this point, sir, if I may now just hand over to you to chair the Q and A with the team. And if I pick up from you at the end, that would be great. Yeah. Thank you very much, and, Djik, and good afternoon, everybody, as well. And maybe perhaps a few questions have come through on the screen. So just going through them now, maybe group a few together.

27:32 Maybe I'll open up with the first one for you, Mike, if I may. How do you anticipate the likely trend of lowering rates potentially through the rest of 2024 would affect future fund flows and asset values? I think, you know, obviously we've seen in the last couple of years, you know, a lot of money that had moved into investment during this sort of low interest rate environment has moved out again. I think people have moved to, you know, reduce debt. For example, debt was obviously very low cost when interest rates were zero. And as those rates have increased, people have looked to reduce debt, either a portfolio debt or personal debt. So I think that's obviously led to withdrawals from investments. And I think as interest rates start to come down, those people who have made the decision to hold off investing by investing in cash or short dated government bonds will start to look at the reinvestment risk there and start to see opportunities for investment both within the equity markets and in fixed income. So I think as we see interest rates start to come off, we will see more interest from an investment standpoint. And I think we're already seeing it, Joffe. I think we've definitely got more activity going on with the advisor and wealth manager market even in anticipation of interest rates coming off later this year.

28:49 Thank you, Mike. And maybe another follow-up question. Looking at the fund range, I know you talked about the fund range already and the depth and breadth of it. Maybe we'll come back and answer that. But if you we look at the funds that perhaps are underperforming, we talked about the ones that are performing. What about the ones that are not underperforming? What corrective actions do you take? You know, Are there sectors or strategies that perhaps you may wish to adjust or just continue? I mean, we keep all our funds under review, obviously, as part of our annual review process, and I think it's important that we continue to do that. I think funds will be in and out of favor given that the, you know, the investment approach that we take. We we do take a lot of risk in our funds relative to to index funds, and, therefore, there are gonna be periods where we go through underperformance. And and, you know, we will have seen that, for example, in areas like, you know, anything that has a value bias within it, such as our UK value strategy is gonna have periods if markets are very against value, where we look poor on a relative basis.

29:44 And and really for the last two or three years, you know, so that whole mid cap growth space has been a very difficult area to be in, and we have a lot of representation in that area. Now clearly, as interest rates start to come down, we think that that that situation will reverse, and and investors will make some very attractive returns from those areas. And and I think, you know, when we do those reviews, I think it's important that we keep focused on, you know, is the investment process that stands behind this fund still valid? Does it still have a place to play in investors portfolios in the long term? So that's the focus. I mean, if we reach the conclusion that that that is not the case and those funds no longer have a role to play, there are steps we can take and we have made those steps a number of times in the past.

30:31 And I think clearly one could look at UK equities, for example, at the moment we have a lot of representation in UK equities, probably 2,500,000,000 of UK equity funds and probably a further billion within our multi manager and multi asset strategies. You look at UK equities and say they've been heavily out of favor over the last three, four, five years and we've seen redemptions from that space. But we know that UK equities are an attractive asset class because private equity firms keep coming in and buying them more or less every week, and we're losing company after company to private equity bids. So, you know, I think there is a case to say that that UK equities having been so out of favor for so long could see a real return to form and could be a fantastic investment for people over the next three to five years. And I think as interest rates come down, as people are looking for alternatives, perhaps we will see a return to form for The UK equity market. Thank you, Mike. And maybe I'm going to turn to Pearce here for a second.

31:33 I think we've got a couple of questions early on about dividend payouts. Is it I think you probably answered those questions now through your finance update. But one of the questions that has come through, which is, talk me through how your cash is down perhaps from the year end position. So how does cash sort of build through the P and L for the year balance sheet? Sure. Well, there is a seasonality in our cash spend. What you'll see is our financial year end is the September 30, and variable remuneration awards for staff accrue into the financial year end. So they build up the balance sheet, and then they are paid out to the individuals in the December payroll. Obviously, there are deferrals of work as well. But if we look at it from a cash point of view, that's a big cash event. So that it then draws down on our cash balance then, and then there's the associated tax that is paid out in January.

32:22 And as I mentioned earlier, we do two distributions in terms of of dividends. So the final dividend is the recommended once we do the year end results, and that comes out and is paid in February. So I think Mike touched on that earlier that that is effectively the low point in our cash balances. And from there, you will then see it build into the financial year end, obviously, drawing down in August when we pay the interim dividend that we just referred to earlier. Great. Thank you, Piers. I'm conscious of time, perhaps time for a couple more questions in here. Maybe we can talk a bit more about the acquisitions, Mike, and how you fund them in the process. Yeah, I mean, it's as Piers has just highlighted here, we don't have huge amounts of cash on our balance sheet. And I think, you know, it's important when we're looking at acquisitions such as the Telworth deal earlier in the year that we're using a combination for a start, we want to do acquisitions that are accretive to the business, right, clearly, and where we believe we can grow those assets under management to create further value for shareholders.

33:23 And I think it's important that we use all of the tools that we have at our disposal when we make those acquisitions. And so for example, on Telworth, we were able to use a combination of cash and of shares. I you know, clearly shares, you know, one can argue about what the the correct value of the shares is at any point in time, but they have a market price. And I think one of the attractions to to certain businesses is to swap their unlisted equity for liquid equity listed equity with us to help grow that business going forward and participate in that growth through the shares they have taken as part of the acquisition. So Telworth was funded through both cash and shares. The the acquisition of the small Dublin usage fund was actually quite a small acquisition, and we did that a 100% in cash. So, you know, we we will use both both forms whenever we look at m and a. And the other thing I think is really important to stress is that, you know, why would people want to do, you know, m and a with us? Yeah. Throw their lot in with us because, you know, the businesses we afford have got an ongoing life with us, particularly for the individuals concerned at Telworth.

34:33 And I think it is the fact that PREMIER MITON is perceived as a business that does have a strong culture, that is a good environment for for management talent to base itself within and has a strong distribution and marketing team, Javi, under your under your auspices, which, you know, obviously allows them to help build their business going forward. So I think, you know, we are seen as an attractive home for investment talent, and, you know, we we have conversations ongoing all the time in terms of m and a, and and we generally find, that it is that combination of an ability to offer onward participation and that strong culture and strong distribution capability that people find attractive. Thank you, Mike. I'm probably, as I said, conscious of time. Well, let's take one last final question. I think, Mike, I think the only one I can pick off the screen in front of me that is perhaps relevant, bear in mind where we are in the political cycle is, you know, with a general election coming up, is that good or bad for asset managers?

35:29 Yeah. That's a that's a great question, and thank you for for for raising it. I think, you know, we're we're an asset manager. We run money globally. We run money in The UK. We run money in in fixed income and in equities and multi asset. So we obviously have to, you know, take advantage of opportunities wherever we see them around the world. So in in a sense, we are apolitical from the from that perspective. I think, you know, one thing that would be encouraging for The UK would be a period of stability. You know, clearly, the period since the Brexit vote, you know, we've been through what what feels like a never ending turmoil, and I I don't I don't think we really mind who forms the next government as long as it it shows some stability. And and I think I am encouraged that, you know, politicians on both sides of the political divide have have evidence that they understand the issues that are affecting, say, The UK capital markets.

36:25 I noticed that the labor have come out and said they they will support the the new UK ISA. I know it's only a small a small amount of money, but I think at the margin, it's helpful. And I think the fact that the politicians on both sides are recognizing that it's critically important, that the, you know, that The UK economy is supported with a vibrant capital market, with a strong funds industry, and with a market that is open for business. So, you know, my my ask, if I if I'm allowed one, to whoever forms the next government is that they keep that focus and and keep that recognition that unless they do something, you know, The UK market is gonna find it very difficult. So I I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far.

37:10 Mike, Pearce, thank you both very much indeed. And, Jake, can I hand back to you, sir? Absolutely. Mike, Pearce, Joffe, thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time then addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this afternoon. And, of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended, just for you to review to then add any additional responses and, of course, where it's appropriate to do so. And we'll publish all those responses out on the platform. But, Mike, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, if I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that would be great. Yeah. No. Thank you, Jake. And thank you to everyone for attending. We hope you do find these sessions useful. We definitely enjoy having an opportunity to come and tell you about our business and tell you what we're doing.

38:00 It has been difficult over the last couple of years. You know, it's been difficult for the whole asset management sector, but it does feel as if things are getting better and that we are turning the corner. And I think our business is well placed. We've got a strong balance sheet. We've got some great people working here. We've got some great investment performance. And I think as market conditions improve, we will be able to capture market share, grow our assets under management and reward our long term shareholders for their patience during this difficult time. So thank you very much, and we look forward to catching up with you all hopefully at the year end results which will be just before Christmas. Thank you. Have a great summer. Perfect. Mike, that's great. Thank you once again for updating investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that management team can really better understand your views and expectations?

38:55 This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of PREMIER MITON GROUP PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.