AJ Bell H2 2024 Earnings Report

AJ Bell EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 20.46
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

AJ Bell Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

AJ Bell Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2024
• Date: 12/5/2024
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, December 5, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 2:00AM ET

Established in 1995, AJ Bell (LON:AJB) is one of the largest investment platforms in the UK, operating at scale in both the advised and direct-to-consumer markets. Our purpose is to help people invest by providing them with easy access to Pensions, ISAs and General investment accounts, great customer service and competitive charges. Our two core platform propositions are AJ Bell in the D2C market and AJ Bell Investcentre in the advised market, which both provide access to a broad investment range including shares and other instruments traded on the major stock exchanges around the world, as well as all mainstream collective investments available in the UK and our own range of AJ Bell funds. In the D2C market we also offer AJ Bell Dodl, a low-cost investment app with a simplified investment range that makes it easier for customers to choose investments and buy and sell them without paying any commission. For D2C cash savers we offer a Cash savings hub which provides access to a range of competitive savings accounts to help people manage their long-term cash deposits. AJ Bell is headquartered in Manchester, UK, with offices in London and Bristol.

AJ Bell H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• A. J. Bell added 66,000 customers (up 14%) to reach 542,000 and saw assets under administration grow 22% to £86.5 billion, with net inflows up 45% to £6.1 billion.
• Revenue climbed 23% to £269.4 million and profit before tax rose 29% to £113.3 million, delivering a 42% PBT margin driven by higher custody fees, transaction volumes and net interest income.
• Shareholder returns hit a record, with the ordinary dividend up 16% to a total of 12.5 pence per share (20th consecutive year of growth) and a new £30 million share buyback announced.
• Recent government tax measures—including higher national insurance, increased CGT rates and proposed IHT on unused pensions—create complexity and could slow inflows and platform usage.
• Operating costs rose 23% to £162.2 million as the company deliberately invested more in branded marketing and product development to support long-term growth.

Presentation

[Danni Hewson, Head of Financial Analysis at AJ Bell]

Hello and welcome to AJ Bell's 2024 Annual results video. We're shortly going to hear from Michael Summersgill and Peter Birch, CEO and CFO of AJ Bell. But first, let's go through some of the key numbers from the year, starting with customers, and AJ Bell's total platform customers increased by 66,000 in the year to close at 542,000, an increase of 14%. Platform assets under administration closed at GBP 86.5 billion, up 22% in a year. Net inflows were up 45% versus the prior year to GBP 6.1 billion, with GBP 2.2 billion attributable to the advised platform and GBP 3.9 billion being D2C. Moving on to the key numbers from today's full year results. Revenue was up 23% to GBP 269.4 million, driven by strong ad valorem and transactional revenues.

[Danni Hewson, Head of Financial Analysis at AJ Bell]

Ad valorem revenue was up 25% to GBP 202 million due to growth in custody fees driven by higher average AUA and an increase in net interest income generated on cash balances held on the platform. Transactional fees were up 34% to GBP 35.3 million. Dealing activity was higher in the year due to improved retail investor sentiment following a recovery in global equity markets. FX revenue was also strong due to increased levels of dealing in overseas shares, particularly the United States. Total costs increased by 23% to GBP 162.2 million, while net finance income totaled GBP 6 million. Taken together, this resulted in a 29% increase in profit before tax to GBP 113.3 million and an improved PBT margin of 42%. And finally, the company has announced a record level of shareholder returns in the form of an increased ordinary dividend and a new share buyback program.

[Danni Hewson, Head of Financial Analysis at AJ Bell]

The board has recommended a final ordinary dividend of GBP 0.0825 per share, taking the total ordinary dividend for the year to GBP 0.125, the 20th consecutive year of ordinary dividend growth. In addition, the board has approved a share buyback program of up to GBP 30 million, returning surplus capital to shareholders in line with the company's capital allocation framework. You can find full details about these results on our website. Now let's hear from Michael and Peter and get some insight into what's behind these numbers and also their expectations for full year 2025 and beyond.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

I think 2024 has been a really strong year for us. When I reflect on the year, I always look at it through the lens of all of our key stakeholder groups, so our customers, our people, and our shareholders. And I think we've delivered to each and every one of those groups. So for customers, we've had the same service standards as we always try to deliver. We've delivered new products and new features to market, and we've reduced prices that customers pay as well. For our staff, the continued growth of the business has meant great opportunities for them. So we've seen hundreds of internal promotions over the course of the year, and we've got the same high level of staff engagement as we've had for a number of years now. And then we've done a good job of delivering to shareholders as well.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

Great returns for shareholders through the course of 2024. So a strong year all around. The platform market is a big market and one that's still growing in the U.K. So there are about GBP 3 trillion of assets that would be well served on an investment platform, and there's just over GBP 1 trillion of money already on one of those platforms. So you would expect the market itself to continue to grow over time. We have about an 8% market share, so there's still plenty of room for us to grow within the platform market. Growth in the year has been very strong, so we've delivered over GBP 6 billion of net inflows onto the platform. And the key to that success has been the fact that we operate in both the direct-to-consumer platform market and in the advised platform market.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

Having those two channels is what helps us to maximize the growth.

[Peter Birch, CFO at AJ Bell]

So another year of record financial performance. Revenue and profit before tax both up significantly year-on-year. From a revenue perspective, the increase was driven by three factors. Assets under administration were up year-on-year, which drove high levels of custody revenue. Average interest rates were also higher through the period, which resulted in an increase in net interest margin. And dealing activity was also at a more normalized level this year, which meant that year on year transaction revenue increased. Within that, there's a greater weighting towards overseas stocks, which drove higher foreign exchange revenue. I think all of that shows the real benefit of the diversified nature of the revenue model because we delivered that growth despite the fact that we also reduced customer prices on the 1st of April. So a really pleasing year from a revenue growth perspective.

[Peter Birch, CFO at AJ Bell]

Underlying costs were up 19% in the year to GBP 156 million. That was about GBP 4 million higher than we'd originally guided to. And that was a deliberate, conscious decision to invest a bit more into branded marketing and also product development. We've seen good traction in those areas and have the sort of ability and the confidence to make greater levels of investment. Our philosophy is that as we generate increased levels of profitability, we will reinvest that into the business, into areas such as pricing, which we've already talked about, and then also product development and branded marketing. The profitability of the business was higher than we'd expected it was going to be when we issued our cost guidance at the start of the year. Hence, the deliberate decision to invest a bit more in those key areas.

[Peter Birch, CFO at AJ Bell]

We announced a new capital allocation framework alongside our half-year results. That was very much a re-articulation of how we already thought about things, but probably set out in a bit of a clearer way. Clearly, we need to comply with our regulatory capital requirements. We then think about organic investment within the business. We committed to a progressive dividend policy, moving away from a fixed 65% payout that we'd used in previous years, which then potentially gives us a bit more surplus capital to think about how do we deploy that. We'll consider M&A opportunities, but we're a principally organic strategy. If there are no M&A opportunities arising, we then think about how we distribute any remaining surplus capital. We'll consider things like special dividend and share buyback programs, and we'll do that on an annual basis.

[Peter Birch, CFO at AJ Bell]

How we're choosing to implement our capital allocation framework this year is that we're announcing an ordinary dividend, which is up on the previous year by 16%. And that is the 20th consecutive year of ordinary dividend growth, which is a great message to be able to give to shareholders. That still leaves us with significant surplus capital within the business. And so we're also, alongside these results, announcing a share buyback program of up to GBP 30 million. Taken together, that is a record distribution to shareholders, which is a really pleasing thing for us to be able to say at this point in time.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

AJ Bell's purpose is quite straightforward. It's to help people invest. And the main way that we do that is through our investment platforms. The way that we think about strategy is we have three focus areas that we're always trying to bring things back to. So that's to be easy to use, which means different things in the advised and the direct market. To be a trusted provider. So we want to build trust by providing great service and building our brand. And we want to be a low-cost provider as well. We think that's particularly important in financial services to deliver great value to our customers. Ease of use is going to require us to deliver technology improvements over time. We're constantly going to have to improve the user interface, add new features to the platform as advisers' behaviors and customers' behaviors change.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

So the key capability we need to have is to deliver technology change more quickly. And that's something that we've been investing in over recent years. And so we've been making sure that we've got robust automated pipelines so that we've got a quick release process. And we've seen that. We've been bringing more engineers into the business, and we're delivering more change more quickly than we ever have. And we've seen that building over a number of years now. The kinds of things that we've been delivering to market range from new products in the direct markets. We've launched a ready-made pension to make it easier for customers to consolidate their pensions in a single pension wrapper. And then there are new features that we've delivered to the advised market.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

A new onboarding process that allows the adviser to far more efficiently pull all the information that they need for a new customer, all the documentation that they need to provide. It aligns that process with their advice process and just makes it far more efficient for them to operate. So it's an ongoing program. Those are just examples of things that we've done in the year. And it's that ability to deliver tech change that is going to be key for us for years to come. Trust is hugely important in financial services. And we've seen all the research that we do around the decision process that people go through when they join a platform, just how important it is. People recommending the platform to them, people having heard of the brands as crucial factors in making their decisions.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

So we've been trying to build that brand awareness for a few years now. The TV campaign, the radio campaign that we've been running through that period have been a key part of the success. We've supplemented that with sponsorship activity. So we've partnered with the Great Run Series. And they have a feel-good factor about those events that we were really looking to draw out in our brand. And that has been a really successful partnership for us. The combination of those two activities has really driven the brand awareness very successfully over the last two years. We're at all-time highs now. And the importance of that is when somebody is making that decision to decide to pick a platform, it just puts AJ Bell at the front of their minds. Once you've won people's trust, on an ongoing basis, you have to maintain it.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

We do that through trying to deliver a really high level of service. So first and foremost, we're trying to deliver a digital proposition. People generally want to self-serve. And so that means that the system has to be reliable. It has to be easy to use. But there will be points in people's investing journey where they want some human support. They'll have a query, and they'll want somebody to talk that through with them. So we think that answering the phones quickly and connecting people to a knowledgeable member of the team here at AJ Bell is important. We've had 450,000 calls from customers this year, and 97% of those were answered within 20 seconds. And that's one of the key statistics that we monitor in the business. And you see the impact that that has on customers coming through in things like the Trustpilot scores.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

We've maintained a 4.8-star rating all the way through the year. And when you see the feedback that people provide so often, it's the quality of support that they got and the speed with which the information was provided that are key. So that combination is really important to maintaining trust on an ongoing basis.

[Peter Birch, CFO at AJ Bell]

As Michael mentioned previously, pricing is a key consideration for customers when selecting a platform. We always want to remain competitive on pricing. As the business has scaled, we've been able to do that. In the year, we announced changes to our customer charges and customer interest rates. The annualized financial impact of those was over GBP 20 million. It was a significant reinvestment into the business in the year. We're clear in terms of the areas we need to invest in to drive growth and to drive benefit for all of our stakeholders. We need to invest in ease of use, trust, and pricing. We've done all of those things in the year. We've generated significant growth. We'll continue to invest in those areas for the benefit of the business in the future.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

So we had the first budget from this new Labour government back in October, and it was certainly a tax-raising budget. That impacted us, the users of our platform, and the retail investors that we're all trying to serve. So National Insurance increased it for us as an employer and for the IFAs who use our platform. The IFAs using the platform, they suffered CGT reliefs on the ultimate disposal of their business. Those reliefs were eroded. And retail investors saw CGT rates increase and also now IHT being applied to unused pensions on death. And it was that last topic of IHT on pensions. It was the one that really concerned me. A lot of the other measures were largely expected, but the IHT proposal is poorly thought through and actually unworkable for the industry.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

It will result in unnecessary delays for people inheriting those pension pots when they don't need to go through the IHT process, and it will create a lot of extra administration for the industry. So we've been very vocal in our criticism. We've spoken to government directly about our concerns, and there's lots of work going on across the industry to try and collaborate and put forward some more workable proposals to the government to tax unused pensions on death. So a concern, but one that I think ultimately we'll be able to work through as an industry. There was lots of speculation leading up to the budget around changes that might be made to different aspects of pensions, namely the tax treatment of contributions into pensions and then the withdrawal of what's commonly referred to as tax-free cash at the point at which somebody starts drawing their retirement savings.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

Now, neither area was actually changed, but the speculation, the uncertainty was incredibly unhelpful. And understandably, these are lifelong decisions that people are making. These are big financial decisions that they're making. We saw a meaningful change, material amounts of money coming into the business and going out of those pension wrappers compared to normal levels. And so you saw the sensitivity that people have to these topics. We made a proposal to government to operate what we refer to as a Pensions Tax Lock, basically saying that those two areas of the system would not be changed. These are really long-term decisions that people are making. We think they need to have confidence in the system.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

Having now been through the budget and seen the importance of that, it's something that we'll be campaigning for again in the new year because I think that having applied IHT on pensions, we've seen that changes to pensions tax are in the mind of the government, and we need some certainty around those two core areas of the pension system. We've been campaigning for ISA simplification for a couple of years now. Our objective is to get more people investing, and that's good for society. It's good for the individuals. Too many people in the U.K. hold cash over the long term, and if they make that move into investing, they'll get far greater returns. ISAs are a brilliant way to try and get more people investing because it's a well-recognized and well-liked part of the financial services system.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

The problem is that the understanding of ISAs has become eroded over the years as more and more ISAs have been added to the landscape, and it just creates confusion. So we want to pare that right back. Ideally, we would like to just have one ISA, but we probably need to get there in a couple of stages. So it's something like I say, we've been collaborating with industry and talking to governments about for a few years now. Labour made a commitment to ISA simplification ahead of the election, and my understanding is it's something that we can expect to see some progress on in 2025.

[Peter Birch, CFO at AJ Bell]

So for FY 2025, we're expecting revenue margins to moderate slightly. We said previously that we expect that to happen next year. And that reflects the full year impact of the price changes that we made on the 1st of April. From a cost perspective, we're expecting cost growth to moderate year on year. That's, again, something that we've indicated previously will happen. Costs are, however, expected to increase a bit more than we'd originally guided to. And there are two main reasons for that. The first one being the impact of the National Insurance changes that were announced in the budget. That impacts us by about GBP 2 million. And the second thing is that we're choosing to invest a bit more in product development and brand and marketing than we originally indicated.

[Peter Birch, CFO at AJ Bell]

And that's a deliberate decision that reflects the fact that actually profitability is higher than we'd expected it was going to be when we issued the guidance this time last year. In line with our philosophy, where we generate higher margins, we look to reinvest in areas like pricing, trust, and ease of use. And so we're going to do that from a brand and marketing and product development perspective. And we believe we can do that and absorb the full year impact of price changes whilst still growing profit before tax and achieving a PBT margin in excess of 40%.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

So I'm really positive about the future for AJ Bell. If we look at the opportunity in the platform market, first of all, we expect that market to carry on growing. I think that the way that we're approaching the market, having a platform in both the advised and the direct-to-consumer market, is the right way for us to make the most of that growth opportunity. Now, not to say that there aren't some challenges. There always are. And we've seen with the new government that we have that they will want to raise more tax and that some of that could add complexity to our industry. But the key thing is I think we've got the right people in place to address those challenges. And we've got a great team here at AJ Bell. We've got a highly engaged workforce.

[Michael Summersgill, CEO at AJ Bell]

I think I've got the right senior people around me, and I've got a very supportive board. So very optimistic about what lies ahead in 2025 and beyond.

Participants

Executives

• Danni Hewson, Head of Financial Analysis
• Peter Birch, CFO
• Michael Summersgill, CEO