IGM Financial Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 8, 2024

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

As a reminder, all participants are in a listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask I would now like to turn the conference over to Kyle Martin, Treasurer and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Betsy, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our Q3 earnings call. Joining me on the call today, we have James O'Sullivan, President and CEO of IGM Financial Damon Murchison, President and CEO of IG Wealth Management Luke Gould, President and CEO of Mackenzie Investments and Keith Potter, Executive Vice President and CFO of IG Financial. Before we get started, I would like to draw your attention to our cautions concerning forward looking statements on Slide 3 of the presentation. Slides 4 and 5 summarize the non IFRS financial measures and other financial measures used in this material. And on Slide 6, we provide a list of documents that are available on our website related to our Q3 results.

Speaker 1

I'll now turn it over to James.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Kyle, and good morning, everyone. Turning to Slide 9. We continue to execute on our growth strategy across IGM and we demonstrated great progress during the Q3. Adjusted earnings per share for the quarter were $1.03 up 12% year over year and our 2nd best adjusted Q3 EPS on record. Total client assets, including our proportionate share of strategic investments, increased 23% year over year to $462,000,000,000 at the end of September, with each of the companies achieving all time record high asset levels.

Speaker 2

Wealth managers IG Wealth, WealthSimple and Rockefeller continue to execute on their strategies to deliver their client value promise, acquiring new client relationships and driving scale through asset expansion. Specifically, on IG Wealth, I am particularly pleased with the growing evidence that they have successfully pivoted to delivering financial planning and investment management services to high net worth Canadians. Many years of investment are now clearly bearing fruit. Asset managers Mackenzie, China AMC and Northleaf continue to drive strong asset growth, leveraging their competitive advantages to deliver relevant investment solutions to retail and institutional clients in Canada and across the globe. Damon and Luke will speak on these points in a moment, while Keith will also speak to how Wealthsimple's ongoing success drove an increase in the fair value of our ownership position in the company.

Speaker 2

We continue to invest to drive further growth, while returning $160,000,000 of capital to our shareholders through our attractive dividend and our share buyback program, which continues to be active. Turning to the current operating environment for our businesses, starting with recent financial market conditions on Slide 10. Both equity and fixed income markets continued to reflect and support improvements in investor sentiment. Our clients achieved investment returns of over 5% during the quarter. On an LTM basis, our clients experienced an average return of over 20%.

Speaker 2

This is an important point that emphasizes the value of long term client relationships centered around financial planning and advice, especially considering the uncertainty that clients faced over that period. Continuing on Slide 11, the operating environment in Canada continued to improve during the quarter with positive long term mutual fund net sales overall. With improving investor sentiment, lower inflation and moderating interest rates, the macro industry backdrop is likely on the cusp of becoming a tailwind for our Canadian retail focused businesses after what has been a challenging 2 year period. We continue to expect gradual improvement persist over the coming quarters, provided financial markets remain steady and interest rate cuts continue to alleviate some of the pressure felt by Canadian households over the past 2 years. On Slide 12, you'll see how our year over year earnings growth was driven by both the Wealth Management and Asset Management segment of 10% 16%, respectively.

Speaker 2

I want to pause on Slide 13 to emphasize the strong double digit plus asset growth across each of our businesses, which together drove the 23% increase at the consolidated IGM level. Each of our wealth and asset management businesses are executing well and driving growth within their unique industry context. And the horizontal connectivity across these businesses continues to unlock new learnings and opportunities to add value for our clients and other stakeholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Damon, who will speak to the performance in our Wealth Management segment. Damon?

Speaker 3

Thank you, James, and good morning, everyone. Turn to Slide 15 and Wealth Management's 3rd quarter highlights, including IG Wealth, Rockefeller and WealthSimple. During the quarter, we saw record high ending AUM and A as well as 3rd quarter records for total new client and existing client gross inflows. The record existing client inflows are important. Have proven our ability to acquire new clients through various market conditions.

Speaker 3

This quarter, we also demonstrated our investments are supporting our ability to expand share of wallet with our existing clients. This is an outcome that we're focused on and expect to continue going forward. Focusing in on the numbers, IG Wealth ended the quarter with AUA of $136,400,000,000 up a solid 19% year over year and up 5.2% during the Q3 driven by financial markets. Within that figure, dollars 1,000,000 plus clients now represent $58,300,000,000 or 43 percent of our AU M and A, up 43% from a year ago. Gross inflows during the quarter were $3,400,000,000 with gross sales into IGM product at 3,300,000,000 dollars Net inflows from the quarter were $330,000,000 and were $144,000,000 during October.

Speaker 3

Net sales into IGM product were $313,000,000 for the quarter and $177,000,000 during October. It's now 3 of the last 4 months where net sales have exceeded net inflows. As we spoke to while interest rates and cash balances are rising, we knew this point would come as our advisors work with our clients, we're confident that we will see clients continue to actively deleverage cost back into the markets driving net sales. Total gross inflows from newly acquired clients were $1,000,000,000 with the masterful and high net worth segments representing almost 3 quarters of these inflows. We continue to see strength in our insurance business and positive progress within our mortgage business.

Speaker 3

And once again, this year, we ranked as leaders amongst our peers in the investment executive dealer report card. Both Rockwell and Wealthsimple had very strong quarters and I'll speak to both in the coming slides. Turn to Slide 16, you can see IG's Q3 flows. As you can see on the left, both October and Q3 represented our best growth inflows on record, while on the right hand side, you can see a continuation of positive momentum in both our net inflows and IGM product net sales. This kind of dollar average cost back into the market, we are now seeing decreases in cash, GICs and Hisense.

Speaker 3

This quarter proves that we have and continue to make the right investments to allow our advisors to work with their clients to build, quantify, preserve and distribute wealth as we move towards a more positive operating environment. Turn to Slide 17, two brief comments here. The top left, you will see an increase of approximately 11% in gross inflows, which is complemented by year over year decrease in our gross outflows rate, the first decrease since Q1 'twenty two. In the middle of the top, you can see the decrease in cash, GICs and high end balances. Turning to Slide 18.

Speaker 3

As mentioned, the $1,000,000,000 of gross inflows from new acquired clients during the Q3 represented our best Q3 for new client acquisition in our history. We continue to execute well on growing our AU M and A within our target market. We fully expect to see further progress as Canadians' needs for financial planning advice continues to rise. Turn to Slide 19, an illustration of our progress within our targeted client segments. 2018, we directed our focus to massive fluent and high net worth clients, focusing our investments, partnerships and business processes to support these 2 important segments.

Speaker 3

Through new clients and expanding our share of wallet with existing clients, both of these segments now represent AUM and A, which is well above $50,000,000,000 The mass affluent and high net worth clients now represent 83% of our AU M and A, up from 69% at the end of 2018. Correspondingly, these two important segments now represent 37% of our total clients, up from 23% over the same period. We expect to see a continuation of this growth as we build our business to align with the industry's wealth drivers. Turning to Slide 20. We've introduced a new slide here, which focuses on our mortgage and insurance business.

Speaker 3

While there are no new disclosures on this slide, it's important to surface these metrics and show the important progress that we're making in both businesses, businesses that complement the needs of our target segments and support our expansion per share of wallet. We'll continue to provide updates for these businesses on a quarterly basis. Moving to Slide 21. ID Wealth ranked extremely well in the Investment Executive 2024 Dealer Report Card, including a net promoter score that continues to place us among the top half when compared to the full service brokerage arms of the big five banks. While overall, we continue to rank above average versus our peers, this slide also illustrates the categories where IG ranked in the number one position.

Speaker 3

These are meaningful as these categories represent where we have invested to build capabilities to elevate our advisor and client experience against the masterful and high net worth segments. Turn to Slide 22, some updates on Rockefeller's progress. Client assets are up 33% year over year and 6% during the quarter, driven by strong inorganic and organic growth. Over the last 12 months, organic growth has driven $6,800,000,000 in client assets. Rockefeller also continues to add to their private advisor network with 52 new advisors being added over the last 12 months.

Speaker 3

Turning to Slide 23 and Wealthsimple. It was another record setting quarter of AUA growth at Wealthsimple. Wealthsimple's AUA increased by $8,500,000,000 during the quarter, ending with over $52,000,000,000 in assets, up 20% sequentially and 109% on a year over year basis. Client count also expanded by 60% year over year to CAD2.6 million. With that, I'll turn it over to Luke Gould.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you, Damon. Good morning, everyone. Turning to Page 25, you'll see a few highlights for Mackenzie and Asset Management for the quarter. Record high AUM of CAD2 $12,000,000,000 is up 13.8 percent in the last year and 5% in the quarter driven by continuing strong client returns.

Speaker 4

We're pleased to see improving investor confidence in the quarter with meaningful year over year improvement in gross and net sales. Net redemptions of $296,000,000 in the quarter compared to $700,000,000 last year and we saw similar improvements in October and positive net sales of $52,000,000 in the month. We received the results of the 2024 Advisor Perception Study in September and we're proud of the results. Our overall score improved and we saw improvements across many dimensions. We remain number 2 in advisor sales penetration, the percentage of advisors actively selling our products and we are number 2 across all 3 advisor types, brokers, planners and insurers.

Speaker 4

We also maintained our number 2 rank on brand. Our overall score remains number 2 relative to large players and out of the 22 rated firms we ranked number 4 this year, down from 3rd last year as a result of a smaller firm newly included in the study. In the 4th section,

Speaker 5

we

Speaker 4

had a busy launch cycle this period focused on active equity ETFs and Quad. We launched 4 active equity ETFs in the period in places where we have strong capabilities in relevant spaces. This brings our total of year to date active ETF launches to 8 and this complements our successful active fixed income ETF offerings, which we introduced in 2016 to 2018. We also watched 3 mandates advised by our Global Quant Equity boutique in the period and we've launched 9 year to date for this boutique as we trailblaze Quant Investing in Retail with our very strong Boston based Quant team. In the bottom left, you can see we established a partnership with CGI during the period on back office processing to ensure an industry leading client experience.

Speaker 4

Through this expanded partnership with CGI, we will automate and improve our platform to ensure a leading client experience for the thousands of advisors and over 1,000,000 retail clients who rely on our plan administration and processing capabilities. This partnership builds on our proven track record of partnering to leverage the scale and expertise of global leaders and we're proud to partner with CGI, a Canadian firm with such strong capabilities and similar values to our own as an employer. During the quarter, we continue to see strong net sales at China MC, where long term investment funding is up 46% in the year and 23% in the quarter. Noteworthy in the quarter obviously was government stimulus focused on domestic equity markets, which led to solid investment returns at the end of the quarter with equity markets up 25% in the last week of quarter and about 15% during the full quarter. Also noteworthy was continued market share gains at China MC, driven by their $96,000,000,000 or around $18,000,000,000 in net flows this quarter.

Speaker 4

And in the bottom right, you can see Northleaf continues its trend of averaging around $1,000,000,000 in fundraising each quarter. And this quarter they raised 1,500,000,000 and nearly 5,000,000,000 over the last year diversified across their private equity, private credit and infrastructure offerings. Turning to Page 26, you can see the trended history of Mackenzie's net flows. As mentioned, we started to see a year over year gross sales improvements with a 20% improvement in Q3 and a 30% improvement in October. This has been accompanied by a peak in redemption rates and we've seen net sales starting to improve in the context of an improving industry environment.

Speaker 4

While we've seen while we have year over year net sales declines within a few of our larger boutiques with softer near term investment performance, which I'll review, we are seeing very good sales momentum in many of our other offerings that have very compelling performance within very large categories. Turning to Page 27, just a few quick remarks. In the top right, you can see that overall Morningstar ratings at September 30th by share of assets remains relatively consistent with June 30th. In the table in the bottom left, you can see we have seen improvements in both retail and institutional investment fund net sales. I want to call it institutional, where institutional investment funds have been quite strong with improvements through our partnerships with Primerica, Laurentian and Wealthsimple.

Speaker 4

And while retail starts to improve, it remains the net redemptions and slightly behind the industry net sales rate as we referenced in the last slide. Trinity Page 28, you can see our performance in net sales for our retail mutual funds and ETFs by boutique. As we spoke to last quarter, we are seeing some short term relative underperformance within our Bluewater and Green Ship boutiques. Though I will reiterate gross sales remains resilient and these boutiques continue to match in line with their disciplined approaches and continue to have very strong long term track records. Across other boutiques, I'd highlight the growing net sales within the Global Quand Equity and the Global Equity and Income boutiques, where we have very compelling performance within very large product categories.

Speaker 4

I'd also highlight the top right, the strong performance of our Putnam advised U. S. All cap growth mandate, which is included in this column and is a very strong 5 star fund. Turning to Page 29, you can see the regular view of the Chinese investment fund industry. On the left hand side of the bottom, you can see that the 3rd quarter saw slight net redemptions overall driven by money market funds and this was partially offset by long term fund net sales of 59,000,000,000.

Speaker 4

Industry long term fund AUM grew by 6% during the quarter and is up 18% year over year. And I'd highlight, while domestic equity markets generally increased by 15% in the quarter driven by the government stimulus, over 55% of industry long term fund assets are actually fixed income. And so that muted part of the increase that you'd expect from the stock market increases. On the right, you can see China MC's continued strong market position ranked number 2 in both long term funds and overall investment funds with very good increases in market share in the quarter and in the last year. Turning to Page 30, you can see continued growth in China MC's AUM with investment fund assets of 11% in the quarter and 34% year over year.

Speaker 4

Total investment fund that flows in the quarter were KRW30 1,000,000,000 and as mentioned earlier, long term fund that flows were KRW96 1,000,000,000 or KRW18 1,000,000,000. As reviewed at Investor Day by our CEO, EMEA Li, China AMC is the market leader in ETFs in the Chinese domestic industry and strong close to ETFs in the period was the key contributor to these strong net sales. And on Page 31, you can see another quarter of continued strong growth at Northleaf with 1,500,000,000 in new commitments the quarter and $4,800,000,000 over the last 12 months. The fundraising during the quarter was well diversified across Canadian and international investors and spread fairly equally across private credit, private equity and infrastructure investments. I'll now turn the call over to Keith Potter.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Luke, and good morning, everyone. On Slide 33, you can see key highlights for Q3. As James commented, adjusted EPS was $1.03 excluding other items at Lifeco. Adjusted earnings are up 12% year over year, our 2nd highest 3rd quarter on record. We returned $160,000,000 to shareholders in the quarter through the quarterly dividend and continue to be active with our NCIB program repurchasing $27,000,000 in shares With the continued exceptional performance of WealthSimple, which Damon spoke to already, we have marked up the fair value of our investment by 46% to $1,200,000,000 I'll speak more to this on a later slide.

Speaker 5

Turning to Slide 34, you can see our AU M and A and flows coming off a strong first half for market returns and asset growth. Q3 got off to a rocky start, but ended up almost 5% with average assets increasing by respectable 3.1%. And on a trailing 12 month basis, average AUM and A is up approximately 7%. Turning to Slide 35, we have our consolidated earnings, up 12% year over year and then 11% sequentially. On 0.2%, as guided last quarter, our operations and support and business development expenses were up 5.1% and on a year to date basis, expenses are up 3.5% and we continue to guide into 4% growth for the full year over 2023.

Speaker 5

And we look forward to providing our 2025 expense guidance on the February call. On Slide 36, we present the key profitability drivers for IG Wealth. I highlight a couple of points here on the left. You can see average AUM and A was up 3.7% over last quarter. And on the right, the advisory fee rate is in line with our guidance and reflects the quarterly increase in market returns as clients moved up wealth bands.

Speaker 5

This includes our continued success with the acquisition of Mass Affluent and High Network clients and strong flows from existing clients Damon spoke to. On Slide 37, IG overall earnings were $125,500,000 in Q3, up 10.8% year over year and 12.3% sequentially. And on point 1, advisory and product and program fees were up year over year relative to last quarter driven by AUM and A growth. On point 2, other financial planning revenues reflect continued strong performance in the insurance business and are impacted by fair value adjustments in the mortgage business. During the quarter, the downward movement of swap rates drove a negative fair value adjustment of approximately $4,000,000 from hedges or mortgages pending sale that did not qualify for hedge accounting, but were effective economically.

Speaker 5

The insurance business had another quarter of growth relative to Q3 2023 and was in line with our expectations following very strong growth in the first half of the year. And as a reminder, other product commissions will move in a similar direction as revenue and you can see in the table under 0.2 that this is 64% of revenue this quarter. Moving to Slide 38, we have Mackenzie's AUM by client and product type as well as net revenue rates. On the left, you can see average AUM is up 2.8% and on the right, haul rates remain relatively unchanged versus last quarter. Turning to Slide 39, you can see Mackenzie's earnings of $59,400,000 is up 5.1% year over year and 6.3% sequentially with higher AUM net asset management fees are up year over year and relative to Q2, and higher net investment income reflected seed capital returns from positive market growth in the quarter.

Speaker 5

Slide 40 has China EMC results. 1st on the last, AUM increased 9.2% versus last quarter and growth came from very strong market returns in the last few days of September. And given the timing of the market rally, average AUM increased by only 2% in the quarter. And on the right, you can see China MC's earnings of $32,900,000 As called out in the slide, the late quarter market rally resulted in positive fair value adjustments from Sea Capital. There were also some other one time items impacting the quarter and adjusting for this Q3 earnings would have been more in line with Q2.

Speaker 5

Slide 41 has earnings contributions from companies in each segment. A couple of comments. First, Rockefeller was close to breakeven this quarter and expect to see continued progress toward positive earnings and north of the earnings of $2,700,000 are up from 2023 and also reflect continued investment in the business. Slide 42 provides a summary view of earnings and ownership and value of our strategic investments by segment. On Wealthsimple, we have revised the fair value upward based on public peer valuations and revisions to revenue expectations.

Speaker 5

And in addition, and as noted in our press release, our valuation of Wealthsimple is also informed by a secondary transaction with a 3rd party investor that is expected to close in the Q4. From an IGM valuation perspective, our strategic investments now represent approximately $5,900,000,000 in value. And as a reminder, WealthSimple is fair value through OCI and Rockefeller currently does not contribute to earnings, but both have significant value. Slide 43 highlights execution against our capital allocation priorities. We continue to execute on our share repurchases during the quarter, while maintaining financial flexibility with leverage remaining at 1.6 times and unallocated capital increasing to approximately $450,000,000 during the quarter.

Speaker 5

That concludes my remarks, and I'll turn it over for questions.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question today comes from Tom MacKinnon with BMO. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Yes, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Question with respect to if you can give us any indication as to what you're thinking about for the expense guide for 2025. It might be a little bit premature, but is the 4% that you had sort of guided for 2024,

Speaker 3

what would

Speaker 6

is there any maybe you can give us some color as to whether that should apply for 2025 as well? And how that might be related to if we had better markets or worse markets, how that might impact what you'd be thinking about for the expense guide for 2025? Thanks.

Speaker 5

Great, Tom. It's Keith here. Yes, we're currently working through the 2025 plan and we'll share more details in February. But we have been pretty consistent commenting that in the next couple of years, we do expect to invest in the businesses as we have this year. And I think as you're thinking about 2024 and modeling, 2024 expense guidance, like you mentioned, 4% is we're going to be in a reasonable range to that.

Speaker 5

So that'd be a good assumption as you think through 2025. To the extent that we continue to have market rally or we continue with that perspective and as we've demonstrated in the past with extreme volatility in the marketplace, we make decisions at that point in time depending on the circumstances. But we are committed to growing and strengthening our businesses.

Speaker 6

Where do you see the most investments needed in the business?

Speaker 5

Yes, I think there's a few areas. Technology continues to be an area of investment. Commented on our back office expansion with CGI. We've commented on middle office in the past. So, we're going to continue to see investments there.

Speaker 5

At IG Wealth Management, it would be similar for advisor client platforms. We have a leading technology platform for advisors today and we'll continue with that. And then there's also commitment to build out our mortgage banking and insurance platforms.

Speaker 6

And has those investments kind of picked up more so than this 4% that you would have guided to for 2024?

Speaker 5

Tom, we're achieving what we want to achieve in terms of investments in these parts of our business within that guidance that we provided in 2024 and just finding efficiencies along the way and reinvesting those to achieve these investments in these areas.

Operator

The next question comes from Graham Ryding with TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Good morning. Maybe what can you share with the increase in value for the WealthSimple stake, what can you share about the secondary transaction, if anything? I know it closes next quarter, but is there any detail that you can provide there? And then secondly, like of the three factors that you cited, peer multiples, then performance of the business and then this third party transaction, which ones or which one would have had the biggest sort of impact on the fair value increase?

Speaker 5

Hi, Graeme. It's Keith again here. Yes, in terms of the fair value increase, maybe the last point, the first thing we'd look to is an identifiable transaction. It is a meaningful third party transaction and you can think about the value that we're placing on WealthSimple being right on top of that particular transaction. Having said that, we do look at the performance of the company, revenue expectations, as well as just what's happening in the industry in terms of market multiples and it's all aligned.

Speaker 5

But really the value that we put on WealthSimple is pretty much in line with the 3rd party transaction.

Speaker 7

Okay. That's helpful. You did at IG Wealth, you flagged that I think 43% of the assets that are being held by households with greater than $1,000,000 in sort of household assets. Is there much change to that sort of overall client mix or AUA mix year over year? I know there's been a big change since 2018, but what about more on the near term?

Speaker 7

Has there been much progress on that front?

Speaker 3

Yes, Graham, it's Damon here. So we've been making steady progress over the last 4 years on this. And quite frankly, it's just accelerating. So when you take a look at our success in both massive fluid and high net worth, we are doing our advisors are doing a great job at first of all identifying them, second of all about sharing what we do as an organization and our value proposition and then bringing them in house. We're also doing a very good job at recruiting advisors, something that we don't talk a lot about, but this is a destination of choice for a lot of advisors that are looking to focus on true financial planning for their costs.

Speaker 3

So I would say to you over the last 12 months, we've made significant progress.

Speaker 7

Okay. So that 43% of assets that are in households greater than $1,000,000 that's slightly higher than what it was last year?

Speaker 1

It is definitely higher than it was last year.

Speaker 7

And then great. And then my next question would just be for Luke. It looks like your ETF sales are solid. Your mutual fund sales, long term fund, they tend to be they seem to be lagging the industry long term fund sales trend. And maybe just what needs to happen in your view to get that those Mackenzie mutual fund flows to sort of catch up?

Speaker 7

Is it heavily dependent on the performance here at Bluewater and Green Chip or is it more than that?

Speaker 4

Thanks, Graham. Yes, on Page 20, you can see the boutiques that I remind, we have this boutique approach. And again, we believe it inhibits a whole bunch of things like group think, which are very good and gives us diversified roster to have something relevant compelling for all client needs in an all market environment. Right now, you hit the nail on the head. You've got some softness in Blue Water and in Greenchip in terms of flows.

Speaker 4

And that's what we need is for the places we have strength in places with compelling performance in relevant categories to overtake it. And we're starting to see that happen. So we've got both of those tailwinds, one being an improving industry environment combined with a bunch of stuff on the shelf that has some real compelling performance in really relevant categories. So we think we are on the right track, but those are the 2 things that's going to take right now.

Speaker 7

Okay. That's it for me. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Jamie Gollin with NBF. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Yes, thanks. Yes, just wanted to dig in a little bit more on that Mackenzie question again. Obviously, like number 2 brand in Canada, number 2 sales penetration. Like we've heard about the Bluewater and Greenchip, I think, for a few quarters now. But like where is the gap here?

Speaker 8

Like why is it lagging so significantly over the last few quarters here basically since 2024 relative to the industry?

Speaker 4

Good question, Jamie. So right now we've got about 6% of our assets in 5 Star Funds. And when you look at flows right now in this quarter and the last one, those have been extremely concentrated within very few products in the industry. Right now, we are very fortunate with our global equity team, global equity and income team, the PUTM advise mandates. We have some very strong performance in these categories and we're pushing.

Speaker 4

But right now, if you wanted one single tagline is we don't have as many 5 star funds as we typically do. And there has been a lot of concentration in a very few key mandates in the industry.

Speaker 8

Okay. And is there anything from like, let's say, like a distribution channel where you're seeing that miss the rest of the industry?

Speaker 4

Yes, not at all. We feel we're well set up in terms of distribution. We like where we're at. I'd also highlight if you look at kind of our peers net sales rates and how they travel with our boutique approach and we don't take it for granted, we've got the most resilient net sales in the industry. And so right now, we're lagging by a little bit the industry rate.

Speaker 4

But for most players in the industry, it's kind of feast or famine in relation to us. So we've got a very resilient net sales. We're always very close to the industry rate in good times and bad times. And right now we are focused on getting back above the industry net sales rate and we are pushing on the things that are most compelling in this environment.

Speaker 8

Yes. So just on what you said there like the feast or famine, right. Could you just give us a little bit more color in terms of like who's feasting and who's starving out there assuming Mackenzie is kind of in the middle?

Speaker 4

Yes. I'd say we're very close to the industry, right. Right now Fidelity is doing very well. They've got they're the industry leader and they've got very strong performance in a lot of mandates, a lot of 5 star funds. And so they've captured a lot of the flows in the last period.

Speaker 4

If you look, PIMCO is another fund company that's obviously done quite well and Dynamics had success in their premium yield offering. So we're focused on what we do well. We've got a very broad offering and yes, there's been some very concentrated flows in the industry last 2 quarters.

Speaker 8

Okay, understood. Then quick one for the IG Wealth. Net Promoter Score looks pretty good relative to big 6 banks. Has that been consistent? Has that improved over the last few years?

Speaker 8

Can you give us a bit more of a time line on how that Net Promoter Score has progressed?

Speaker 3

Yes, Jamie, it's Damon. I believe over the last few years, we've seen very strong Net Promoter Scores relative to what the banks have been producing on the full service brokerage side. So, if you take a look at, I would say, in 2022, we started to make a move. 2023 was quite strong. And in 2024, it's also quite strong.

Speaker 3

So, I'd start with 2022. So it's a build that follows kind of what we've been doing and the build of our platform, the build of our advice capabilities and what we're doing at the organization.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. And then last one for Keith. Just to refresh on the dividend payout ratio. I believe you've kind of said you want to see it get to adjusted cash earnings of 60% or below. Is that something you'll look at more on a like a retroactive, so looking backwards as opposed to maybe looking out at the next year and having some more confidence in markets and the potential earnings coming off of that, cash earnings coming off of that?

Speaker 8

So what's your frame of mind? Is it looking backwards or will you look forwards in terms of thinking about that dividend?

Speaker 5

Yes, hi, Jaeme. It's Keith here. Yes, we're currently at about 68% on adjusted basis looking at LTM. That's historically how we looked at it when we've said we obviously approached the Board and have that conversation. But I would say we look at it we look at a number of factors.

Speaker 5

We look at the past, the future, running off of the current run rate. But I think all when we start getting closer to 60%, we'll be looking at from a number of different dynamics.

Speaker 2

Jaeme, it's James. I would just add that it continues to be my view that we need more growth more than we need more yield. And so you should expect our focus to continue to be in growing EPS.

Speaker 8

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Kyle Martins for any closing remarks.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Betsy. And we'd just like

Speaker 1

to thank everyone once again for joining us on the call this morning and wish everyone a good weekend here. Thanks, Betsy. And with that, we'll end today's conference call.

Operator

This brings an end to today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.

Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
IGM Financial Q3 2024
00:00 / 00:00