Martin L. Flanagan
Analyst · the deal in the quarter, so I get the math
Thank you very much, and thank you, everybody, for joining us. And this is Marty Flanagan, along with Loren Starr, and we'll be speaking to the presentation that's available on the website, if you're so inclined to follow. And we'll provide a review of the business results and also the specific discussion around the U.K. Loren will then go into greater detail on the financials. And as always, we'll have Q&A. So let me start on Slide 3, and let me hit some of the highlights of the firm's operating results for the first quarter. Long-term investment performance remained very strong during the quarter. Strong investment performance and continued focus on clients contributed net inflows of $5.2 billion for the quarter across a diverse range of investment capabilities. Adjusted operating income was up 34.5% as compared to fourth quarter of the prior year. And a continued focus on a disciplined approach to our business drove improvement in our operating margin to 40.5%, almost a 500 basis point increase from a year ago. Assets under management were $778 billion for the fourth quarter, up from $745.5 billion in the prior quarter. Operating income was $347 million versus $328 million in the prior quarter. Earnings per share were $0.58, up from $0.55 in the prior quarter. And the quarterly dividend remains at 22.5% -- excuse me, $0.225 per share, and we returned $450 million to shareholders during the quarter. Now let me take a moment and look back at the achievements over the past year, which will provide insights into our long-range plans. First and foremost, of course, we remain very focused on delivering strong long-term investment performance to our clients, which continues to drive the growth in the business. 83% of assets under management were ahead of peers on a 3-year basis at the end of 2013. And by delivering strong long-term investment performance to clients, long-term flows for the year were $34.4 billion. We continue to invest in capabilities where we see strong client demand or future opportunities, such as multi-asset, fixed income and liquid alternative capabilities in particular, and by hiring world-class talent, upgrading technology platform, launching new products and providing additional resources. The ability to leverage capabilities developed by our investment teams to meet client demand across the globe, we believe, is a significant differentiator of our firm. We will continue to bring the best of Invesco to different parts of the business where it makes sense for our clients. We also successfully completed our joint venture with Religare Asset Management in India, divested our private wealth management business and finalized the outsourcing of our European transfer agency process. And before I go into more detail -- Loren goes in detail on the financials, but let me take a minute to review investment performance. And I'm on Page 7, if you are following the presentation. Our commitment to investment excellence and our work to build and maintain strong investment culture helped us maintained a solid long-term investment performance across the enterprise during the quarter. Looking at the firm as a whole, 72% of assets were ahead of peers on a 1-year basis, 83% of assets were ahead of peers on a 3-year basis and the softness in the 5-year number reflect the rolling off of some very strong numbers in the fourth quarter of 2008 and a brief period where we trailed the market during the low-quality rally in 2009. Based on the strength of our recovery later in 2009, we would expect our 5-year numbers to demonstrate steady improvement over the second and third quarters of 2014. Now turning to flows on Page 8. You'll see gross sales remain strong during the quarter, and particularly strong numbers for active assets under management. These numbers also reflect the broad diversity of flows we saw across the global business during the quarter, which included continued strength in equities, alternatives and traditional ETF offering. Net long-term flows were $1 billion for the quarter. Although gross sales remained strong for the fourth quarter, redemptions increased. I'll provide more detail in a moment. We also saw upward trend in institutional channel, net long-term flows and continued demand in real estate and bank loans. Although clients in particular -- institutional clients continue to show interest in our asset allocation strategies, we saw further shift towards risk-based assets in the quarter, which resulted in the slowdown in the sales of IBRA. As we've said in the past, in risk-on environments, client shift demand towards equities and away from risk-parity strategies. This is exactly what we experienced. We saw $6.6 billion of improvement in equity flows in 2013 versus 2012, which more than offset $6.2 billion decline in IBRA inflows in 2013 versus 2012. It's important to note that our asset allocation strategies continue to perform well relative to risk parity peers, and we anticipate these types of flows during the type of equity rally we saw last year. That said, the choppiness we're seeing in the market currently is a likely favorable development for IBRA. Gross long-term sales for our U.S. retail business remained strong at $18.4 billion for the quarter, a 14% increase over the same quarter a year ago. The annualized redemption rate for Invesco remained favorable relative to the industry, as you can see on Slide 11. Flows into the complex were led by strength in U.S. equity, international global equity, traditional ETFs and alternatives. Our business has become increasingly diversified as allocation in alternatives grew to 37% of sales in the quarter versus 28% during that same period 2 years ago. We saw 18 funds with net flows of greater than $100 million over the trailing 12-months ending 12/31 versus 8 in the same period in 2011. We also took the opportunity during the fourth quarter to launch a number of new capabilities globally that will help support the future growth of the firm. In fact, we launched more funds during the fourth quarter than we did in any full calendar year over the past 5 years. A number of these capabilities is built on the work we've done over the past few years to strengthen our alternative offerings to the market. These products leverage 25 years of experience managing alternative assets for pension plans, sovereign wealth funds and other institutions. These product launches are designed to further solidify our position as one of the largest managers of alternatives for U.S. institutional investors, with more than $83 billion of alternative strategies. We continue -- we launched the global total return funds in the U.K., EMEA, the EMEA cross-border and the U.S. market as part of our efforts to further scale our multi-asset capability globally. Multi-asset absolute return funds provide exposure to a blend of investment ideas across asset class, geographies, sectors and currencies, something Invesco is extremely well positioned to implement. We also took the opportunity to expand our suite of investment capabilities in the fast-growing China market. We're pleased with the progress during 2013. We feel good about the momentum of our business. We believe Invesco's very well positioned regardless of where the markets take us. As always, we continue to look for opportunities to strengthen our competitive and financial position over the long term. And before I turn the call over to Loren for more in depth discussion of the quarter's results, let me take a few minutes to provide an update on our business in EMEA. As I have mentioned, we are very well positioned for long-term success across the U.K. and Continental Europe. We continue to execute our transition plan, which is going very well. The market has been extremely receptive to Mark Barnett, who has an excellent track record. Mark is supported by strong Invesco perpetual investment team as he transitions into the leadership role for U.K. equities. U.K. experienced record gross sales during 2013 and has experienced excellent momentum heading into the new year. We have many attractive, highly competitive funds across the franchise, and we will -- which we will use to offset any outflows in the U.K. equity income funds. Strong investment performance drove continued success in our cross-border retail business, which experienced $10 billion of net flows across 2013. We also made progress further diversifying our business during the quarter -- during the final quarter of the year, with strong net sales into global equities and European equities. We've also been pleased with investors' response to recently launched GTR fund, which has seen flows in excess of $250 million in a very short period of time. We continue to make further progress in promoting experienced, capable, well-tenured fund management team in Henley. Assets managed by our EMEA business totaled nearly $172 billion, as you'll see on Slide 15. During the fourth quarter, net flows into EMEA, excluding U.K. equity income, were $4.3 billion, representing an annualized organic growth rate of 15%. Given our efforts to thoughtfully manage the transition, we're pleased to report that client reaction to the departure news has been calm and professional, highly supportive of Invesco Perpetual's investment teams. From October 15 through the end of the year, redemptions from U.K. equity income totaled $4.8 billion, approximately 10% of the total. This is good outcome. We continue to see strong evidence that many clients are choosing to remain invested in the funds as demonstrated by Tuesday's announcement from Edinburgh Investment Trust that is retaining Invesco Perpetual as the manager of the trust. We find the results encouraging. We continue to do everything we can to deliver good outcomes for clients, retain assets and grow our EMEA business. Now I'll turn the call over to Loren to review the financials.