Market Selloff Continues to Affect Invesco’s Flows and AUM Levels; No Change to $20 Per Share FVE

Business Strategy & Outlook

A confluence of several issues–poor relative active investment performance, the growth and acceptance of low-cost index-based products, and the expanding power of the retail-advised channel–has made it increasingly difficult for active asset managers to generate organic growth, leaving them more dependent on market gains to increase their assets under management. While there will always be room for active management, the advantage for getting and maintaining placement on platforms will go to managers that have greater scale, established brands, solid long-term performance, and reasonable fees. With $955 billion in managed assets before the Oppenheimer Funds acquisition, Invesco already had the size and scale to be competitive, but that deal has raised the firm to a different level, with the company holding $1.390 trillion in assets under management at the end of June 2022, making it the 13th-largest global asset manager and the seventh-largest in the U.S. retail channel. That said, size is not always a guarantor of organic growth (which is a function of performance and fees) and above-average profitability, as demonstrated by Invesco’s historical shortcomings.

During 2012-21, the firm’s organic growth rate averaged 0.9% annually with a standard deviation of 3.7%, leaving it on much better footing than most of its equity-heavy active management peers. Having seemingly put its merger-related outflows (which added to depressed organic growth during 2018-20) behind it, Invesco has now generated seven straight quarters of positive long-term flows as of the end of March 2022. The firm’s adjusted GAAP operating margins, which rose to 24%-26% following contributions from merger synergies from the Oppenheimer Funds deal and cost-cutting efforts, to deteriorate in the near term in the face of fee compression and rising costs (necessary to improve investment performance and enhance product distribution), even when considering the company’s product and channel mix as well as its recent return to positive organic growth.

Financial Strengths

Invesco entered 2022 with $2.1 billion of debt on its books, composed of $600 million of 3.125% notes due November 2022, $600 million of 4.000% notes due January 2024, $500 million of 3.75% notes due January 2026, and $400 million of 5.375% notes due November 2043. The company also has a $1.25 billion floating-rate credit facility (maturing in April 2026) at its disposal. Should the firm close out the year in line with the expectations, and roll over its debt due later this year, it would enter 2023 with a debt/total capital ratio of 11%, a debt/EBITDA ratio of 1.4 times, and an EBITDA interest coverage ratio of 16.3 times. While Invesco has traditionally dedicated much of its excess cash to seed investments, dividends, and share repurchases, the issuance of $4.0 billion of 5.9% perpetual noncumulative preferred stock as part of its financing of the 2018-19 Oppenheimer Funds acquisition is eating up cash, as the firm pays out $236 million annually to service the interest obligation. The size and scope of the Oppenheimer Funds deal means that future deals are likely to be smaller, bolt-on acquisitions aimed at plugging holes in the firm’s product mix and/or geographic reach. One had not expected the company to cut the quarterly dividend by 50% to $0.155 per share at the start of the second quarter of 2020, but given the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the commitment to the preferred dividend, it was not too surprising. The firm did, however, raise the quarterly dividend 10% to $0.17 per share during 2021 and lifted it by another 10% in early 2022 to $0.1875 per share. Even so, one cannot expect the dividend to return to pre-pandemic levels for some time, with the firm likely to maintain a payout ratio of 30%-35% longer term. One does not expect much in the way of share repurchases in the near term unless the shares are trading at a significant discount to intrinsic value.

Bulls Say

The Oppenheimer Funds deal lifted AUM closer to the $1.5 trillion mark, putting Invesco on a slightly better footing with industry giants like BlackRock and Vanguard, each of which oversees more than $5 trillion.
Invesco’s organic AUM growth has turned positive, with the firm picking up an average of $12.8 billion in net inflows quarterly over the past eight calendar quarters compared with negative $11.9 billion the previous eight quarters.
Oppenheimer Funds’ slightly higher AUM realization rate should help offset some of the impact of industry wide fee compression on Invesco’s top line.

Company Description

Invesco provides investment-management services to retail (67% of managed assets) and institutional (33%) clients. At the end of June 2022, the firm had $1.390 trillion in assets under management spread among its equity (47% of AUM), balanced (5%), fixed-income (22%), alternative investment (14%), and money market (12%) operations. Passive products account for 31% of Invesco’s total AUM, including 55% of the company’s equity operations and 12% of its fixed-income platform. Invesco’s U.S. retail business is one of the 10 largest nonproprietary fund complexes in the country. The firm also has a meaningful presence outside the U.S., with close to one third of its AUM sourced from Canada (2%), the U.K. (3%), continental Europe (11%), and Asia (15%).

(Source: Morningstar)

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