Victory Capital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:VCTR) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Victory Capital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:VCTR) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 9, 2024

Victory Capital Holdings, Inc.  isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning, and welcome to the Victory Capital Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All callers are in a listen-only mode. Following the company’s prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Matthew Dennis, Chief of Staff and Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Dennis.

Matthew Dennis: Thank you. Before I turn the call over to David Brown, I would like to remind you that during today’s conference call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements. Please note that Victory Capital’s actual results may differ materially from these statements. Please refer to our SEC filings for a list of some of the risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed on today’s call. Victory Capital assumes no duty and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Our press release that was issued after the market closed yesterday disclosed both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. We believe the non-GAAP measures enhance the understanding of our business and our performance.

Reconciliation between these non-GAAP measures and the most comparable GAAP measures are included in tables that can be found in our earnings press release and in the slide presentation accompanying this call, both of which are available on the investor relations portion of our website at ir.vcm.com. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to David Brown, Chairman and CEO. David?

David Brown: Thanks, Matt. Good morning and welcome to Victory Capital’s fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I’m joined today by Michael Policarpo, our President, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, as well as Matt Dennis, our Chief of Staff and Director of Investor Relations. I will start today by providing an overview of the fourth quarter and full year. After that, I will turn the call over to Mike to review the financial results in detail. Following our prepared remarks, Mike, Matt, and I will be available to take your questions. The quarterly business overview begins on Slide 5. I’m pleased to report that we ended 2023 on a high note. During the year’s final quarter, we achieved the best level of gross sales as well as net long-term flows in more than a year.

This helped us end 2023 with $166.6 billion in assets under management, providing a strong jump off point for 2024. With interest rates appearing to have plateaued, the general sales environment is starting to feel a bit more constructive from an activity standpoint. However, the general sentiment of most clients is still cautious. This cautious approach and the ability to earn a substantial yield in cash and cash equivalent type investments has continued to produce record levels of investor assets in the cash asset class. That said, longer term we are very optimistic about the prospect for assets coming out of cash and entering into more risk-based asset classes, but the specific timing of those assets moving is uncertain. Our fee rate rose to 52.1 basis points in the quarter.

This was slightly higher than the average rate realized in the prior quarter, which helped produce a very solid revenue number for the quarter. GAAP operating income and adjusted EBITDA both grew in the fourth quarter from third quarter levels. Our margins were strong for the quarter and for the full year. For the quarter, adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 52.3%, and for the full year it grew to 50.9% compared with 49.6% in 2022. The consistency of our margins quarter to quarter, year-to-year, and during one of the tougher cycles for our industry validates the strength and resiliency of our business platform and our team’s ability to execute. Shifting to capital, we returned more capital to shareholders during 2023 than in any other year in our history.

And at the same time, we accumulated additional excess cash in our balance sheet to enhance our future financial flexibility. We also continued to invest in our organic growth. Specifically, we invested in product development through the launch of new products in 2023 and preparations to launch additional new products in 2024. Additionally, we invested in our technology and data platforms, as well as expanding our digital marketing capabilities for key distribution channels, and we continue to hire in numerous areas of our business. Turning to Slide 7, our investment performance remains strong with 70% of our AUM in mutual funds or ETFs earning overall four or five star ratings. This is broadly diversified spanning across 42 different products.

Compared against benchmarks, our one-year performance at the end of December dips slightly from above 70% at the end of November. Importantly, over the three and five year periods, 62% and 84% of our total AUM has outperformed their respective benchmarks. And perhaps more importantly, over the trailing three year period, 44% of our AUM in mutual funds and ETFs was ranked in the top quartile of the industry by Morningstar. Drilling down further into performance, 95% of fund AUM managed by our Victory Income Investors franchise held four or five star Morningstar rankings as of December 31st. This is encouraging as we anticipate investors will be pivoting their portfolios into longer duration fixed income products as the outlook for interest rates changes.

Moreover, products such as our Victory RS Global Fund, RSGGX, remains five-star overall rated and through year-end, this fund ranked in the top decile over the one, three, and five-year periods. And even more impressively, for the 10-year period it was ranked in the first percentile. On Slide 8, you can see our capital allocation strategy. We continue to favor strategically investing for the growth, given we believe this is how we will create the greatest amount of shareholder value over the long term. We remain flexible and opportunistic in our approach. During the fourth quarter, we repurchase more shares in the open market than in any other quarter following the third quarter when we focused on accumulating cash. We further increased cash on hand during the fourth quarter as well to ensure that we have financial flexibility in the future to execute on our strategy.

For 2023, we returned a record amount of capital to shareholders and at the same time, we’re able to strengthen the balance sheet. Our return of capital was made up of $158 million in share repurchases and $85 million in the form of cash dividends. Taken together, this $243 million of capital return in 2023 exceeded the prior year by 21%. In December, the board approved a new $100 million share repurchase program allowing us to remain flexible, and yesterday we announced a 5% increase in our quarterly cash dividend. Meaningful progress continues to be made with our M&A diligence initiatives and 2024 looks like it is setting up to be a year where we potentially could execute a strategic transaction. Although I have nothing specific to report today, I can say that I am extremely optimistic about our ability to execute.

We look forward to updating you on our progress here as we move through our process. Turning to Slide 9, here is an update on the ownership of our private equity shareholders. Since commencing share sales in late 2021, 33.4 million shares have been sold or distributed through today. This is noteworthy and that it represents more than 50% of our current outstanding shares and 77% of our current public flow. As a result, the liquidity and trading volume have improved in our shares, and there has been sufficient market demand for our shares to absorb this significant shift to a much higher proportion of public ownership. At year end, our employees and directors held almost 20% of their diluted equity in our firm, reinforcing our unique ownership culture.

This ownership is extremely broad throughout the firm, with approximately 86% of our employees owning the VCTR stock. Just as important as the VCTR stock ownership is for our culture, is the personal investments of our employees in our own Victory Products. At 12/31, 2023 our employees have invested over $200 million in Victory Products all by choice side-by-side with our clients. Taken together, at year-end our 481 employees had approximately $600 million of skin in the game between ownership of the VCTR stock and our Victory Products. This is particularly noteworthy considering there was no employee equity ownership in our company prior to the management buyout in 2013. Crestview Partners is now the sole remaining private equity shareholder with a current position of 11.6 million shares, representing approximately 18% of the outstanding shares.

With that, I will turn the call over to Mike to go through the quarter’s financial results in greater detail. Mike?

Michael Policarpo: Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. The financial results review begins on Slide 11. AUM grew to $166.6 billion at the end of the year. This was up 9% from the beginning of the year and it was also a 9% increase from $153.5 billion at the end of the third quarter. The point-to-point increase in AUM was driven by market strength primarily in November and December. Average AUM, which is how our fees are primarily determined, declined quarter over quarter. This was partially offset by the better average fee rate and resulted in revenue for the quarter of $205.8 million, compared with $209.7 million in the third quarter. For the full year, revenue was $821 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $107.6 million in the fourth quarter, marking the highest quarterly level of the year.

Margins expanded by 120 basis points in the quarter, reaching 52.3%, and for the full year adjusted EBITDA margin was 50.9%, up 130 basis points from 49.6% for 2022. Fourth quarter GAAP net income rose to $55 million or $0.82 per diluted share, up from $52 million or $0.77 per diluted share in the third quarter. And ANI with tax benefit was $1.15 per diluted share. We ended the quarter with $124 million in cash, which was up from $108 million in cash at the end of September and $85 million higher than at the start of the year. In the fourth quarter, we made the final earn-out payment of $36.4 million for the USAA Asset Management Acquisition, fulfilling our full obligation and removing that liability from our balance sheet. As previously discussed in our last call, we monetized our interest rate swap locking in our gain on that instrument, which will be realized in the form of lower interest expense through the end of the original term in July of 2026.

We returned $80 million in capital to shareholders in the quarter. For the full year, we returned $243 million in capital to shareholders, while at the same time improving our net leverage ratio to 2.0 times at year end. The 5% increase in our quarterly dividend to $33.5 announced yesterday will be payable on March 25th to shareholders of record on March 11th. Turning to Slide 12, our AUM remains very balanced from a distribution channel perspective with the percentage mix being very consistent over short and longer periods of time. Slide 13 illustrates how net long-term flows steadily improved in the second half of the year. Investor activity was well diversified with our institutional channel generating positive net flows in the fourth quarter.

You can see from the chart that we also gained some traction in gross sales in the fourth quarter and achieved our highest level of gross sales in more than a year. Additionally, with redemptions holding steady, this resulted in our best quarter of long-term net flows in more than a year. Looking to 2024, we are confident that our investments made to enhance organic growth have us well positioned to benefit when the macro environment gets more constructive for risk assets. As Dave highlighted, we have very competitive investment performance and a number of our investment franchises were flow positive for the quarter and for the year. That list includes WestEnd Advisors, RS Global, Trivalent Investments, and New Energy Capital. To drill down on WestEnd a bit more, in 2023 we increased the number of financial advisors allocating assets to their strategies by 35%.

This fortifies an already strong foundation of advisors who tend to increase their clients’ allocations to WestEnd products over time. We’re also casting a wider net with the addition of WestEnd’s products to seven new platforms since the acquisition. Revenues are highlighted on Slide 14. Firmwide average fee rate remains steady throughout 2023, covering around 52 basis points, which is within our expected range. Most of the movement associated with our firmwide fee rate is attributable to shifts in asset class, vehicle, and distribution channel mix. Slide 15 illustrates how our operating expenses calibrate with revenue and earnings variability. This is a key feature of our platform that results in our consistently strong margins. Cash compensation expenses were down slightly, in line with lower revenue quarter-over-quarter and represented 22.8% of revenue.

Additionally, we experienced lower non-personnel operating expenses compared with the third quarter. Distribution and other asset-based expenses declined $1.7 million, in line with lower average AUM for the quarter. Certain non-cash expenses, such as depreciation and amortization declined from Q3 and the change in value of contingent consideration realized in the quarter declined compared with the prior quarter. Our depreciation and amortization declined $4.3 million from the third quarter. This was due to higher than normal amortization in the prior period related to the previously disclosed divestment and consolidation of our INCORE franchise in the third quarter. These declines were partially offset by higher general and administrative expenses in the quarter, which was driven by $2.4 million of one-time costs associated with the monetization of the interest rate swap and slightly higher marketing and promotional expenses.

On slide 16, we cover our non-GAAP metrics. Adjusted net income was $67.4 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $107.6 million and was the highest level of the year. For the full year period adjusted EBITDA was $418 million and adjusted EBITDA margin for the year was 50.9%. Although the margins are in excess of our long-term guidance, we are not changing our current guidance of 49%. We think it is prudent to stay at this level to maintain the flexibility to invest in our platform. Moreover, as we have stated in the past, the margins will fluctuate quarter-to-quarter based on the timing and nature of investments. Finally, turning to Slide 17, while we did not pay down any debt in 2023, our net leverage ratio improved by nearly half a turn during the year.

Reflecting cash accumulation and higher run rate EBITDA, our net debt to leverage ratio at year end was 2.0 times compared with the 2.4 times at the beginning of the year. Our $100 million revolver remains undrawn and GAAP operating cash flow was $97 million in the fourth quarter and $330 million for the year. That concludes our prepared remarks. I will now turn it back over to the operator for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ken Worthington from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Michael Cho: Hi, good morning, Dave and Mike. This is Michael Cho. I’m in for Ken today. Thanks for taking my questions here. My first one is just on the sales and flows environment that you called out. You found it fairly off speed in terms of improving gross sales and flows in 4Q, and you also called out institutional, the institutional channel as well. I guess my question is, one, has that kind of momentum and client discussions continued year-to-date 2024? And two, as we can see it in the aggregate numbers, but from your perspective, where are you seeing the most improvement relative to, let’s say, prior quarters?

David Brown: Good morning. As you stated, our fourth quarter definitely we saw a pickup. If you look at our gross sales, you’ll get our net sales definitely have improved and has consistently improved. In my prepared remarks, I made mention of the environment is getting a little bit better. I think until rates there’s a clear vision of when rates are going to come down or when they’re going to stabilize. I don’t think we’re going to see material movements. As far as the first quarter of 2024, we have seen some reallocations to the positive and we’ve seen some clients pull back as well. So nothing materially has changed in the first quarter from the fourth quarter, but when we look out in 2024 and going into 2025, we’re quite optimistic about assets coming into asset classes where we have exposure and we think there’s a lot of money sitting in cash as everybody knows.

And at some point when rates come down, some of those assets are going to move and they’re going to move into asset classes where we have really competitive investment performance and really good distribution. So quarter-to-quarter it’s going to be hard to predict, but when we look in years, when we think about 2024 and we think about 2025, we’re quite optimistic.

Michael Cho: That’s great. Thank you for that. And just to follow-up, I just want to touch on organic investments that you discussed as well. I mean, clearly, 2023 was a year of organic investment as usual, and you called out some more ahead in 2024. So, I’m just kind of curious, just given that dynamic environment that we just talked through, like, where are you focused on in terms of organic investment initiatives for the year ahead? Thanks.

David Brown: So a number of areas we’re reinvesting. I’d start off in distribution and partnering with our distribution partners in different channels. So a big push to build the distribution pipes, if you will, to be available when significant assets are moving. So we spent a lot of time and invested dollars into those areas. Data analytics and technology is another area that we focused on. And then the third area is our direct business and we’ve launched the brokerage platform and we continue to invest there. We are consistently investing. We’ve consistently invested through this cycle. We haven’t invested anymore, and we haven’t invested really any less. One of the benefits of our platform and the way we’re set up is that, we have not had to pull back, we have not had to make cuts.

In fact, we probably reinvested in our platform in 2023 more than we have in the history of our organization. And so, I think that’s one of the real benefits that we have on the platform that we have and still maintaining the margins that we have. In fact, this quarter, as we all know, we posted in excess of 50% operating margins.

Michael Cho: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Craig Siegenthaler: Good morning Dave, Mike. Hope everyone’s doing well. We wanted to continue with the organic investment question. I believe you launched some CITs in the quarter. So we are curious, which strategies did you put in these wrappers? Which client verticals are you targeting with the CITs and are you expecting some rotation out of the mutual fund wrapper in the identical strategy?

David Brown: We’ve made investments in products and product launches. We have launched a few ETFs and then we have a few on the docket for 2024. A good example of what we’ve done is, we’ve launched [V-Flow] (ph), which is an ETF that focuses on free cash flow. We’ve also launched MODL, which is a version of our WestEnd Advisors franchise. And so, when we think about going forward, we are thinking about launching, as you said, CITs and also ETFs. We have — we’re well experienced in the in the ETF side and we think that’s an area where we can launch product and be pretty effective. And then, specifically on the CIT, we’re targeting really retirement and institutional clients there. So a collective fund that our institutional clients can go into, and then also some of our retirement clients can go into some of the CITs as well.

Craig Siegenthaler: Thanks, Dave. For my follow-up, we wanted to dig a little deeper into your M&A commentary. I think you said you’re evaluating numerous acquisition opportunities, some of that effect. So, it did sound a little more bullish than prior calls. So, maybe you could update us on size ranges and capability objectives. And I’m guessing that you’re going to try to avoid product redundancies so you’re generally focused on strategic versus consolidation?

David Brown: Yeah, we’re quite optimistic that 2024 is going to be a year where we can execute a transaction. I use the term in my prepared remarks strategic and that would refer to something of size, and as far as product capabilities, redundancy, consolidation, I won’t comment on any of that, but I will say that we’re quite optimistic that 2024 is going to be a year where we can execute. We think the environment is a lot more friendly to doing acquisitions. We’ve got a really, really strong track record of the acquisitions we’ve done and how successful they’ve been. And we think 2024 is going to be a year where we can continue that. Nothing to report today, but we’re making significant progress and we’re bullish about it.