Aberdeen International Inc. (AAB) Q1 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for joining our Q1 trading call this morning. With me today is Ian Jenkins, our interim CFO. I'm going to focus on Q1, of course, but I'll also make a few comments about April, not least to pre-empt some of your questions. First, starting with the highlights from the quarter. AUMA at the end of Q1 was £500 billion. On the positives, we had strong inflows for Interactive Investor, but this was more than offset by market effects and outflows in Investments and Advisor. Growth in Interactive Investor was strong once again, with total customers up 9% year-on-year, and this includes 29% annual growth in SIPs. Net outflows in Advisor of £0.6 billion were represent an improvement versus prior quarters, driven by restored service, enhanced platform functionality and repricing. In investments, the Q1 outflow of £6.4 billion largely reflects the redemption from the low-margin mandate I mentioned at the full year results. I'm going to add that following a large quant mandate win in April, Net flows within institutional and retail wealth are, in fact, now positive year-to-date. As we set out at the year-end, our strategy is to become the UK's leading wealth business and to reposition our investments business to areas of strength and market growth. We're a long-term player with a long-term focus. Despite the heightened market uncertainty of recent weeks, we've made good progress toward our objectives this year. In fact, we haven't seen any significant client-led effects in investments or advisor. And in II, the only effective note was higher trading volumes in the first half of April. Now, turning to our businesses in a little more detail. Starting with Interactive Investor, which has maintained the strong momentum seen in recent q...