"The market is not moving in lock-step towards passive equities,” says Impax Asset Management (IPX) chief executive Ian Simm. As he sees it, there is a “bifurcation going on” between passively managed equity funds and “differentiated” actively managed funds. Such a belief is required if you run or own Impax, of course, but it is supportable from the sustainable investment specialist’s full-year figures.
Record net inflows of £2.1bn in the year to September helped push assets under management up 61 per cent to £7.3bn at the period-end. Forecasting flows is a fickle business, but those assets had pushed on further to £7.6bn by the end of October, demonstrating that the beginning of the 2018 financial year saw the momentum sustained.
The acquisition of Pax World Management, announced in September, gives Impax a better global balance: currently, around 15 per cent of Impax’s clients, by assets, are in North America. The transaction will bring that proportion close to an equal split on each side of the Atlantic, says Mr Simm, as well as giving Impax a fixed income capability and a better platform to distribute stateside. The risks in such a deal are losing managers and assets, so it is actually reassuring that Impax is not feeding alienation through headcount counts or seeking large cost synergies, although there will be some operational savings in the back office.
Analysts at broker Peel Hunt kept its forecasts of EPS of 7.3p (from 5.1p in FY2017) for the year to September 2018, from £11.9m in adjusted pre-tax profit.
| IMPAX ASSET MANAGEMENT (IPX) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 158p | MARKET VALUE: | £202m | |
| TOUCH: | 156-160p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 171p | LOW: 49p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 1.8% | PE RATIO: | 24 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 28p | NET CASH: | £12.9m | |
| Year to 30 Sep | Turnover (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
| 2013 | 18.5 | 3.35 | 2.44 | 0.9 |
| 2014 | 20.4 | 3.54 | 2.78 | 1.4 |
| 2015 | 19.7 | 5.14 | 3.16 | 1.6 |
| 2016 | 21.1 | 5.20 | 3.62 | 2.1 |
| 2017 | 32.7 | 5.85 | 6.48 | 2.9 |
| % change | +55 | +13 | +79 | +38 |
| Ex-div: | 8 Feb | |||
| Payment: | 16 Mar |
