Earnings call transcript: Richardson Wealth Q4 2024 growth and innovation

Richardson Wealth reported strong financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2024, showcasing significant revenue growth and strategic advancements in product offerings. According to InvestingPro data, the company’s stock has delivered an impressive 73.5% return over the past year, with a notable 44.9% gain in the last six months. The company highlighted its commitment to operational efficiency and a robust recruitment pipeline, positioning itself as a leading independent wealth management firm in Canada.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue for Q4 2024 increased by 12% year-over-year, reaching $96.9 million.
• The company launched new business intelligence tools for advisors.
• Richardson Wealth aims to achieve $50 billion in assets under administration (AUA).
• Operational improvements and cost management remain a priority.

Company Performance

Richardson Wealth demonstrated solid performance in Q4 2024, with revenue climbing 12% compared to the same period last year. InvestingPro analysis shows the company maintaining a strong revenue growth trajectory of 21.5% in the last twelve months, though investors should note its current Financial Health Score stands at FAIR. The company is capitalizing on the growing independent wealth management space, aiming to attract more assets under administration. Its focus on technology integration and advisor support is expected to drive future growth. Discover more insights with InvestingPro’s comprehensive research report, available along with additional financial metrics and analysis tools.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $96.9 million, up 12% YoY
• Fee Revenue: Increased by 15%
• Trading Commissions: Rose by 20%
• Corporate Finance Revenue: Jumped 80%

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Richardson Wealth is targeting $50 billion in AUA, with plans to continue enhancing advisor support and recruitment. InvestingPro analysis highlights that the company’s current ratio of 0.16 suggests careful liquidity management will be crucial. The company anticipates that interest revenue may be impacted by declining prime rates, but remains committed to maintaining operational efficiency. Strategic acquisitions or partnerships are also potential avenues for growth. InvestingPro subscribers can access additional key metrics and ProTips to better evaluate the company’s growth prospects.

Executive Commentary

Dave Kelly, CEO of Richardson Wealth, emphasized the company’s strategic direction, stating, "We are on track to become the best independent choice in Canada." He also highlighted the importance of financial planning, saying, "Insurance is an outcome of an amazing financial planning conversation with clients."

Risks and Challenges

• Potential impact from global economic conditions on AUA growth.
• Declining prime rates could affect interest revenue.
• Operational challenges around service levels, though improvements are expected by spring.

Richardson Wealth’s Q4 2024 performance reflects its strategic focus on growth and innovation, with a clear path set towards achieving its ambitious goals in the independent wealth management sector.

Full transcript - RENN Fund Inc (RCG) Q4 2024:

Luis, Conference Moderator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the RF Capital’s Fourth Quarter and Year End twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Aza Ahmed, Vice President, Finance. Please go ahead, Aza.

Aza Ahmed, VP of Finance, RF Capital: Thank you, Luis. Good morning and welcome to RF Capital’s Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Call. My name is Aza Ahmed and I’m the VP of Finance. I’d like to remind you that our remarks may contain forward looking information and actual results could differ materially. Forward looking information is subject to many risks and uncertainties.

Certain factors or assumptions applied in the forward looking information can be found in our latest AIF and MD and A. These documents are available on our website and at cdrplus.ca. Today, I’m joined by our President and CEO, Dave Kelly. Dave will provide a brief update on the last quarter and some comments on his plans for going forward. I will cover our detailed financial results and financial outlook.

We will then open the call to questions from our analysts. If you have questions once this call is complete, please reach out to Investor Relations. Our contact information can be found at the end of our earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Dave.

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Thank you, Isaac. Good morning, everyone. I want to start with a personal note. Last month, I reached a one year milestone of service at Richardson Wealth. In reflecting on this anniversary, I’m reminded how inspired I was by the company’s well designed three pillar growth strategy.

The clear and achievable strategy also fueled my enthusiasm. It lays out what we need to become what we need to do in order to become a serious contender in the Canadian marketplace. But just as important, it aligns with my core beliefs in this industry. I believe the independent space is presenting an attractive alternative for Canadian investors who are seeking a differentiated offering. I’m also convinced that advisors and their teams who are working at large investment dealers are beginning to seek a new path to grow and flourish for their client success.

These factors helped me see the opportunity we have here at Richardson Wealth. They also helped drive my decision to accept the Chief Operating Officer position. One year later, and now as President and Chief Executive Officer, it continues to be the right strategy. And as I will explain now, I continue to believe our three pillars are the right journey. Last year, we achieved a major milestone by reaching $40,000,000,000 of AUA for the first time in our history.

Our next step is to reach $50,000,000,000 dollars that requires a concentrated effort on execution and 2024 was exactly that. Last year, my full attention centered around Pillar one, which is leaving the work to double down on the advisory team support. Within Pillar One, we had and continue to have two goals. First, we need to make it easier for our teams to work here. Second, we need to help them grow more valuable practices.

And if I circle back on the first one, making it easier for teams to work here, we’re diligently focused on creating middle office excellence, which is delivered through our own advisor service center and Fidelity Clearing Canada, ULC. However, we’re not there yet. We are fully mobilized to resolve issues with pace and we’re making steady progress. I’m also committed to celebrating wins as they occur and we expect much more of that in 2025. With respect to growing more valuable practices, we focused on enhancing existing platforms and we also launched a new suite of business intelligence tools that give our advisors critical data and insights that are needed to see opportunities in their practices.

I’ll shift now to the second pillar of the growth strategy, supercharging recruitment, which continues to be a significant part of our growth strategy. We welcome some exceptional teams here in 2024, managing $1,800,000,000 in AUA. We continue to maintain a robust pipeline of advisors who are drawn to our culture and our brand to the extent of over $31,000,000,000 In 2025, we will enhance our emphasis on our by invitation only mindset. That along with some refinement to our discovery and our onboarding processes makes us confident in our ability to execute on Pillar two in 2025. Last year, the focus was to drive hard on Pillar one and Pillar two and in 2025 that will continue to be the case.

As for our third pillar, acquiring or partnering with like minded firms, several factors including the availability of targets, the targets price expectations, our share price and our access to other forms of capital will impact our ability to execute on this pillar. That said, we did and will also continue to seek opportunities to work with parties that align with our strategy and in ways that generate value for our shareholders. Turning to our financial results for 2024, here’s a quick summary. We ended the year with AUA of 39,500,000,000 up $4,300,000,000 on the year. At a high level, the increase in AUA was helped by rising equity markets as well as strong recruiting activity and an increase in assets with existing clients.

Revenue was $369,300,000 adjusted EBITDA was $57,300,000 and free cash flow available for growth was $31,500,000 These results are relatively stable compared to 2023. Finally, before I turn it over to Isaac for a deeper dive into the financials, I want to provide an update on our executive searches. You will remember that last fall we were conducting searches for a new RF Capital Chief Financial Officer and a Richardson Wealth National Sales Leader. The search for our national sales leader continues and I’m confident I’ll give you an update on that during our next call. However, I’m pleased to share that Francis Barajan is our new CFO.

Francis brings experience including with investment banks focused on the investment and wealth management industries. He and I worked together at TD Bank when he was in corporate development. More recently, he spent four years as CFO for a scale up flow EV charging, one of Canada’s leading clean technology companies. I’m thrilled to have him as part of my executive committee. Ordinarily, Francis would have provided the financial results on the call today, but he has a commitment which was in his calendar before his employment began with us.

So Iza will do another great job like last quarter in his absence. You will meet Francis next quarter. And now I’ll turn it back to Iza who will take you through the financials in more depth.

Aza Ahmed, VP of Finance, RF Capital: Thanks, Dave. For the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, RF Capital reported $96,900,000 in revenue, an increase of 12% as compared to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Fee revenue was up 15% due to higher average AUA and trading commissions increased 20% driven by higher trading activity in client accounts. Corporate finance revenue increased 80% from higher structured note related fees and interest revenue decreased 19% from a decline in benchmark interest rates, while client cash and margin loan balances remain largely relatively stable. Insurance revenue declined 12% from lower sales activity from the fourth quarter last year.

Adjusted EBITDA was $16,200,000 in Q4 twenty twenty four as compared to $14,500,000 in Q4 twenty twenty three. This result reflects the increase in revenue that I just mentioned partly offset by an increase in adjusted operating expenses. Operating expenses were up due to an increase in legal provisions, higher carrying broker charges as a function of trading activity, higher benefits and annual inflationary increases in salaries, as well as an increase in expenses linked to corporate finance revenue growth. Discretionary expenses decreased from the fourth quarter of last year. Turning to cash flow.

Free cash flow available for growth is the cash flow that the company generates before any investments in growth or transformation initiatives. It is intended to provide an indication of the cash that we generate organically to fund our strategic plans. In the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we generated $9,200,000 of cash flow available for growth, up from $8,300,000 last year, primarily due to higher adjusted earnings. Free cash flow is the net cash flow that the company generates from its continuing operations after considering its recruitment, transformation and strategic initiatives. RS Capital generated free cash flow of $8,800,000 in Q4 twenty twenty four as compared to a usage of $9,600,000 in Q4 twenty twenty three.

That was driven by advisor loan payments and settlement of several legacy legal matters, both of which are reflected in free cash flow. Turning to our outlook, I will speak to some of the drivers of our revenue and profitability as we see them today. In 2025, we expect AUA will continue to be driven by growth in client assets and recruiting and is expected to correlate highly with equity market returns, which may be impacted by global economic conditions. Interest revenue is impacted by prime rate trends, which economists expect to continue to decline before stabilizing later in the year. Turning to operating expenses, we are committed to finding savings and efficiencies where we can and driving operating leverage from our platform to remain profitable as inflation continues to impact certain core operating expenses.

Furthermore, operating expenses will continue to be subject to mark to market expenses on RSUs and DSUs. Cash flow for growth will be driven by the factors just discussed and will primarily be deployed toward adding new advisors to the Richardson Wealth platform. Capital expenditures are expected to continue at normalized levels. With that, I will now pass the call back to Dave.

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Thank you, Aiza. And before I open it up to Q and A, I would like to provide a quick closing comment. My overarching goal in 2024 was to ensure our advisory teams felt valued and respected and that they have the products, services and tools needed to provide superior client advice and service. That has certainly not changed at all for 2025. With our corporate teams, advisory teams and the executive committee aligned, I’m confident we are on track to become the best independent choice in Canada.

I’m very excited to lead the next leg of this journey. That concludes our prepared remarks. Louise, please open the line for questions.

Aza Ahmed, VP of Finance, RF Capital: Thank you.

Luis, Conference Moderator: First question is from Jeff Fenwick, Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.

Jeff Fenwick, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Hi, good morning everyone. David, I wanted to circle back to your commentary about the efforts you’re making to improve the operations for the advisors there and your comment that you’re not there yet. And I’m just wondering what at this point is missing? I know the transition to Fidelity has been underway now for, I guess, more than two years, maybe two or three at this point. And what’s missing from the equation here?

And what really is the problem there? And when do you think you can have that addressed?

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Yes, Jeff, thanks for the question. Listen, I think we’ve made a lot of progress on what I’ll describe as platform and technology with Fidelity. I think we’ve got a good cadence now on what they’re delivering to our advisors in terms of in particular some of their straight through technology, which has been received fantastically well. Most of the problem, Jeff, centers on service, right? And just making sure that we have both our service levels aligned and service delivery aligned.

And so we’ve got great ongoing conversations with teams at Fidelity, but we’re also reimagining our advisor service center team, which is our middle office group. And the way I describe it to our teams is that it’s probably 60% of the experience that our advisors and associates feel in working with Fidelity. And so we’re re engineering and redesigning that team. And we think that we’ll have that to a very, very good spot across the country by spring. We’ve had two very successful advisor pilots at the end of twenty twenty four.

We’re now live with one of our first branches to also go through the pilot. And so I would say by late spring, Jeff, I think you’ll start to see the momentum really turn.

Jeff Fenwick, Analyst, Cormark Securities: And maybe turning to the advisor base and recruitment, Obviously, some good progress there, which is always good to see in terms of new teams coming in. But I did note that you’ve had, it looks like a net reduction of three over the last quarter of the year. Just any comments there? I think we were we’re sort of hoping to see some stability. I know you spent some time going across the country and talking to the advisors and the teams there.

And when they leave, is there a consistent theme as to why? And is there a way to sort of address what those concerns are? Be it frustrations with those service levels or is it a question just to being bid away and something that maybe you can’t do anything about?

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Yes. No, I think there’s always things you can do, Jeff, for sure, right? And it was actually between October 1 and probably the December. I spent a half hour with every single advisor or team at Richardson Wealth. And we spent about a half hour together talking about where we want to take the business, what we think we need to focus on, a really good dialogue back and forth with the teams on priority areas.

And I would say that the feedback was very positive in terms of where they saw us focusing. And I’ve really been describing that the heart of supporting the advisors rests with the mid office excellence experience, which we talked about already. We need to do some work for them on integrating some of the tools and technology on their desktop, which is underway and in plan for 2025. We need to do some work around making sure from a compliance perspective that we are meeting our regulatory requirements in an advisor friendly way as we possibly can. And then it’s just really energizing our corporate teams around the things that advisors need to do well.

And so we’re really, really focused on helping advisors find new clients, onboard them well, present financial plans, invest the money in service. And so I think when we pull all those four things together, the feedback has been very strong, Jeff. I think I do think the most important thing for the teams to feel is that change in model that we’re making with our advisor service center teams in that mid office. And again, very confident that that will start to become very tangible for the teams in the spring. We have also been really leaning in on communication with the teams.

And so we run a call now monthly across the country where we’re consistently highlighting three to four things that have improved for them in the last month. And we group those as sort of process platform and policy. And we’re starting to get some good feedback and momentum there as well. So I think there’s absolutely things you can do. I don’t think it’s a very fancy formula.

You need to tell people what you’re going to fix, fix it and then tell them what you’re going to fix next. But I have confidence that we’ll be able to get our team seeing the progress that they’ve been expecting as we move forward.

Jeff Fenwick, Analyst, Cormark Securities: So it sounds like you’re getting to a point now where you say although those operational efforts are getting close to being at a level that is acceptable and expected for everyone and hopefully that avoids frustration for advisor teams. Are there I guess in terms of investment though and incremental capabilities, are there things on the you need to have on the shelf for the advisor tools for them that maybe you’re missing today. And so you do need to continue to invest to make sure you’re sort of at a leading point in the industry with respect to that sort of thing? And is that maybe another piece that you need to have there to help you attract and retain teams?

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Yes. I don’t think that capital spend is particularly meaningful, Jeff, in terms of what’s required. I do think there’s some capabilities that we need to help our advisors with in particular as we think about supporting their growth and ability to really grow their practices quickly. We have a number of those on tap in plan for 2025. I think what we’re trying to be careful about and thoughtful of is we want to make sure the teams really feel our focus on making sure that mid office excellence progress is achieved yet before we try and bring other things to the table, right?

And so we’re just balancing the priority for our teams of making sure they really start to feel that difference in being able to service their clients. And then we’re well positioned in ’25 to add some capabilities to their desktop that will help them grow. So excited about being able

Luis, Conference Moderator: to move

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: from what I’ll describe as transformation to investing for our teams, but we are really, really mindful of winning the mid office excellence journey.

Jeff Fenwick, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Okay, great. Thanks for that color. I’ll pass it along.

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Thank you.

Luis, Conference Moderator: Thank you. Next (LON:NXT) question is from Jim Byrne from Acumen Capital. Please go ahead.

Jim Byrne, Analyst, Acumen Capital: Yes, good morning. Maybe

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: just

Jim Byrne, Analyst, Acumen Capital: a couple from me, Dave. You mentioned the kind of $50,000,000,000 goal. Is there any timeline around that? And then kind of secondly, just thinking about where you are in from a corporate structure and kind of back office, mid office, are there things that you would need to add to get to that 50 or is it largely going to flow right to the bottom line?

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Yes, I think so the way we’re thinking of 50 as the next stop in the journey, Jim, if I can phrase it that way. So not a specific timeline, but really trying to rally the teams to get there as quickly as we can, obviously. I don’t think there’s a lot of material investment from an organization perspective that we need to make that would be incremental. So I would expect to see a lot of that drop to the bottom line. What I have been saying to the teams though is, we do need to make sure we’ve got our teams organized in a way that they can do their best work.

And I was mentioning earlier, what I’m trying to do is really structure the organization around this concept of advisor journeys and how do we make sure every single day we’re making that easier for teams to achieve what they want to achieve. And so I think as we drive through that, there’s likely to be some skills that we need to either add to the team that we don’t have. And we’ll also be thoughtful as we do that work to look for efficiencies at the same time. So I don’t expect there to be a big capital investment in order to get where we need to go.

Jim Byrne, Analyst, Acumen Capital: Okay, that’s great. And then maybe just an update on the insurance initiatives. Are you happy with the progress to date? Is there anything there that you can do to maybe accelerate some of that growth?

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Yes. The way we think of that is insurance is an outcome, Jim, of an amazing financial planning conversation with clients, right? And so as we think about the business, what we’re trying to do is to help our advisors get into as many financial planning conversations as they can with clients. When you do that, the insurance opportunity explodes. And so we’ve had consistent progress, I think, from an insurance perspective.

My view is there’s significant upside from here. We’re very focused on making sure our advisors are having great advice conversations with clients and we know that opportunity will come.

Jim Byrne, Analyst, Acumen Capital: Okay, that’s great. Thanks.

Luis, Conference Moderator: Thank you. There are no further questions registered at this time. So Mr. Kelly, I’ll return the meeting back over to you for closing remarks.

Dave Kelly, President and CEO, Richardson Wealth: Thank you, Louise. Really appreciate that. And listen, thanks everyone for participating in today’s call. We really appreciate your time and focus. Please feel free to contact us with any follow-up questions.

Have a great weekend. Louise, thank you so much. You may end the call.

Luis, Conference Moderator: Thank you. Your conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time and we thank you for your participation.

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