Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. Together with our CFO, Samir Ayub, we'll take you through the annual results this morning.

I'm very privileged, actually, I feel privileged to be delivering such a strong set of numbers as my first full-year numbers reporting and that coinciding with our 25th anniversary. I'll start, I'll take you through the highlights.

As I say, it was a it was a a strong set of results, and I'll frame this morning around three words: progress, momentum, and discipline. We closed the year with a record year-end closing AUM of £30.6 billion, up 43% on the year.

That was driven by strong investment performance, improved investment performance, and a continuing demand for specialist strategies. Structural growth themes led last year, particularly technology and AI, and we benefited from those tailwinds.

We saw positive net inflows for a second consecutive year of a total of £902 million. That does exclude corporate actions, two investment trust corporate actions and fund closures, but it was a positive year of flows.

Adjusted diluted total EPS was up 10% at 57.8p, and the board has maintained the full-year dividend at 46p. We have an ongoing £15 million share buyback, which was initiated in January and was our first share buyback.

I'm very pleased to to report that the momentum has continued into the current financial year. That AUM, record AUM number already looks stale.

AUM as at the 19th of June was £44.7 billion, and that's been driven by strong markets, but or and also and performance, but also by continued net inflows, £2.3 billion in the current quarter. Before I move on to talk about investment performance, just a bit of background on the environment in which we operate, which remains challenging.

It was a very volatile year. You'll I'll come back to talk about the year, and it was very much a year of two halves.

We've we've been navigating geopolitical uncertainty, shifting investor behavior, and and periods of of heightened market volatility. Active equity headwinds persist, dynamics that you're sure you'll be familiar with.

The opportunity set is improving. Markets are broadening.

We've seen elevated stock-level dispersion, and those things support high-conviction stock selection. The structural themes, as I mentioned in the highlights, remain powerful, particularly technology and AI.

Healthcare sentiment did improve through the year, particularly in the second half, and I'll I'll come back to that. Investors remain selective, both in terms of risk appetite, but also where they're looking to allocate.

We are seeing them continuing to favor differentiated, proven specialist strategies, which plays to our strength. The implication for us, the message to you as shareholders is a deliberate contrast.

The backdrop remains challenging, but the opportunity for specialist active managers is widening, and that plays directly to our strengths. This challenging backdrop is why investment performance so matters so much, because it is the foundation for client confidence and for future inflows.

If I turn to performance, looking here at our UCITS performance, which which is the bulk of our assets, it represents more than three-quarters of our total assets. As I mentioned in the highlights, performance has improved, particularly over the shorter term.

Long-term numbers remain very strong. 100% of our funds, of our AUM, is in the top two quartiles since inception, 85% over 5 years, and 74% over 3 years and 1 year.

That those better rankings do give us a stronger platform for business retention, but also for new business inflows. The benchmark relative picture over the page is also strong.

The majority of our UCITS AUM outperformed benchmark across all periods shown here in the chart. A high proportion of AUM outperformed, but that's reflective of our larger franchises, such as tech and healthcare, delivering very strong performance.

Say, tech and AI led, key contributors to outperformance over the 12 months, but also strong performance from healthcare, from biotechnology, convertibles, and smart energy. If we look at our regional and single-country strategies, the performance there was more mixed, but we are supporting investment teams and taking targeted action, where improvement is needed.

If we go over the page, before I look at our flows in detail, the active management backdrop, as I said in the the second slide, does remain challenging. The numbers on over the page, please, Hannah.

Thank you. You see in this top chart here, for active equity funds, we can the industry continues to face structural pressure.

The numbers on the top left there are actually the US mutual fund market, but you'll see exactly the same pattern in Europe. Active equity has been net outflow now for eight of the last nine years.

Our performance in that context, I think, is standout, and having positive net inflows for a second consecutive year stands out against that data. That, and as I've said, clients are seeking genuine differentiation, and they are looking for structural growth exposure, which plays to plays to our strengths.

How's that sort of gone into AUM? As I talked about, AUM reached a record year-end level of £30.6 billion, up from £24 billion, £21.4 billion at the start of the year, driven by fund performance, market movements, that did much of the work, I say, alongside those net flows.

Average AUM importantly was also up 14% to £26 billion, and the benefit of that feeds through to earnings, which Samir will talk to. The momentum didn't stop at year-end, as I said, as at the 19th of June, AUM at £44.7 billion.

As I also mentioned, the path through the year was not linear. Going over the page, you can see from the inflows month by month.

Over the page, please, Hannah. You can see the flows month by month.

It was very much a year of two halves. The first half of the year was challenging.

We saw £690 million in net outflows, plus a one-off return of capital as part of an investment trust corporate action of £280 million. We saw that things turned in the second quarter.

From outflows of £632 million in the first quarter of the financial year, slowed significantly to just £58 million in the second quarter, and then turned positive, with positive net inflows in December, and then a very strong finish to the year, Q4, £1.4 billion in net inflows. As already mentioned, that momentum carried into the current financial year, to the 19th of June, we have £2.3 billion in net inflows in this current quarter.

The next slide shows where that demand came from. The gross demand was for our products was healthy across the platform: gross subscriptions of £8.5 billion in in the financial year, which compares to £6.1 billion in the prior year.

Technology and artificial intelligence, as you can see in that chart, led the inflows, and that was helped significantly by private bank demand in both Europe and in Asia. Then healthcare contributed contributed particularly in the second half as performance improved in that strategy, and we landed a couple of new institutional mandates.

Crucially, the demand was broad. We saw demand in sustainable thematics, Japan value, global absolute return.

Where we saw outflows, they were concentrated in nature, and they were largely client-specific rather than a broad shift away from any particular strategy or from the from the firm. The message to you as shareholders is, redemptions are hard to forecast still, our focus is on converting that healthy £8.6 billion demand, gross demand into durable net inflows over time.

As I mentioned calendar year to date over the slide, that momentum has continued, and global technology, as you can see in the chart, very starkly has led. We've seen £2.6 billion inflows into technology in this current quarter in the global technology fund and £1.2 billion into the artificial intelligence fund.

That reflects both outstanding performance, investment performance from our team, but also continued appetite for AI exposure. We are being disciplined how we in how we interpret those figures.

We we're not extrapolating that pace of inflow. It's very recent.

While we're the team is very constructive on the outlook for technology and they remain bullish, we're not extrapolating the current rate of inflow. Encouragingly, though, inflows are not confined just to technology.

Sustainable thematics, healthcare, global absolute return, and Japan continue to take inflows. You can see on the right of the chart, much lower scale in terms of outflows, and still concentrated in emerging market markets in global insurance and in North American funds.

Again, client-specific rather than broad-based. The takeaway is very much Q4 momentum carried into the current financial year, and the inflows are drawn across several strategies rather than just a single source, although, granted, technology and AI is dominating.

Moving on now to sort the strategic side of the business. In 20- January 20- this year, we celebrated our 25th anniversary, which is a genuine milestone for the firm.

The firm was founded back in 2001 with a very clear purpose, which was to build a specialist active manager with an uncompromising focus on investment performance and client outcomes. That purpose still defines us today.

After my formal appointment of chief as chief executive, sorry, in September 2025, I've worked with the ExCo and with the board to formalize and refine the plan, the strategic plan for our next phase of growth. Our ambition is to build on that specialist model of the last 25 years while sharpening the platform really for what comes next.

Our ambition, our aim is to be the specialist active manager of choice and to scale through differentiation and focus, which I'll talk a little bit more on the next slide. The core of the strategy is very simple.

It's to scale where we have genuine differentiation and will concentrate on fewer high-impact priorities. As you can see on this slide, we have five principles across the top there that set the direction.

The story to give you today is really the four priorities below that, which drive the execution. Firstly, we have investment and product.

The aim here is scaling our specialist strategies only where we have clear demand, capacity, and a and a clear edge, but never at the expense of performance. We are first and foremost a performance-led organization, and we will continue to manage capacity of funds carefully so as not to negatively impact performance.

Second, distribution: we're deepening our UK and European foundations while growing selectively overseas with a focus on Asia and the US, and I'll come back to talk talk in more detail about that after Samir has gone through the financials. Thirdly, people, culture, and technology.

We are I am very much protecting our entrepreneurial culture. The culture here is very strong, and we are very protective of it.

We will be, though, strengthening accountability and looking carefully at succession. Succession planning is is is very important in in a people-led business.

We are using AI and data to scale more efficiently. If we can continue to grow our assets without growing the number of headcount in a in, commensurately, then that is good for the business.

Then fourth, finally, financial discipline and operating model, which Samir will talk to, but we are holding to disciplined economics, preserving investment independence across our teams, and keeping the balance sheet flexible in terms of both investing in the business and and returning capital to you as shareholders. The message I want you to take away as shareholders is we are not broadening for the sake of scale.

We're we're scaling our specialist strategies and capabilities where we have a clear advantage and nowhere else. With the strategic context set, I'll pass to Samir, who's going to talk through the the financials.

Iain, thank you, and good morning, everyone. If you move to the next page, thank you.

Very similar format to previous years, I'll walk through the income statement as well as the balance sheet, and round off the conversation on financials with shareholder returns. As Ian's mentioned, a year of two halves, and the strength in AUM flows and markets has come in the latter half of the year.

The average AUM for the full year at £26 billion meant that average AUM was up 14% for the full year. Dropping that down into net management fee revenues, £197-odd million, up 10% year-on-year.

That was at a net management fee yield of 76 basis points, which was two basis points lower than last year, but well within our stated long-term stated guidance of expecting fee margin erosion of 1 to 2 basis points because of industry headwinds and change of product mix as that evolves. In terms of profitability, again, as I've stated in the past, there are three main legs to income and profitability at Polar Capital.

There is core operating profit, which is essentially net management fee revenue minus all direct costs of running the business, and that was up 11% at just under £63 million for the year. Core operating margin, 32%, while flat year-on-year, remember at the interim stage, that metric was 29%, you can see that with the average AUM increasing over the latter half of the year, core operating profit and importantly operating margin has fed through to the bottom allowed us to feed all of that through to the bottom line.

Performance fee profits, which are performance fee revenues minus shares of those revenues paid to the investment teams, were £16 million, roughly twice that of last year. Other income is essentially interest income on bank balances, but the bigger component is mark-to-market and realized gains and losses on our seed portfolio net of hedging costs.

On that line, we took a little bit of pain this year with predominantly losses on the international small part of the seed book there. Tying everything together, adjusted diluted total EPS for the year was 57.8p, up 10%, and the dividend per share was held total dividend was held at 46p.

The final point that I'd raise is, again, we're providing a little bit more guidance on half year on the first half of '27, especially because of the increase in AUM post year-end. Through to the 19th of June, average AUM was running at £39 billion.

We expect net management fee yield certainly of the first half to hold at 76 basis points, predominantly because the net flows that we're taking in and the strong performance that we're seeing is in the higher-margin parts of our portfolio: the tech, healthcare, and smart energy strategies. Again, as Iain signaled, we are looking to invest back into the platform along two main strands.

One, putting more into the distributional platform and making sure that client service, client support, and distribution is match-fit and able to support the additional AUM and client relationships that we've taken on, but also allows a platform for us to kick forward and and and grow from here on now, and also to improve and to continue to evolve the IT and technology stack. With that in mind, we still believe on a conservative basis that after that investment has gone in, core operating margin over the full FY '27 year, we expect to be in the range of 38% to 40-odd percent.

If you move to the next slide, please, and we'll look at the cost base of the firm in a bit more detail. Again, very similar slide to previous years.

Total operating costs were roughly £152 million. That was a 3% increase year-on-year if you ignore exceptional items, which remember last year was the impairment charge on goodwill related to the Dalton acquisition that was written off.

If you exclude exceptional items, costs increased 15% year-on-year. Looking at that chart on the right, the predominant drivers of those costs were variable costs, the profit shares paid to the investment teams and variable compensation related to performance fees.

Apart from compensation-related costs, other operating costs, which are the non-compensation-related operating side of the business, those increased roughly 3% year-on-year, a fairly disciplined impact on the overall cost base, with variable costs only increasing in line with increasing revenues and operating margins and operating profits. If we move to the next slide, Hannah, we'll look at other operating costs in a bit more detail.

Again, very similar line items as in the past, up 3% year-on-year, which we think is a is a good outcome considering the overall business changes over across the year. A bit of guidance there, not so much for FY '27, but certainly for the outer years, FY '28 and '29, is an indication that the lease for our current property does renew or expire in early 2028, January '28, therefore there's a bit of a signal to say for the outer years, it's realistic to expect a 10% to 20% increase on rent and rates line as we look at our options there and and and potentially renew or or or or or look to move.

We look at the balance sheet next across the next two slides. Cash and seed portfolio combined of £177 million, with seven funds supported by our seeding program currently.

We have recycled some of the seed book, the seed book is slightly lower than what it was last year. Again, a slight signal, Iain will pick up the view on distribution and growing that within different geographies around the world.

We are keeping we we do have the view that we may look to expand the seed book across the remainder of FY '27 on a tactical basis as we look at different product wrappers in different geographic regions to to continue to grow the business. The next slide takes us and shows us a slightly different view of the balance sheet: surplus capital over regulatory requirements.

Regulatory requirements remained unchanged year-on-year, and surplus capital stood at roughly £72 million. The framework for use of capital, bottom right-hand side of that slide there, mainly unchanged as we look to invest for future growth, as Iain indicated.

Maintain strength on the balance sheet as well, because that has served Polar really, really well over the last 25 years in making sure that we have the ballast on the balance sheet to navigate volatility through market cycles. Equally, the two pegs of returns of capital to shareholders, both through the ordinaries and, as we've seen this year, potentially looking at other forms of returns through buybacks and potentially specials going forward, which takes us neatly onto the conversation around shareholder returns on the next slide.

For the year that just closed, a maintained second interim dividend of 32p, providing a total dividend for the year of 46p, which is a payout ratio of 80% of adjusted total earnings for FY '26. As Iain indicated, a £15 million buyback, our first buyback announced in January 2026, was 71% complete as at 19th of June.

Really, that was an signal of intent and ability to provide other forms of returns to shareholders. Again, while the board and the board are absolutely focused on sustainable and disciplined capital allocation, and with the expanding core earnings part of our P&L, this feels like the right time to evolve the shareholder return policy.

Yesterday, the board announced the the evolution to be a re-anchoring of the dividend around core earnings. Moving forward, we expect to return at least 50% of adjusted core earnings to shareholders through an ordinary dividend, still paid on a half-yearly basis, and still with the first interim dividend paid in January and being roughly 50% of the first half's core profits, no change there.

We still aim to grow returns to shareholders over time, but through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. After taking account of growth plans and investment requirements in the business, we will take a view on excess performance fee profits and surplus capital, and look to return that to shareholders over time through either special dividends or share repurchases, as determined by the board depending on prevailing market conditions.

Again, we appreciate this FY '27 is likely to be a transition year, but looking out ahead, given consensus that emerged yesterday on FY '27 earnings, we can see that earnings will allow for, given current conditions, the ordinary dividend for FY '27 to likely be at least 46p. The message we want to deliver to shareholders is is hopefully a positive and a strong one, that with earnings expected for FY '27 allowing for at least a 46p ordinary dividend, and that is after we've invested back into the business for future growth, and with the optionality of further returns through either special dividends or or share buybacks.

Overall, the financial health of the business is strong as we look to navigate the the future in front of us. I'll pass back to Iain.

Thank you, Samir. Turning to outlook and then finally summary.

Starting with distribution, this is clearly where investment performance turns into durable flows, and it is a genuine differentiator for us, particularly as a boutique, specialist boutique. We've continued to diversify our client base, as Samir alluded to, overseas.

You can see on that chart on the right, 45% of our current assets under management are from international clients. Just to give you some context, for those asset managers globally that choose to distribute overseas, and not all do, but those that do, the average represented by international clients is about half that number, is about 21%, 22%.

We are differentiated in that regard. UK still remains our home market, our core market, and is more than half of our assets.

Europe also a very strong foundation. We'll be looking to both deepen and broaden our distribution in the UK and Europe.

We're seeing momentum in Asia. Asian percentage of AUM has gone up from 6% to 8% in the last 12 months.

As Samir said, we'll be looking to add resource in Asia to manage that growing client base. They are very high-quality clients, and they are demanding.

We have one individual currently based in Singapore, and we need to add resource to help that individual continue to grow and carry on that momentum. The US has been slower than our ambition, but it does remain strategically important because it's the largest market globally, and our penetration is still very slow.

We are working on ways to make our strategies more accessible to clients there, and that's an ongoing project. Say, it's a clear differentiator for us, and that overseas element of the business just gives us a broader base on which to grow the business and to build net flows over time.

I just want to talk about a few strategies, pinpoint a few strategies where we are seeing growing client engagement, growing inflows. First is the Artificial Intelligence Fund.

We launched this close to 9 years ago, and it's been a standout thematic story for this year. The narrative, the story for investors that we have been delivering and has been gaining increasing traction is this is not just a pure technology fund.

This is a global equity fund. Over half of the AUM is invested outside of the information technology sector, investors are getting access to both the enablers of AI, but also the beneficiaries of AI.

Demand has been very strong, particularly from Europe and from Asia. This fund at £3.5 billion sterling currently is the third-largest open-ended fund on our platform.

It's exactly the kind of differentiated thematic strategy that we want to continue to scale. As I said earlier in the presentation, with the discipline on capacity and a focus on performance.

Moving on to the next slide, healthcare, as I mentioned, we saw strong momentum in the second half in this franchise, driven by improving performance and renewed client demand. The valuation backdrop is attractive.

We've been issuing stock in the investment trust this year following the corporate action, which is another signal of client demand. We've had two new segregated accounts, one from a major US institution and another from a Swiss wealth manager.

We have an encouraging pipeline for this team. They're now managing close to £5 billion sterling, second-largest team here, and another example of a high-conviction team and strategy where we can see clear scope to scale further.

Thirdly, smart energy: so we've seen a real resurgence here in the alternative energy fund, supported by AI-powered demand. Delighted for the team.

They've been here now 5, 5-plus years, slow initially to grow assets, but we've seen significant inflows, particularly this year. The team now manages £980 million sterling, comfortably through a billion, and seeing growing client engagement and demand, driven in great part by that demand for energy security, a strong investment theme, but also very strong investment performance delivered by our specialist team.

It's a great example, actually, of a specialist strategy meeting real client demand at exactly the right moment. Delighted for that team.

Bringing all this together, the message to you as shareholders is a straightforward one. I think we are very well placed for the next phase of growth.

Equally, we're clear-eyed about the environment we're operating in. It remains challenging, but our boutique advantage is real.

We have independent investment teams, very disciplined risk management, and a scalable platform. If I had to pick one thing which makes us stand out, it's 25 years of specialist heritage, and that is very difficult to replicate.

As I've talked about, we have leverage from our distribution, an unusual global footprint for a firm of our size. As Samir has talked about, the balance sheet gives us freedom to act, gives us optionality to seed new ideas, to invest in new investment teams, and to pursue selective bolt-ons and also to return capital to shareholders.

I think genuine conditions for us to win in that next phase of growth. To bring it all to a close and to summarize, FY '26 was a year of real operational progress, and the numbers tell that story: record AUM, positive net inflows for a second consecutive year, and that momentum has carried into the current financial year.

I think we are genuinely well placed for the next phase of growth. Our priority from here is simple: it's to convert that gross demand into durable, repeatable net inflows, keep investment performance moving in the right direction, and to execute on the strategy with discipline.

All sounds very easy, I know, but if we can do that, we can compound value for both clients and shareholders in the years to come. With that, we're very happy to take any questions, Hannah.

Thank you. We do have a number, let's begin.

First up, obviously, the success of the technology fund invites question: what is the flight risk of the tech team?

You can never be complacent. The technology team is led by two very talented individuals, Ben Rogoff and Nick Evans, and they are second generation.

The first generation were the founders of the business. Nick and Ben have both been here, Ben's been here for 22, 3 years, I think, Nick 18.

They are strong Polar people and culture carriers. They've built a phenomenal team.

Say we can never be complacent, but they are the epitome of what Polar Capital is about, which is collegiate entrepreneurial individuals. They are the beating heart of the business.

Say we can't be complacent, but I would be very surprised if they ever looked beyond these walls.

Thank you. Sticking to the technology theme, at what point does technology become too large a proportion of the business?

For example, stress testing, if Nasdaq fell 20%, what would the impact be on revenue and operating profit?

Oh gosh, [laughter] This is a stress test of my ability to respond very quickly. To give you a guide, we do stress tests regularly on an annual basis.

We stress test to levels up to losing 30% plus of our overall AUM, not just market movements, and the business can withstand those pressures. The business model is predicated on a large part of our cost base being variable in terms of how we share economics with investment teams.

That allows great flexibility in how we run the business. It's a very well-understood model by staff, by investment teams, that they participate in the upside, but equally, when Polar navigates difficult times, variable compensation comes down.

We don't have a large fixed cost element. I think hopefully those two elements sort of answer that question.

Thank you. I guess, in terms of technology as a percentage and the opportunity for other strategies, perhaps we could approach it from that perspective, Ian.

Obviously, technology's so big now, are you comfortable with the size of it, that it dominates the rest of the portfolio?

Look, I think, as I've said, we're playing to our strengths where we have capacity, where we have performance, and where we have client demand. Clearly, we would like to continue to diversify the business, but not for diversification's sake.

I'm encouraged that, when you look at the gross flows and net flows, it's not all about technology. We have other franchises that are growing.

We have other franchises that have significant capacity. The sustainable thematics team have significant capacity.

The emerging market team have significant capacity, as does healthcare. There are other areas for us to grow, and those businesses are in net inflow.

It's just currently it's being dwarfed, and I think that's really a function of investor demand. Ian,

I'd just add that in no way are we complacent about this, but it is a phenomenally great problem to have. We have an excellent technology team and exposure to a long-term structural growth engine for the entire world.

At 55% and slightly more of exposure in terms of AUM, it's not too far out of line with where technology is in terms of exposure to, if you looked at World MSCI. We're certainly not complacent about it, but it's a good problem to have.

Coming back to the prior question, Hannah, because I think it's important talking about the team, as I mentioned, the lead managers of the team are second generation. They're still young, they're early 50s, but we are thinking about the next generation.

Succession is something that we think very carefully about, already, making sure that we can repeat the very smooth transition from second to third as we did from first to second. That's very important with the business, particularly with a franchise of that size.

Super, thank you. We have a number of questions on shareholder returns.

Let's start with surplus capital. A couple of questions there.

Obviously, one, what is the right level? Two, with £70 million, why is your buyback only £15 million?

Would you consider special dividends or similar additional returns?

Absolutely. Taking the latter half of the question, which is exactly why that shareholder return policy has been evolved to the current pitch that we've come out with yesterday.

The prior policy focused on total earnings, and it was silent on either specials or buybacks, we've kind of tried to articulate a better framework for shareholders and investors to understand how we will approach returns. We're absolutely cognizant of the fact that the dividend is very important to a large part of our shareholder base.

Equally, there are a number of shareholders, both on the register, but equally prospective registers that we want to try and speak to, that appreciate returns in a different format: share buybacks. In terms of how much capital on the balance sheet is enough, I think as I said earlier, we're probably going through a transition year, FY '27, where we do want to invest back into the business, both taking some of that capital and investing into the seed book, but also some impact onto the P&L.

I think to answer the third element within that question, why was a share buyback only £15 million? I think with the opportunity set during FY '26, it was a signal of intent.

We could see 15 roughly £15 million of performance fees coming onto the P&L and therefore ultimately landing onto the balance sheet. Actually, it was a signal of intent to say that is essentially excess capital arriving, and we feel that that is excess capital that we can deliver in a different form, and hence the board announced that buyback for 2026.

Will it be £15 million next year? I think too early to call, but it's not certainly something that we're looking to set in stone, and we're allowing ourselves a little bit of flexibility to see what the mix of returns is.

Okay. I've got a dividend question which is going to test your speed of response again, Samir.

If we've got core profit of £60 million, PBT 45 post-tax, would the new policy suggest a 22p dividend?

Is that reference to the interim dividend?

Sorry, yes, the interim dividend, yeah, H1.

The interim dividend, again, difficult for me to make a call, that is a board decision when we get to November, but roughly if 50% of the core earnings equates to roughly 22p, there will be a conversation around whether that interim dividend needs to move up given prevailing market conditions. The indications that the question lays out are in the right direction.

Thank you. A couple of questions on inflows.

Are you seeing how much of the existing inflows are from existing clients versus new institutional mandates? Have any of these come from model portfolio allocations that could reverse quickly?

Very good questions. To take the institutional piece first, so as I mentioned, we've had two new segregated accounts, one from a US institution, an endowment, which was into our biotechnology strategy.

Then the second one was into healthcare opportunities, which was with a Swiss private wealth manager. Broader flows, actually, as I mentioned, the strongest flows into technology and AI have been driven by European and Asian clients.

I would say that, in large part, is private banks, regional banks, but also global banks and private wealth managers rather than actually model portfolios. It's been because a lot of the bank business is advisory.

I'd say less so MPS.

Thank you. Of the inflows since March, is the fee yield in line with 76 bps?

Yes, absolutely, which is why the indication is certainly for first half '27, we expect the fee yield to remain at 76 basis points.

Okay. Was any outlier mandate win or lots of small top-ups?

No, I'd say in Asia, actually, we've signed two new banking clients, again, flows through their high-net-worth channels, but they've only very recently signed as partners, we've not seen significant flows from either of those parties yet.

They're certainly not concentrated into one or two large tickets coming in. They are quite diversified.

Yes.

Okay. Commissions rose faster than management fees.

Can you explain? Do you expect those to increase as you expand into Europe, Asia, US?

I think the year-on-year percentage certainly looks like it's jumping up more, but if you look at the fee yield, that's come in line exactly within the 1 to 2 basis points broader-term, longer-term fee erosion that we've signaled over a number of years. As we expand or grow, we expect to try and manage the business plus or minus to be within that range of 1 to 2 basis points a year.

Okay. Will you need to soft-close your tech fund to protect performance as capacity is reached?

The response to that is yes if we continue to grow, but not yet. If you look at the capacity numbers, capacity numbers are always a reflection of current market conditions, but looking at current liquidity, current market conditions, we still have capacity of around £12 billion sterling in the technology team, we're some way from needing to soft-close.

That said, we think about capacity in two ways. One is underlying liquidity; the other is managing clients.

When you take on the number of new clients that we have, that becomes demanding. We are, as Samir said, we're looking to add resource in Asia, but we're also looking to add resource in the technology team.

They're already a tech team of 12, but we're looking to add one, if not two, what we would call client portfolio managers, which will be their specialists there to help with incoming inquiries from existing shareholders, because it's important that they are spending the majority of their time investing.

Why have you seen such slow growth in US distribution? What can you do to address this?

Would you look at a third party to help distribution? Again,

very good questions. It has been slower than our ambition.

At the moment, we have two US-domiciled products, mutual funds: emerging markets and international SMID cap. Initially, when we started distributing in the US, the primary headwind was that US allocators were not typically looking overseas for equities, because US equities were performing so strongly both in absolute terms and relative.

We saw that begin to change in Q1 last year, there was rising engagement and interest in both of those products, but candidly, the performance of both of those last year was not as strong as we would like to have been, and that has slowed momentum in terms of engagement. We're focused on performance of both those, improving the performance, but equally, we're looking at what other strategies can we take into the US, and in what wrappers, to help accelerate growth.

As an example, that SMA I talked about was a biotechnology SMA sold at actually the same level of fee as the fund because of capacity constraints. We can look at different structures to take existing strategies, and then depending on what we decide to take across the US will then drive the distribution side.

I'm not saying we will, we are actively looking at active ETFs. If we were to do that, then I think we quite possibly would use third-party distribution, but it'll be very much product-led first and then distribution requirements second.

Samir, can you give a bit more color on the other income line? No,

absolutely. The other income line is interest income on bank balances, but the bigger component, as I mentioned, is mark-to-market, fair value, realized gains and losses on the seed book, where we have taken losses on the seed book and therefore through that other income line compared to last year.

It's on our seed capital within the international small company. It's had a difficult year, mainly driven by the fact that it is small cap, but also it has a quality bias.

Through the latter half of effectively our financial year, quality has had a very difficult time, and so therefore that fund has experienced that. Therefore that's fed through into that P&L line.

Are your seed investments hedged?

They are hedged. However, any under- or overperformance is not hedged, which is the net impact that you see on the P&L if those two questions were correlated.

Thank you. Some of the performance in the regional strategies is mixed.

Are you still pursuing a strategy of trimming these? In particular, China Stars seems to have disappeared.

Why is that?

I think another good question. There is always an element of housekeeping.

We shouldn't be afraid to close products if we don't see commercially and from a client perspective that they're offering value. One of the first things I did when I took over as chief exec in September last year was to close the China Stars fund.

It was sub-£10 million. You may have seen, but across the industry a number of China-specific equity funds have also closed, but it was sub-scale, and we couldn't see a line of sight for that to grow.

We've been running it for 8 years, and from the client feedback is that where allocators are allocating to China-specific funds, it's very much to investment teams that are based in the region, that are based in China. It was a difficult decision, but an easy decision, if that makes sense.

I think those commercial decisions, we need to take them. They're not always easy, but we do need to take them.

We'll continue to do so.

Thank you. What workflows, benefits have you seen implemented in order to grow AUM without growing costs, for example, using AI?

My message to staff, Hannah, has been very clear, which is we need to embrace AI. If we don't embrace it, we'll get left behind.

The message to staff is don't be fearful of it. It can feel uncomfortable.

Innovation is uncomfortable, and this is innovation at breakneck speed. We are adopting it across the business.

We have a number of POCs underway at varying degrees of progress. That's in investment, that's in finance, that's in client service, across the business.

The lens we have to look through is: is it genuinely productivity-enhancing? We should adopt those things that are and not be afraid to shut down those that aren't.

Samir, you want to talk about the investment in the tech stack and that side of things?

No, absolutely. To add color to that answer, the investment going in is sort of the evolution of the proof of concepts that we've been running.

We have a clear idea of what has worked, what hasn't worked, caveating that, as Iain said, it's a fast-evolving field, but the investment is going to go into effectively resource, funnily enough, to help us accelerate improving the IT and data architecture infrastructure that we need to kick on and really make use of AI at a firm level to make sure that we continue to remain efficient and have operational gearing in the business. We can't compete as a boutique if the view is that we're going to let headcount double or triple as AUM grows, so that we're very clear on that.

Thank you. Has the board considered AIM versus the main market recently?

We had fairly lengthy conversations about 12 or 18 months ago when there were some participants on the AIM that moved. We will continue to pick up the conversation.

I think we canvassed at the time a number of our institutional shareholders, and most were fairly comfortable. We spoke to a number of shareholders that were not on the register and looking in from the outside internationally, and they themselves were fairly agnostic.

I think the simple view is we need to continue to focus on growing the business, and if we do that and the business is larger and we have better liquidity, there will naturally come a point where that conversation is a more meaningful conversation to have. Simply moving to the FTSE 250 right now, I don't think in itself will solve the liquidity concerns that some people may have or add any sort of value to the business per se.

I think that's the thinking.

I guess we've got a couple of questions. In fact, to summarize them, you've done exceptionally well, and the technology team and the healthcare team are all contributing brilliantly, but how quickly could this reverse?

How should investors think about the dark side of the coin of your success?

Again, a great question. I take comfort from the fact that I've been through cycles, many cycles, have the technology team.

Ben and Nick, who lead that team, they were technology investors in the last cycle in the late '90s. Unlike some of our peers, we have long-standing experience.

They are very constructive. They think actually, from a technology perspective, this is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.

This is a multi-year cycle. Now, there will be volatility through that cycle, and they fully expect that we will see significant drawdowns, but that's to be expected in a multi-year cycle.

I think we focus on the things we can control, not the things that we can't. While they remain very positive, clearly there are risks: US recession, as an example, rising conflicts in the Middle East.

We can't control that. If that were to happen, then clearly all equities are going to be impacted, including our own, including tech, and including the business.

As an exec team, we have to focus very much on the things we can control.

That's a great note on which to end. Just leaves me to thank our audience, and a reminder feedback will be popping up just now, stick around.

Thank you to the both of you for your time today. We look forward to the update in six months' time.

Hannah, thank you.

Thank you to everyone.

Thank you to everyone.