On Tuesday, AGF Management (TSX:AGF) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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View the webcast at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/pdxua75r/
Summary
AGF Management reported a 12% year-over-year increase in assets under management (AUM) and fee-earning assets, totaling over $60 billion by the end of Q1 2026.
The company announced a new Chief Investment Officer, John Porter, effective May 1, 2026, bringing decades of investment management experience.
Strong free cash flow of $36 million was recorded for the quarter, up 14% from the previous quarter, supporting an 8% increase in the quarterly dividend.
Adjusted EPS, excluding the impact from AGS Capital Partners, was $0.35, up 21% year-over-year, but adjusted EPS including AGS was negative $0.05 per share.
Revenue from long-term investments decreased, leading to a negative $10.6 million impact due to a 2.5% decline in the value of these investments.
The company continues to see strong interest in its strategies within the institutional space, with recent inflows of $350 million from an institutional client.
AGF Management’s Canadian mutual fund AUM grew by 15% year-over-year, and its ETF and SMA AUM saw a 54% increase globally.
The company remains disciplined in expense management while investing for growth, with a strong balance sheet featuring $432 million in investments and $160 million available on its credit facility.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q1 2026 AGF Management Limited earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference. Mr. Tseng, you may begin.
Ken Tsang (Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you Operator and good morning everyone. I’m Ken Tsang, Chief Financial Officer of AGF Management Ltd. Today we will be discussing the financial results for the first quarter of 2026. Slides supporting today’s call and webcast can be found in the Investor relations section of ajf.com also speaking on the call today will be Judy Goldring, Chief Executive Officer for the Q and A period following the presentation, Ash Lawrence, Head of AGF Capital Partners and David Stonehouse, Interim Chief Investment Officer will also be available to address questions. Slide 4 provides the agenda for today’s call. After the prepared remarks, we will be happy to take questions.
Judy Goldring (Chief Executive Officer)
With that, I will now turn the call over to Judy. Good morning and thank you for joining us. Before we get into the specifics of the quarter, I’d like to touch on some exciting news for AGF Investments announced late yesterday. Following a comprehensive global search, we are thrilled to welcome John Porter as Chief Investment Officer for ags Investments effective May 1, 2026. John brings decades of investment management and leadership experience overseeing investment management teams across markets and asset classes. John will also join AGF’s executive management team and will report directly to me. I want to sincerely thank David Stonehouse for his contributions as Interim Chief Investment Officer. David provided steady leadership that helped ensure disciplined execution and oversight of the investment management team during a pivotal period for the firm. Looking ahead, I am confident that under John’s leadership, the investment team culture of high performance, collaboration and risk management will continue positioning the firm for future growth. Continuing with our Q1 highlights against the backdrop of significant market volatility, AGF continued to demonstrate the durability of our business outside of the impact of long term investments which I will speak to shortly. Q1 was a solid quarter. AUM and Fee earning assets were over $60 billion at the end of Q1, up 12% from a year ago. AGF Investment’s retail mutual fund business reported net sales of $237 million in the quarter, marking our seventh consecutive quarter of positive retail mutual fund net sales. 7 of AGF Investment funds earned fund Grade A awards which are given annually to investment funds that have delivered consistent outstanding risk adjusted performance throughout the year. The seven award winning funds span across our suite of equities, balanced and fixed income strategies. We continue to generate strong free cash flows totaling $36 million in the quarter which is up 14% from last quarter. Free cash flows were $122 million over the trailing 12 months. Our balance sheet remains strong with $432 million in short and long term investments. Net debt of $48 million with $160 million available on our credit facility. The strength of our balance sheet and capital position provides us with flexibility to deploy capital thoughtfully in line with our strategic priorities. On the back of our strong capital position, the Board unanimously declared a 13.5 cent per share quarterly dividend for Q1 2026 representing an 8% increase. This is the sixth consecutive year where we have increased our dividend. Following the quarter we were pleased to see AGF added to the NASDAQ Broad Canadian Dividend Achievers Index reflecting our track record of consistent dividend growth and our ongoing focus on returning capital to shareholders. During the quarter we did see revenue from our long term investments decrease to negative 10.6 million. This represents a 2.5% decline in the value of our long term investments during the period. As a consequence, our adjusted EPS from AGF Capital Partners was negative $0.05 per share excluding AGF Capital Partners. Adjusted EPS was $0.35 which is up 21% year over year and our adjusted diluted EPS was $0.30 in the quarter. Starting on Slide 6, we will provide updates on our business performance. On this slide we break down our total AUM and fee earning assets in the categories disclosed in our MDA and show comparisons to the prior year AGF investments. Canadian Mutual fund AUM was $36 billion up 15% year over year outpacing the industry increase of 14%. The growth of our ETF and SMA AUM globally remained strong up 54% year over year. I’ll provide more color on our mutual fund sales and ETFs and SMA AUM in a moment. Segregated accounts and sub Advisory AUM decreased by 9% compared to the prior year. The decrease is driven by the redemptions from two institutional clients as disclosed in previous quarters. Subsequent to quarter end we saw inflows of 350 million from an institutional client. We continue to see strong interest in our strategies in the institutional space with a number of existing clients. Our private wealth AUM increased by 13% compared to prior year to approximately $10 billion and our AGF Capital partners AUM and fee earning assets were 4.5 billion at the end of the quarter. As a reminder, New Holland Capital’s aum of approximately $10 billion is not consolidated into AGF’s total AUM and fee earning assets at this time. Turning to slide 7, I’ll provide some details on mutual fund sales. The mutual fund industry in Canada saw net positive sales of $19 billion in the quarter. AGF Investments retail mutual funds delivered the seventh consecutive quarter of positive net sales totaling $237 million in line with the industry net sales rate of 0.7% of AUM. Since Q1 2024, the Canadian mutual fund industry has recorded approximately $55 billion of net sales representing 2.5% of AUM. Over that same time period, AGF’s retail mutual fund business generated roughly $1 billion of net sales or 3.3% of AUM, demonstrating our ability to continually grow market share. The strength of our retail mutual fund sales reflects the successful execution of our distribution strategy and our strong investment performance. Let me provide a brief update on our investment performance. AGF Investments measures mutual fund performance by comparing gross returns before fees relative to peers within the same category with the 1st percentile being the best possible performance. Our 1 year performance was in the 35th percentile, our 3 year performance was in the 46th percentile, our 5 year performance was in the 39th percentile and nearly 2/3 of our funds are outperforming our peers on the three and five year basis. Turning now to Slide eight In addition to our retail mutual fund net flows of $237 million, the AUM in our ETF and SMA vehicles, which has now reached 4.5 billion, have grown at 64% on a compounded basis over the last two years. We continue to see consistent growth and momentum in our SMA vehicles across U.S. canada and Asia where many of our strategies are available on leading wealth management platforms. In January we launched ETF series of AGF Global select and AGF American Growth Fund here in Canada, two funds with long standing and proven track records. The launch expands our Canadian ETF lineup and addresses growing advisor demand for more choice in how they access our capabilities for investors. I will now pass it over to Ken to discuss our financial results.
Ken Tsang (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks Judy. Slide 9 reflects a summary of our financial results with sequential quarter and year over year comparisons. The financial results in these periods are adjusted to exclude severance, corporate development, non cash acquisition related expenses as well as other adjustments. As noted in our MD&A adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $30 million, down $22 million from the prior quarter and $18 million from the prior year, primarily reflecting lower net revenues from AGF Capital Partners long term investments which we will expand on in a moment. SG&A was $65 million, down 3 million from the prior quarter and up 1 million from the prior year. The decrease from the prior quarter was attributable to lower non compensation and performance based compensation offset in part by the seasonally higher government benefits recorded in this quarter. The increase from the prior year was primarily due to higher non compensation expenses reflecting the impact of inflation as well as increased sales and marketing and other AUM driven costs. Net income attributable to equity owners for the quarter was $20 million and adjusted diluted EPS was $0.30. Free cash flows for the quarter was $36 million which is $4.5 million higher than a prior year and prior quarter reflecting strong cash generation. As a reminder, free cash flows excludes non cash items such as fair value Mark-to-Market Adjustments on Our Long term Investments slide 10 provides a further breakdown of our net revenues within our traditional asset and wealth management businesses. Net management fees were $93 million for the quarter which is $2 million lower than the …
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