Tech investments pave way for staff cuts & margin upside
Brooks Macdonald has announced it intends to reduce staff complement by 55, around 10% of its workforce of just over 500. It expects to save £4m of costs per year from the changes, but it will incur restructuring costs of up to £3.0m, to be recognised in the current FY24.We update our forecasts and valuation as a result of these changes, primarily:
- Adding ‘one-off’ restructuring charges of £3m to FY24 which reduces statutory profits but not ‘underlying’ profit.
- Reducing staff costs from FY25 onwards, by around £4m per year.
While these adjustments offset each other to a degree, the increase in outer-year profits is the dominant driver of valuation and we increase our fundamental valuation from 3,000p per share to 3,050p per share (71% above the current share price). We also maintain our view that the ‘de-rating’ of investment/wealth managers, especially Brooks Macdonald, has been overdone.
Brooks MacDonald Group is an independent investment management firm. Co. has four segments: Investment Management, which provides discretionary investment management to private investors, pension funds, charities and trusts through Bespoke Portfolio Service and Managed Portfolio Service; Financial Planning, which delivers both fee based financial advice to high net-worth families, and employee benefit consultancy to small and medium sized employers throughout the U.K.; Funds and Property Management, which engages in new investment across the range of funds with the Defensive Capital Fund; and International, which includes the Channel Islands business discretionary funds under management.
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