Tatton Asset Management — The Wealth Manager That Owns No Wealth
ROIC 42.2%, 98.3% retention and a fee margin that rises instead of falling. Why the largest client loss in the company's history was a gain.
Tatton Asset Management manages £26.5bn and owns none of it [2]. The company runs model portfolios for 1,218 independent British financial advisers, charges 15 basis points for doing so, and needs neither branches nor a balance sheet nor debt to do it [1]. The result is a return on capital that I rarely see in the financial sector.
The number I consider decisive for this financial year is not in the income statement. In January 2026 Tatton lost by far its largest client, and the group's fee margin rose as a result, from 20.1 to 22.0 basis points [1]. How those two facts fit together is the core of this analysis.
Tatton earns a 42.2% ROIC and a 42.4% ROCE against my required return of 12.5%, and that spread is not narrow but structural, because the business ties up no capital (Greenblatt gate 1). The moat consists of switching costs at the adviser level and can be measured: 98.3% retention in the 2026 financial year (gate 2). Losing the largest client cost 13.6% of assets but only 2.5% of revenue, and it lifted the fee margin from 20.1 to 22.0 basis points. My FCFE model gives a probability-weighted fair value of £8.52, 23% above the £6.92 share price, and the probability-weighted expected return of 15.5% p.a. clears the 15% hurdle narrowly (gate 3). All three Greenblatt gates are passed; rating: Accumulate.
The business model
A British independent financial adviser (IFA) has a time problem. He wants to talk to clients, not construct portfolios, rebalance them and document every allocation decision. Since the FCA's Consumer Duty began requiring that every recommendation be demonstrably in the client's interest, the documentation burden of running money in-house has risen substantially.
Tatton takes that over. The adviser keeps the client relationship; Tatton runs the portfolio on the platform where the money already sits. The decisive point, and the annual report states it in so many words: Tatton is purely an intermediary and does not compete with the IFAs [1]. It owns no advice chain of its own that could poach its customers' clients.
Two divisions carry the business. Investment Management accounts for 87% of revenue and runs at an operating margin of 64.8% [1]. Paradigm offers IFAs support services around mortgages and compliance: £6.8m of revenue, adjacent to the core business but slower-growing (+8.1%) and, at 6.7% of group profit, very much the smaller half [1].
“The customer is not the saver but his adviser. And the adviser does not switch, because he would then have to move his entire client base.”
The Perspective exit: why it was not a warning shot
In January 2026 the partnership with Perspective Financial Group ended; at £3.3bn it was the largest single client in Tatton's history [1]. 13.6% of assets gone, in a single day. On a superficial reading that is an alarm signal, the proof that advisers do leave after all.
Three facts from the annual report turn that around for me.
First: Perspective paid almost nothing. The client contributed £1.3m to group revenue [1]. On £3.3bn of assets that is roughly 4 basis points, a fifth of the group margin of 20.1 basis points. The exit cost 13.6% of assets but only about 2.5% of revenue. That is why the fee margin rises to 22.0 basis points once Perspective is stripped out.
Second: it was a legacy of the founding story. Paul Hogarth, Tatton's CEO, founded Perspective Financial Group himself in 2007. That explains both the size of the relationship and its terms.
Third: it came with fourteen months' notice. The termination was communicated to shareholders from November 2024, so it was built into every plan. The annual report is unambiguous: “Tatton does not have any other agreements or clients of a similar nature to PFG.” [1]
Tatton discloses retention explicitly for the first time: 98.30% retention on £22.805bn [1]. Attrition to consolidators amounts to 1.70%, or roughly £387m, by name to True Potential, IWP, Superbia, Furnley and others. Against net inflows of 15.6% of opening assets, that attrition stands in a ratio of roughly nine to one.
So the vertical-integration risk has not disappeared; it has been quantified. It runs at 1.7% a year, not 13.6%.
What has become of Perspective since
The three facts above still hold. They answer only why the departure cost Tatton so little, however, not what the client has since become. And on that front, 2026 has seen a good deal of movement.
Perspective is acquiring at a pace that rebuilds its own asset base quickly. In the first quarter of 2026 it completed six acquisitions, adding £825m of assets and twelve advisers [7]; April brought six more with £550m and ten advisers, among them Grosvenor Wealth Management and Graham Investment Management [8]. That is twelve deals and roughly £1.4bn in four months. By its own account the group has now completed more than 120 acquisitions since founding, serviced by an in-house M&A team of around fifty people [7].
The earnings behind that pace are thinner than the pace suggests. For calendar year 2025 Perspective reports turnover of £72.7m against £51.8m the year before, EBITDA of £17.8m and an operating profit of £6.7m after a loss of £12.4m [9]. After tax, £2.3m remains, around three per cent of turnover. That is a return to profitability, but it is not a business that funds twelve acquisitions a year out of its own cash flow.
The consolidation section below names the most serious structural risk as the buyer who brings its own investment solution. Perspective is now precisely that type of buyer: a consolidator with its own DFM arm, acquiring twelve advice firms in four months. Every one of those firms brings clients who previously held a model portfolio somewhere. The 2026 departure was therefore not the special case of a legacy relationship but the first visible instance of a mechanism that continues to run in the market. This does not devalue the three facts above — Tatton has shown it can grow through such a loss inside a year. It does mean the question is not whether a second Perspective case arrives, but how often and how large. The 1.7% consolidator attrition is the figure against which to read it.
The numbers
The financial year ends in March. I derived the FY2027 column from the company's guidance, not from consensus estimates [1][2].
| Metric | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 (guidance) |
|---|---|---|---|
| AUM/I (£bn) | 21.8 | 24.2 | 26.9 |
| Revenue (£m) | 45.3 | 54.4 | ~63.4 |
| Adjusted operating profit (£m) | 22.9 | 28.5 | ~33.6 |
| Operating margin | 50.6% | 52.3% | 53.0% |
| Tatton fee margin (bp) | – | 20.1 | ~22.0 |
| Adjusted diluted EPS (p) | 28.7 | 35.05 | ~42 |
| Dividend per share (p) | 19.0 | 27.0 | ~70% of adjusted earnings |
| Net debt | Net cash | −£34.5m | debt-free |
The headline figure of 11.0% AUM growth understates the engine considerably. Excluding Perspective, assets rose from £18.942bn to £24.216bn, an increase of £5.274bn, or 27.8% [1]. That is the rate at which the ongoing business is actually growing; the 11.0% is what was left after a legacy relationship departed.
On the calculation basis, because it is easy to get wrong: the adjusted opening base is not the prior-year figure less the reported Perspective outflows. £21.825bn minus £3.329bn would give £18.496bn, and from that a growth rate of 30.9%. That calculation is wrong because it mixes two dates: the £3.329bn is the outflow measured at the point of departure in January 2026, whereas the base sits at 31 March 2025. Tatton therefore deducts the Perspective assets as at the start of the year, £2.883bn, and £21.825bn minus £2.883bn gives exactly the £18.942bn disclosed [1]. The £0.446bn difference is the growth in the Perspective assets over the ten months to their departure. Take the wrong base and you overstate organic growth by a good three percentage points.
Two further lines deserve attention. The margin rose while revenue grew by 20.1%; the growth was not bought with margin, it expanded it. Over nine years the operating margin has risen from 38.0% to 52.3%, a gain of 14.3 percentage points [1]. And the fee margin is rising against the market trend, for two reasons: the departure of Perspective and the ongoing ACD migration, with which Tatton brings fund administration in-house [2].
AUM/I in £bn [1][2]. The five-year target of £30bn is 72% achieved after two years.
Guidance delivery as a quality marker
A detail that rarely appears in valuation models but is central to my assessment of management: in the 2026 financial year Tatton met or beat every single line of its guidance [2].
| Metric | Guidance FY2026 | Actual FY2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Net inflows per month | £200–250m | £234m |
| AUM/I | c. £21.8bn | £24.2bn |
| Fee margin | 20–21 bp | 20.1 bp |
| Paradigm revenue growth | ±5% | +8.1% |
| Cost growth | c. +12.0% | +12.5% |
| Operating margin | 50.0% | 52.3% |
Ten years of trajectories
Snapshots deceive. I find it more interesting to ask in which direction the metrics have moved over ten years, and whether the pace is accelerating or slowing [1][6].
Growth has not slowed.
| Period | Revenue CAGR | Op. profit | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 years (FY2017–FY2026) | 18.4% | 22.8% | 20.6% |
| 5 years (FY2021–FY2026) | 18.4% | 20.1% | 19.0% |
| 3 years (FY2023–FY2026) | 19.0% | 20.2% | 19.4% |
Revenue has risen 4.6-fold and the growth rate has not fallen; the three-year rate is even slightly above the nine-year rate. There is no sign yet of the law of large numbers.
Operating leverage is measurable. Over nine years, £42.5m of revenue and £24.0m of operating profit were added, an incremental margin of 56.5% against an average margin of 52.3%. Every additional pound contributes more than the existing book. The pace of expansion is slowing, though: +10.8 percentage points in the first four years, +3.5 in the last five.
Return on capital has a dent, not an erosion. The series reads 109% (FY2022), 95%, 62% (FY2024), 82%, 90% (FY2026) [6]. The dip falls in the year of the Fintegrate acquisition; within two years the return is back. When a company earns roughly 100% on its capital, every acquisition at a normal price depresses the metric. That is arithmetic, not moat erosion. For context: depending on how invested capital is defined, figures between 42% and 90% circulate for Tatton's ROIC. With £20–30m of capital against £28.5m of profit, only the direction is readable, not the level.
And the one finding that stands against the rest:
| Financial year | Op. margin | FCF margin | Gap | Owner-earnings margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2022 | 49.5% | 46.2% | 3.3 pp | 41.1% |
| FY2023 | 50.7% | 40.7% | 10.0 pp | 36.3% |
| FY2024 | 50.3% | 35.5% | 14.8 pp | 32.2% |
| FY2025 | 50.6% | 41.2% | 9.4 pp | 38.1% |
| FY2026 | 52.3% | 42.8% | 9.5 pp | 39.4% |
While the operating margin rose by 2.8 percentage points, the FCF margin fell by 3.3. The gap between book margin and cash margin has tripled from 3.3 to 9.5 percentage points. Accordingly, owner earnings (free cash flow less share-based compensation) grew over the same four years at 15.4% p.a., slower than revenue at 16.6%, and markedly slower than adjusted operating profit at 18.4%.
The reason is not investment: capex was £0.32m on £54.4m of revenue [1]. It sits below operating profit, in taxes paid, working capital and the growing share-based compensation. At a 39% owner-earnings margin this is no alarm. But the two margins are moving in opposite directions, and I consider that more relevant information than any single value.
Valuation, meanwhile, has come down. The P/E fell from 28.7x (FY2022) to 18.9x at the FY2026 year-end, while earnings per share rose from 18.6p to 35.1p [6]. The share price has tracked less than half of the earnings growth. EV/FCF stood at 13.8x at the last balance-sheet date, the lowest of the five years.
The market and the consolidation question
The British on-platform MPS market grew from £42bn (2017) to £214bn (2025), a CAGR of 22.6%, while the overarching platform market grew over the same period only from £491bn to £991bn, or 9.2% [2]. The difference is the outsourcing trend. Tatton's market share rose from 10.9% to 11.3%.
This pace cannot be extrapolated indefinitely: MPS growth is the product of platform growth and penetration, and penetration is capped. From 8.6% (2017) to 21.6% (2025) was the easy part. I see a realistic corridor for the coming years at 14–18% market growth; that is my assumption, not a company figure.
Adoption has not yet peaked, though. According to surveys by ISS Market Intelligence, 38%, or 2,131 IFA firms, see MPS as their central investment solution, up from 26% and 1,366 firms a year earlier [5]. And in the split of MPS demand, 59% goes to outsourced and 41% to in-house solutions. The trend towards outsourcing continues, explicitly despite consolidation in the adviser market.
Even so, consolidation is the most serious structural risk: the number of authorised advice firms has fallen by 15% since 2021 while adviser headcount has stayed constant, and a large share of the buyers bring their own investment solutions [2]. Tatton has developed three answers to this.
First: Evolved MPS. Rather than losing large firms to their own brand, Tatton provides the brand. The segment comprises £5.3bn and grew by 28.6% in the financial year [1].
| Model | Agreements (prior year) | AUM | Typical firm size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Co-Branded Tatton MPS | 49 (31) | £2,397m | > £50m of assets |
| White Labelled Tatton MPS | 18 (15) | £2,092m | > £100m of assets |
| Appointed Investment Adviser MPS | 4 (4) | £850m | > £150m of assets |
Second: a stake in a consolidator. In December 2025 Tatton invested up to £10m in Absolute Financial Management Group, a private-equity-backed IFA group with deliberately low leverage [1]. The stake yields 12% and secures distribution. Whether one calls that forward integration or a hedge is a matter of taste; economically it is an attempt to stand on the right side of the consolidation wave.
Third: regulation. The FCA is currently conducting a multi-firm review of MPS, with a questionnaire sent to 40 of 200 providers [2]. Two of the review areas strike me as notable: “Conflicts of interest — including own/group funds in MPS” and “Costs and charges — fee structure, breakdown, and any vertically integrated/additional fees.” The findings are expected in the first quarter of 2027.
The FCA review targets precisely the business model that shelters Tatton's competitors: own funds inside own model portfolios and vertically integrated fee layers. Tatton is purely an intermediary, runs no own funds in its portfolios and charges 15 basis points. If the review in the first quarter of 2027 comes out strict, the vertical-integration risk turns into a tailwind, and one with a date attached.
Return on capital and the question of the reinvestment path
| Return metric (LTM) | Value |
|---|---|
| ROIC | 42.2% |
| ROCE | 42.4% |
| ROE | 35.4% |
| Gross margin | 100.0% |
| Operating margin (EBIT, LTM) | 43.3% |
| Interest cover | 127.8x |
| Cash flow from operations FY2026 | £29.3m |
LTM metrics from market data at the price date [6]; operating cash flow from the annual report [1].
The price of this structure: because hardly any capital can be tied up, hardly any capital can be reinvested. Tatton pays out roughly 70% of adjusted earnings, a 4.2% yield with a dividend CAGR of 19.3% since the IPO and £64.5m of dividends paid [1]. There is no buyback programme; instead, the Employee Benefit Trust bought shares for £5.1m during the year to cover future option exercises [1].
The reinvestment path lies not in the balance sheet but in the book. Tatton puts the average asset development per adviser firm since 2016 at £8.6m in the first year, £3.7m in the second, £2.7m in the third and roughly £2.0m from the fourth onwards [2]. From the existing 1,218 firms alone, the company extrapolates a further £23.1bn over ten years.
I find the share of wallet even more telling: the 1,084 non-Paradigm firms, 78% of the book, bring £16.1m on average, up from £5.9m in 2019 [2]. An average advice firm in the industry, however, holds roughly £40m on platforms. Tatton therefore holds only about 40% of the available assets at its own customers. That is growth that requires not a single new client win.
Management and strategy
With a founder-led compounder, what decides matters for me is not yesterday's metric but whether management actually works through the reinvestment path. At Tatton that has been measurable for two years against a published plan, which is rarer than it sounds.
The five-year plan and where it stands
In March 2024 Tatton started at £17.6bn with the goal of reaching £30bn by March 2029 [2]. That requires roughly £2.5bn a year.
| Date | AUM/I | Target achieved | Plan milestone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2024 (start) | £17.6bn | 0% | – |
| Mar 2025 (year 1) | £21.8bn | 34% | – |
| Mar 2026 (year 2) | £24.2bn | 53% | – |
| Jun 2026 | £26.5bn | 72% | FY2027 target was £25.0bn |
| Mar 2028 (plan) | £27.5bn | 80% | |
| Mar 2029 (target) | £30.0bn | 100% |
After 40% of the plan period, 72% of the target has been achieved. Instead of the required £2.5bn a year, an average of £3.3bn was added. The milestone of £25.0bn set for March 2027 had already been passed in June 2026, and that despite the £3.3bn Perspective exit, which the plan did not anticipate. The company itself now phrases the target as “£30bn by FY29 or sooner” [2].
For my assessment of management this matters more than any remuneration table: there is a public plan, it is verifiable, and it is being over-delivered. Add to that the guidance record; in the 2026 financial year every single line was met or beaten.
Where the next five billion are supposed to come from
The priorities to 2029 are four concrete workstreams, not a catalogue of intentions [2]:
The ACD migration is the underrated point. Tatton is bringing fund administration in-house; the project cost £0.5m as an exceptional item in the financial year [1] and is, alongside the Perspective departure, the reason the fee margin is expected to rise from 20.1 to 22.0 basis points. A margin programme with execution risk, but with a clear numerical target.
Artificial intelligence is treated by management not as a threat but as a capacity lever, and the argument is unusually clean: an AI agent cannot hold an FCA authorisation. Discretionary mandates require a regulated firm with professional indemnity cover and personal accountability, and Consumer Duty accountability cannot be delegated to an algorithm. For Tatton itself, AI means automating rebalancing, trade execution and portfolio monitoring, which “shifts the scaling constraint from people to technology” [2]. That calculation has to work for the margin to rise from 52.3% to 53.0% and beyond.
Among the medium-term ambitions is the sentence that the company wants to “explore international markets whose structural characteristics resemble the early development of the UK outsourcing sector, which would open up a considerably larger addressable market” [2]. That is the only answer to the mathematical ceiling of the British market. Today it is worth nothing, because it is unquantified and carries no date. If it came with a specific market and a budget, it would be the largest single value driver of the whole thesis.
On pricing strategy the company is equally explicit: it considers the 15 basis points appropriate, “positioning us below the market average of 17bps” [2]. Cost leadership is thus declared intent, not accident.
Ownership and remuneration
| Person | Role | Shares | Stake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paul Hogarth | CEO, founder | 8,986,227 | 14.7% |
| Lothar Mentel | CIO | 1,372,699 | 2.2% |
| Paul Edwards | CFO | 529,483 | 0.9% |
| Chris Poil | Non-exec | 173,205 | 0.3% |
Directors' Report in the 2026 annual report [1].
Paul Hogarth founded Tatton in 2007 and has run it ever since. Over 60% of remuneration is performance-related, with three-year vesting periods plus malus and clawback rules [1].
Two points belong on the other side of the scale. Share-based compensation has almost doubled, from £1.5m to £2.9m; that is 15.4% of net income after 9.3% the year before [1]. The option overhang rose accordingly from 0.78% to 1.00% of share capital. And open-market purchases by executives are not on record; the ownership stems from the founding and from remuneration schemes. Neither is a disqualifier, but both need watching.
“A published five-year plan that is 72% fulfilled after two years says more about a management team than any statement of intent in the annual report.”
How cyclical is the business really?
Tatton is filed under financials, and financials are considered cyclical. But the banking cycle consists of four building blocks, net interest margin, loan-loss provisions, balance-sheet leverage and refinancing, and Tatton has not a single one of them. No loan book, no provisions, no debt, no deposits. The only interest-rate sensitivity is £1.5m of interest income on its own cash, roughly 4% of adjusted pre-tax profit [1].
The cycle Tatton does have is the equity market, and it acts more mutedly than the mechanics suggest. Three reasons: in the 2026 financial year, £2.8bn of the AUM increase came from net inflows and only £2.5bn from market movements [1]. The model range runs from Defensive to Global Equity, so the average equity weighting is well below 100%. And fees are charged on the average book, so a crash feeds through with a lag.
| Financial year | Revenue (£m) | Δ | Op. profit (£m) | Δ | Market backdrop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar-20 | 21.4 | +22.3% | 9.1 | +24.7% | Covid crash in March 2020 |
| Mar-21 | 23.4 | +9.3% | 11.4 | +25.3% | Recovery |
| Mar-22 | 29.4 | +25.6% | 14.5 | +27.2% | Inflation shock |
| Mar-23 | 32.3 | +9.9% | 16.4 | +13.1% | Bear market 2022 |
| Mar-24 | 36.8 | +13.9% | 18.5 | +12.8% | – |
| Mar-25 | 45.3 | +23.1% | 22.9 | +23.8% | – |
| Mar-26 | 54.4 | +20.1% | 28.5 | +24.5% | Tariffs, Middle East |
Historical revenue and profit series from the annual reports [1] and market data extracts [6].
In nine years since the IPO, neither revenue nor operating profit has fallen even once. The most telling year is the financial year to March 2023, which covers the 2022 bear market exactly: equities down roughly 18%, gilts down roughly 25%, the worst year for a mixed portfolio in decades. Tatton's revenue rose 9.9%, operating profit 13.1%, and the margin went from 49.3% to 50.8%.
A stress test on the FY2027 base, using my assumptions: if equities fall 30% at an average equity weighting of 60% and inflows halve at the same time, revenue drops by roughly 9% and operating profit by roughly 13%. The margin would stay above 50%. Even with zero net inflows it would be roughly −12% revenue and −19% profit. A bank loses half its profit or more in such an environment.
Economically, then, Tatton belongs not with the banks but with the fee toll-booths on other people's assets, closer to an index provider or an exchange than to a lender. Whoever benchmarks Tatton against banks is comparing the wrong thing.
The counter-calculation I owe myself: a loan is a contract, an adviser mandate is not. Tatton's book can leave at any time; the 98.3% retention is an empirical finding, not a contractual promise. The risk is therefore not a cycle but a step: not slow erosion, but the sudden departure of a large firm. Add the decumulation phase: as the client base ages, structural outflows grow. Both are covered by inflows today, both need watching.
The exception: Paradigm Mortgages
The one genuinely cyclical part of the group is the mortgage business. It depends on interest rates and the housing market and delivered a record £18.0bn of completions in the 2026 financial year, after £14.2bn the year before, a rise of 27.2% [1]. The split supports the figure from two sides: £8.6bn in the first half and £9.4bn in the second, the second half thus 8.6% above the first. The momentum continued afterwards: new applications in the first quarter of calendar 2026 were £6.4bn, 39.1% above the prior-year quarter (£4.6bn) [2]. The number of affiliated mortgage firms rose to 2,014 (prior year 1,915). Particular emphasis is placed on a 35% increase in buy-to-let completions, described as “margin rich” [1].
The Act received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025, and its first stage has applied since 1 May 2026: abolition of Section 21 evictions, conversion of all tenancies into periodic agreements, rent increases only once a year [4]. A landlord ombudsman and a register follow at the end of 2026. Neither the annual report nor the investor presentation mentions it with a single word; the housing market is described in purely macroeconomic terms (rate cuts, stamp-duty deadline, remortgaging) [1][2].
Two clarifications up front. Paradigm owns no rental property and holds no loan book. It is a mortgage club that earns procuration fees on completed mortgages; buy-to-let is only one segment of that. The £18.0bn is intermediated volume, not a balance-sheet item, and Tatton carries no credit risk from it. Loan-to-value ratios, book quality and refinancing cliffs are therefore not categories that apply here. What remains is a volume and margin risk.
And: for a property owner, a purchase pulled forward is value-neutral; he keeps holding the asset afterwards. For a fee earner the opposite holds: volume pulled forward is borrowed volume. That is why a record immediately before a regime change needs explaining. The market data, however, take the edge off that concern. UK Finance for the first quarter of 2026, which is exactly this window [3]:
| UK buy-to-let market, Q1 2026 | Value | vs. prior year |
|---|---|---|
| New BTL loans in total | 58,272 / £10.8bn | +3.3% by number, +7.0% by value |
| of which remortgages | 39,160 | +11.1% |
| of which purchases | 16,871 | −14.9% |
| Interest cover ratio | 221% | from 204% |
| Average gross yield | 7.21% | from 6.93% |
| Loans in arrears | 8,960 | −560 vs. prior quarter |
The market is shifting from one-off to repeat transactions: purchases are falling, remortgages rising, and 1.47m outstanding fixed-rate BTL loans roll off continuously [3]. For an aggregator that is the better business foundation, because a remortgage earns the same fee as a purchase but repeats every two to five years. The refinancing wave that one would count as a risk for a property investor is the revenue engine here. And credit quality is improving rather than deteriorating.
The overall market grew by 3.3% [3]. Paradigm's BTL volume grew by 35% [1], while purchases in the market fell by 14.9% at the same time. That is over 30 percentage points of outperformance. Either it is genuine market-share gain, or a remortgage-heavy mix (both good and repeatable), or purchase-heavy pull-forward in a shrinking purchase market. Only the last would be a problem.
A caveat on the state of the data: the first quarter ended on 31 March, the Act has applied since 1 May. There is not yet a single market data point from the period after it came into force. The figures above describe the run-up, not the outcome. The first evidence will be the half-year results in November or December 2026.
Materiality limits the stakes in any case: Paradigm contributes 6.7% of adjusted operating group profit [1], and buy-to-let is an undisclosed part of that. Even a slump there moves group earnings by a low single-digit percentage.
Valuation
Methodology: two-stage FCFE model, discount rate 12.5%, ten explicit years plus terminal value. The starting point is owner earnings of roughly £27.0m derived from the FY2027 guidance (adjusted earnings of roughly £26.3m, cash conversion 1.15, less share-based compensation of roughly £3.3m). I add net cash of £34.5m and calculate on 62.3m diluted shares [1]. Discount rate, cash conversion and growth paths are my assumptions.
Bear case (25%)
£5.04
- Prolonged bear market depresses the fee base
- Consolidator attrition rises from 1.7% to over 5%
- Fee pressure reaches the 15 bp level
- FCFE growth 3% p.a., terminal 2%
Base case (55%)
£8.67
- Net inflows hold at £200–250m per month
- Market movements contribute ~5%
- Fee margin holds 22 bp after the ACD migration
- FCFE growth 11% p.a., terminal 3%
Bull case (20%)
£12.44
- Share of wallet grows from 40% towards 60%
- FCA review 2027 weighs on vertically integrated competitors
- Number of firms rises towards 1,850
- FCFE growth 16% p.a., terminal 3.5%
Probability-weighted fair value: £8.52 against a share price of £6.92, an upside of 23.1% [6]. The analysts' target price is £8.55 and thus almost identical [6].
Cross-check: earnings growth model
| Scenario | EPS growth | Exit P/E | Price + dividends | Return p.a. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bear (25%) | 6% | 14x | £9.67 | 6.9% |
| Base (55%) | 12% | 17x | £14.74 | 16.3% |
| Bull (20%) | 16% | 20x | £20.09 | 23.7% |
| Weighted | – | – | – | 15.5% |
| Valuation multiple | Current |
|---|---|
| P/E on FY2027 guidance | 16.4x |
| NTM P/E (consensus) | 17.40x |
| LTM P/E | 22.90x |
| NTM EV/EBITDA | 11.43x |
| PEG (on FY2027 guidance, +20%) | 0.80 |
| PEG (on consensus growth 12%) | 1.37 |
| Dividend yield | 4.2% |
Multiples at the price date of 28 August 2026 [6].
Consensus expects roughly 39.8p of earnings per share for the next twelve months [6]. The company's own guidance implies roughly 42p [2]. Given that Tatton met or beat every guidance line last year, I consider this gap the most interesting number in the entire valuation.
What the share price did over the past year remains remarkable: minus 3.1%, while earnings per share rose 22.3% [6]. Whoever buys here buys a valuation that has come down.
The checklist score
I score against my investment checklist, each criterion with 0 (not met), 1 (partly) or 2 (clearly met).
| Section | Points | Ratio |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Size and room to grow | 5 / 8 | 63% |
| 2. Business quality | 11 / 14 | 79% |
| 3. Financial strength | 15 / 16 | 94% |
| 4. Management and ownership | 18 / 22 | 82% |
| 5. Valuation | 15 / 16 | 94% |
| 6. Catalysts | 10 / 10 | 100% |
| 7. Customer and business risks | 10 / 18 | 56% |
| 8. Exclusion criteria | 19 / 20 | 95% |
| 9. Due diligence | 27 / 28 | 96% |
| 10. Investment decision | 23 / 24 | 96% |
| Total | 153 / 176 | 86.9% |
86.9% means: a very attractive candidate. No exclusion criterion is breached. The weak spot remains section 7 at 56%, and that one is structural, not fixable: one country, one division, one equity market.
One qualification on the criterion “regulatory risks manageable”: I scored it with two points because the Consumer Duty is a tailwind for 87% of the business. For the remaining 13% the opposite applies, and the fact that the Renters' Rights Act does not appear in the reports at all is a gap in disclosure, not an all-clear.
Bull vs. bear
- ROIC 42.2% with practically zero capital tied up and zero debt
- Retention 98.3%: consolidator attrition of 1.7% stands against net inflows of 15.6%
- Fee margin rises from 20.1 to 22.0 bp, against the market trend
- Share of wallet at existing customers only around 40%: £23.1bn of growth potential without a single new client
- Every FY2026 guidance line met or beaten; consensus sits below the company's own FY2027 guidance
- FCA review with findings in Q1 2027 targets vertically integrated competitors, not Tatton
- 4.2% dividend pays for the wait; AIM listing and thin coverage keep the valuation low
- Revenue depends on asset values: a 30% equity-market decline with halved inflows costs roughly 9% of revenue and 13% of operating profit, manageable but unavoidable
- 100% United Kingdom, 87% of revenue from one division
- Consolidation of the adviser market continues; 41% of MPS demand is already in-house
- Perspective, the large client lost in 2026, acquired twelve advice firms with roughly £1.4bn in Q1 and April 2026 and runs its own DFM arm; the buyer type that carries the structural risk is actively growing
- Share-based compensation almost doubled to 15.4% of net income
- Model portfolios are commoditisable in the long run; the moat is the adviser relationship, not the product
- Competition from Parmenion, Timeline and the platform operators is intensifying; IFAs even perceive Timeline as cheaper
- Key-person risk: Hogarth has been the face to the adviser community for 19 years
- Owner earnings grow at 15.4% p.a., slower than revenue (16.6%) and book profit (18.4%); the gap between book margin and cash margin has tripled since FY2022
- Paradigm's BTL volume grew 35% against a market of 3.3%, in the window before the Renters' Rights Act; the purchase/remortgage mix is not disclosed, and management does not mention the Act with a single word
Conclusion
The 2026 full-year figures answer the three questions left open after the half-year results. How large is the concentration risk? 98.3% retention, 1.7% attrition to consolidators, and no second client of Perspective's kind. Is the fee margin falling? No, it is rising from 20.1 to 22.0 basis points. And is the loss of the largest client a warning shot? No, it cost 13.6% of assets but only 2.5% of revenue, and it improved the margin.
“The largest client loss in the company's history raised the fee margin. That says more about the quality of the remaining book than any presentation slide.”
With that, the case clears all three Greenblatt gates for the first time. The weighted expected return of 15.5% p.a. is above the hurdle, narrowly, and carried by guidance the market has not yet fully priced in. The fair value of £8.52 gives 23% upside.
At £6.81 there is a 20% margin of safety on the £8.52 fair value; at £6.39 it would be 25%. Today's price of £6.92 is only just above that; for a staged build-up that is enough for me, for a full position I wait for the pullback. The thin trading volume of roughly 0.13m shares a day has to be kept in mind [6]: a position can only be built over weeks and exclusively with limit orders.
What would refute the thesis
- Net inflows. Guidance £200–250m per month. Two half-years averaging below £150m break the core thesis.
- Retention. 98.3% in the 2026 financial year. If it falls below 95%, the consolidation wave has reached Tatton.
- Fee margin. Guidance 22.0 bp for FY2027. If it lands below 20 bp, either the ACD migration has not delivered or the price war is biting.
- Share-based compensation. 15.4% of net income. Above 20%, a watch point becomes a valuation discount.
- Owner-earnings margin. 39.4% in FY2026 after 41.1% in FY2022. If it does not rise above 40% in FY2027, the gap to the book margin is structural rather than a consequence of the integration years.
Open questions for investor relations
Six points that cannot be answered from the reports and that I want clarified before a full position:
- Purchase/remortgage mix in the BTL business. How does Paradigm's BTL volume split between purchases and remortgages, ideally over the last three years? The overall market grew 3.3% in Q1 2026, Paradigm 35%: where do the 30 percentage points of difference come from? And how has volume developed since 1 May 2026?
- Fee per case. How have average procuration fee and cost per intermediated case developed? Volume growth without margin data says little about the profitability of the increase.
- Concentration in the mortgage business. How is intermediated volume distributed across lenders and broker firms? An aggregator carries no credit risk, but it does carry channel risk.
- Distribution of the book. How are the £22.8bn spread across adviser firms, and how much sits with the ten largest? The average of £16.1m per non-Paradigm firm says nothing about the tail of the distribution.
- Consolidator exposure. How much of the book already sits with firms owned by a consolidator with its own MPS? The 1.7% attrition describes the past, not what is at risk.
- ACD migration. Which part of the fee-margin jump from 20.1 to 22.0 bp stems from the departure of Perspective and which from the migration itself? Only the second part is durable and repeatable.
Update log
- 05.09.2026 — Editorial revision to house style, list of sources added; figures and valuation unchanged. Price basis still 28 August 2026.
- 06.09.2026 — Added the section "What has become of Perspective since": the former large client's acquisitions in Q1 and April 2026, its 2025 earnings, and how both bear on the consolidation risk. Sources 7 to 9 are new. Valuation, rating and fair value unchanged.
- 05.09.2026 — Error correction: Perspective-adjusted AUM growth is back at 27.8% on an opening base of £18.942bn. Both are the annual report's own figures; the change to 30.9% made on 4 September 2026 rested on a base that mixed two reporting dates and was wrong. The derivation is now set out in the text.
- 04.09.2026 — Correction round: figures verified against the 2026 annual report and the June 2026 investor and analyst presentation. Paradigm volume of £18.0bn confirmed, Q1 new applications of £6.4bn and 2,014 mortgage firms added.
- 01.09.2026 — First publication based on the 2026 annual report (financial year to 31 March 2026), share price as of 28 August 2026.
Sources
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Tatton Asset Management plc, Annual Report and Accounts 2026 (financial year to 31 March 2026), published 16 June 2026. Segment figures, AUM/I bridge including Perspective net outflows, retention, Evolved MPS table, Paradigm volume, Directors' Report (shareholdings, remuneration, share-based compensation), cash flow, net cash, share count, stake in Absolute Financial Management. → https://www.tattonassetmanagement.com/downloads/reports/Tatton_AR_26.pdf
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Tatton Asset Management plc, Investor & Analyst Presentation, FY26 Results, June 2026 (16 June 2026). FY2027 guidance, FY2026 guidance reconciliation, five-year plan and AUM as of June 2026, market data on the MPS and platform market, FCA multi-firm review, asset development per adviser firm, strategic priorities, quotes on AI, pricing strategy and international markets, Paradigm Q1 new applications. → https://www.tattonassetmanagement.com/downloads/reports/FY26-Results-Presentation-Master-Final.pdf
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UK Finance, Buy-to-Let Lending Update Q1 2026, published July 2026. New BTL loans by number and value, purchase/remortgage split, interest cover ratio, gross yield, arrears, stock of fixed-rate BTL loans. → https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/data-and-research/data/buy-to-let-lending
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Renters' Rights Act 2025 (c. 26), UK Parliament / legislation.gov.uk, Royal Assent 27 October 2025; first stage in force from 1 May 2026. Abolition of Section 21, periodic tenancies, rent-increase rule, ombudsman and register. → https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/26/contents
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ISS Market Intelligence, survey on MPS adoption among IFA firms, December 2025, as cited in the Investor & Analyst Presentation [2]. Share and number of IFA firms with MPS as their central investment solution, outsourced/in-house split. → ‹TODO: Link›
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Market data (TIKR Terminal, AIM London), as of 28 August 2026: closing price £6.92, LTM return metrics, P/E and EV/FCF history, NTM consensus (EPS 39.8p, multiples), analysts' target price £8.55, one-year share-price performance, average trading volume. No URL.
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Chapters Capital, "Perspective Financial Group: six acquisitions in Q1 2026", Q1 2026 review. Six acquisitions, £825m of assets, twelve advisers, names of the acquired firms, more than 120 acquisitions since founding, in-house M&A team of around fifty people. → https://www.chapterscapital.co.uk/post/perspective-financial-group-six-acquisitions-q1-2026
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Perspective Financial Group, "April M&A Update", press release, April 2026. Six further acquisitions, £550m of assets, ten advisers, three new offices, twelve deals in the calendar year to April. → https://www.pfgl.co.uk/news/perspective-news/april-ma-update-press-release/
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Professional Adviser, "Perspective posts £72.7m turnover and pulls into profit in 2025", August 2026, based on the accounts filed at Companies House for calendar year 2025. Turnover, EBITDA, operating profit, profit before and after tax, prior-year comparison. → https://www.professionaladviser.com/news/4534306/perspective-posts-727m-turnover-pulls-profit-2025