Impax Asset Management (LON:IPX) - A fallen angel fund manager where I’m betting on recovery
Market cap at the time of writing: £320m, at a share price of 241.5p.
I recently added this one to my personal portfolio as my perception of the value on offer created a sense of obligation to buy it.
Impax is an ESG-focused fund manager whose mission since its inception has been sustainable investing.
Founder and CEO Ian Simm retains an interest in 9.5 million shares or 7% of the company.
When it was still enjoying net inflows during the 2021 bubble, the share price reached a level that in hindsight was ludicrous, topping out at £14.80:
The share got another kicking this month, falling 19% on the news that St James’s Place (STJ) was taking away a £5 billion mandate from Impax.
The only consolation was that this particular mandate generated lower margins than Impax generates across the rest of its activities. And when you look into the situation at STJ more closely, it is clear that they (STJ) are under pressure to make changes that in normal circumstances they might not feel obliged to make. So I’m treating this news as a one-off misfortune rather than being representative of a more serious loss of confidence in Impax by its institutional clients.
If we suppose that Impax now has c. £32 billion of AUM after the loss of the STJ mandate, the shares after the recent price drop now offer £100 of AUM for every £1 invested in them.
In bubble territory in late 2021, the shares only offered £19 of AUM for every £1 invested in them.
Similarly, the P/E multiple has moved from over-stretched upper limits back to far more modest, undemanding levels at the bottom of its range:
Analyst Paul Bryant at Equity Development is forecasting adj. EPS of 24.9p in the current financial year (FY Sep 2025), down from 27.4p before the news of the loss of the mandate. That suggests an adj. PER of less than 10x at the current share price.
Of course we risk the possibility that a fund manager such as Impax might permanently fall out of favour. Fund-gathering is a highly competitive business and the competition…
