Sliding share prices bring licensees into play

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor/Publisher, Financial Newswire

28 March 2023

Amid continuing speculation about further consolidation of Australian financial planning licensees, new analysis had confirmed that with one or two exceptions they have all been facing share price declines in 2023.

In simple terms, shareholders have been voting with their feet and share prices are increasingly being viewed as bringing some of the licensees into play.

A Financial Newswire analysis of the major publicly-listed listed licensees has confirmed that 2023 has not been great in share price terms for the licensees and that CountPlus received minimal bounce out of its acquisition of Affinia Advisers from TAL earlier this month.

The analysis shows that the Affinia acquisition announcement saw the CountPlus share price briefly touch 61 cents per share before dropping back to around 55 cents per share.

CountPlus, which started its life as an offshoot of Count Financial, has now scheduled an extraordinary general meeting to change its name to Count Financial.

Sequoia, by comparison has benefited strongly from the announcement that it was selling 80% of Morrision Securities to New Quantum for $40.5 million lifting its share price from around 45 cents per share in mid-February to just over 56 cents per share.

By comparison, Centrepoint Alliance managed to lift its share price from a modest 21 cents per share closing out 2022 to 26 cents per share at the time of its first-half results announcement before dropping back to be trading at around 23.5 cents per share this week.

For its part, Clime Investment Management has struggled declining from 55 cents per share in early February to be around 45 cents per share largely influenced by the announcement of a 47% decline in statutory profit after tax.

Diverger, which last year made headlines with its bid to acquire Centrepoint has also witnessed a downward slide in its share price from around $1.03 per share in late January to around 91 cents per share.

Diverger’s half-year results revealed a 22% decline in profit to $1.221 million.

All of this is occurring while AMP’s share price has declined from around $1.37 in early February to be sitting at $1.06, while Insignia Financial has declined from $3.73 in mid-January to be sitting at $2.77.