Pinnacle MD blasts media criticism of Metrics as 'ignorant stupid comments'
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The news: Pinnacle Investment Management founder and managing director Ian Macoun has defended its affiliate Metrics Credit Partners after a “tough year” in 2025, during an investor call on its half-year earnings.
The context: A Canaccord Genuity analyst on the call asked for "any comment further around Metrics, given they copped a lot of heck in the press over the last six months" along with comments on its performance, flows, activity and the launch of the asset-backed lending trust.
Responding, Macoun said Metrics had “to deal with a lot of generally uninformed, ignorant and stupid comments, might I say they just got on and kept performing”.
“It set back their plans somewhat, because their LICs [listed investment companies] went below NTA for a while and so on. Their retail flows were down compared with where they were,” Macoun said.
“But nothing has fundamentally changed, and Metrics are getting on with it.”
Pinnacle chief finance officer Dan Longan said plans had been delayed included an LIC raise and an asset backed lending trust which Pinnacle expected to come to market “reasonably soon”.
Also on the call, head of wholesale and retail distribution Kyle Macintyre said, despite the negative sentiment around private debt and the regulatory review on the sector, “Metrics came out with flying colours”.
“The retail flows, we managed to contain that better than I previously expected we were going to so we feel really good,” he said.
“That's a huge credit to Andrew Lockhart and the whole team, because they've continued to deliver exactly what investors are asking them through that period.”
Macintyre noted that offshore flows were coming in strongly from New Zealand and Japan, along with opportunities from the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He also said that “watch list investments” were shortening year-on-year as challenges in the real estate market were starting to “eviscerate”.
Metrics was one of seven funds Macoun called out as standout affiliates. The other funds were Antipodes, Plato, Solaris, Firetrail, Resolution Capital and Coolabah.
Macoun noted that while returns on principal investments, invested as seed capital for certain new funds of affiliates, was very low but that this was “unusual” and the company did not expect this to occur again.
“We would think the history of our earnings on principal investments would demonstrate that there is an argument that it is likely to be reversed in coming periods… we do certainly believe this is an unusual factor, and think many analysts would exclude the impact of this when assessing core or underlying earnings,” Macoun said.
The chair said the low return was due to a “perfect storm” that came out of three new vehicles from Hyperion, Pacific Asset Management, and Langdon.
“They just had a particular period. I don't think we'll need to liquidate positions,” he said.
The source: Pinnacle investor call
