BlackRock Profit Increases 20% on Tech and Fees
The firm’s assets under management dipped to $9.6 trillion from over $10 trillion
BlackRock Inc. reported higher quarterly profit even as market volatility lowered the investment firm’s assets under management to $9.6 trillion.
The world’s largest asset manager reported net income of $1.4 billion, or $9.35 a share, for the first quarter, up 20% from $1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier.
BlackRock exceeded analyst expectations of a per-share profit of $8.60, according to analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Revenue rose 7% to $4.7 billion, slightly below analysts’ estimates of $4.76 billion.
BlackRock’s shares were down $2.41, or 0.3%, at $714.42 by midday after jumping in morning trading Wednesday. The stock has fallen 11% in the past year.
The firm ended 2021 with over $10.01 trillion in assets—the first time any money manager has reached that number—but market conditions in the past three months have changed drastically, compounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. With inflation climbing to its highest levels in the past four decades, investors’ faith in the markets is lower as evidenced by slowing inflows of $86 billion, down from $172 billion over the same period last year.
BlackRock is a top provider of exchange-traded funds and other low-cost alternatives that track market indexes. But the firm’s actively managed funds, its higher-fee products, made up nearly half of the manager’s fees last quarter, despite making up about one-quarter of BlackRock’s total assets under management.
This quarter, the money manager’s revenue from performance fees decreased $31 million from a year ago—a sign of a tough quarter for actively managed products. BlackRock’s base management fees—fees not tied to performance that the firm receives for administering fund holdings—was a main driver for the revenue growth. Management-fee revenue increased 6.7%, or $241 million. Revenue from its suite of software tools, Aladdin, was a driver as well, which rose 11%, or $35 million.
https://archive.ph/MFr78
Hedge funds and bankers make billions in profit while the poors struggle to afford gasoline and groceries.
Un-fucking-believable.