Manning & Napier, Inc.
Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 1 May 2021

[Operator:]

Good evening. My name is Angela, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Manning & Napier First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Our hosts for today's call are Nicole Kingsley Brunner, Chief Marketing Officer; Marc Mayer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Paul Battaglia, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning at 8

[Nicole Brunner:]

Thank you, Angela. And thank you everyone for joining us today to discuss Manning & Napier's first quarter 2021 results.

[Marc Mayer:]

Thank you, Nicole. There are several main points we would like to make today. 1) We continue to deliver good investment results for clients and we are receiving notable recognition for them. 2) The combination of those results as well as our marketing and PR efforts and investments in our client facing teams are positioning us well to continue improving the trend in net flows. 3) Our strategic initiatives are progressing well and we've launched the overhaul of our wealth management pricing model. And 4) as planned, we returned capital to shareholders in the first quarter. We will discuss each of these in detail as we progress throughout the call. First, let us begin as we always do with our investment results for clients. Specific figures are available on pages six and seven of the earnings supplement. Performance remains strong across the risks spectrum for our traditional multi-asset class investment strategies for all the main stay of our holistic wealth management solutions. Each of our various risk-based strategies delivered positive ahead of benchmark total returns in the quarter. There's several aspects to the first quarter that make us proud of these results. First, the three months of the year were the most difficult quarterly stretch for aggregate U.S. fixed income performance in almost 40 years. The rapid and nearly continuous rise in interest rates from extremely low levels challenge bond holders leaving many fixed income investors with losses in the order of low single-digit percentages. For the portion of our more defensive portfolios that are heavily weighted to fixed income, this was a very difficult end-market environment broadly. The dynamism of our asset allocation is visible in many ways; moving it between asset classes; pressed to dial with these capitalizations and equity styles.

[Paul Battaglia:]

Thanks, Marc. Good afternoon everyone and thanks for joining us today. The highlights for the first quarter included continued improvement on net client flows and further evidence of stabilized AUM, increases in revenue and operating income and good traction on the share repurchase plan announced on our last call. I did do my remarks for the review of assets under management

[Operator:]

[Marc Mayer:]

Thank you, guys.