BlackRock on Thursday reported $3.648 trillion in assets under management for the quarter ended March 31, up 2.4% from the prior quarter and up 8.4% from the year before.
BlackRock said in a news release the $87.5 billion rise in AUM from the prior quarter reflected $100 billion in market gains offset by net outflows of just more than $12 billion.
The firm enjoyed net inflows for its long-term equity, fixed-income, multiasset and alternatives strategies of more than $16 billion during the latest quarter. That total reflected $34.7 billion in overall inflows, offset by $18.4 billion of what BlackRock has called “merger-related” outflows as some clients continued to pare back their exposure to any single manager following BlackRock's December 2009 acquisition of Barclays Global Investors.
However, in a conference call Thursday to discuss the firm's results, Laurence D. Fink, BlackRock's chairman and CEO, said with the latest quarter, those “concentration-related” outflows were largely complete, and BlackRock will no longer break out those numbers in coming quarters.
For the latest quarter, Mr. Fink said clients — institutional and retail — continued to add more risk to their portfolios, with many institutional clients pursuing a “barbell” approach with allocations to both passive strategies at one end of the risk spectrum and higher-alpha offerings on the other.
The company reported revenue, on a GAAP basis, of $2.3 billion for the latest quarter, down 8% from the prior quarter — as seasonal performance fees dropped to $83 million, or 66%, from $243 million in the prior quarter — but up 14% from the year before.
Net income, attributable to BlackRock Inc., came to $568 million, down 14% from the prior quarter but up 34% from the year before.