BlackRock sees assets rise 4% for quarter to $3.9 trillion

BlackRock on Tuesday reported assets under management of $3.936 trillion as of March 31, up 4% from the prior quarter and 7% higher than the year before.

According to BlackRock's earnings release, market-related gains for the latest quarter were $104.3 billion; total net inflows were $40.5 billion.

Net inflows to BlackRock's long-term strategies were $39.4 billion for the latest quarter. That total reflected net inflows of $33.7 billion to equities, $9 billion in multiasset strategies and $1.5 billion into core alternatives. Those were partially offset by net outflows of $2.6 billion from fixed income and $2.2 billion from alternative currency.

Assets in BlackRock's iShares ETF business totaled $802 billion, up 6.5% from three months earlier. Long-term net inflows into iShares equity funds totaled $26.3 billion, while net outflows to its fixed-income ETFs were $1 billion.

For the latest quarter, BlackRock reported net income of $632 million, down 8% from the prior quarter but up 10% from the year before.

Revenue, meanwhile, came to $2.449 billion, down 4% from the prior quarter but 9% above the year before.

“Institutional flows were led by passive equity net inflows of $13.6 billion,” said Laurence D. Fink, chairman and CEO, in an earnings call with analysts later Tuesday. “More and more institutions have shifted to passive as part of a barbell strategy for tactical allocation as part of a core holding. And we see these trends continuing, particularly for passive equity, where we saw our largest flows in more than two years.

Daniel Fannon, analyst for Jefferies & Co., said in a note to clients that long-term inflows at BlackRock were “solid” and above Jefferies' estimate of $25 billion. “The primary difference was strong inflows into index equity products ($14 billion vs. Jefferies estimate of $5 billion) and multiasset products ($9 billion vs. Jefferies estimate of flat).” Mr. Fannon also noted that equity ETFs once again experienced strong inflows.