Washington University in St. Louis posts fiscal year net return of -2.3%

Washington University in St. Louis reported its $12.5 billion managed endowment pool returned a net -2.3% for the fiscal year ended June 30 in an endowment fact sheet posted on its website.

The endowment did not provide a benchmark return for its most recent fiscal year.

For the three, five and 10 years ended June 30, the endowment pool returned an annualized net 13%, 11.2% and 9.4%, respectively, above the respective benchmarks of 10.8%, 8.1% and 7.7%.

The endowment pool had returned a net -10.6% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2022.

For the most recent fiscal year, the university did not provide returns by asset class. Among the 45 college and university endowments whose returns have been tracked by Pensions & Investments as of Dec. 4, Washington University had the second-lowest return. The median return for the universe is 4.5%.

While the university's website did not provide further information on the drivers for the negative return, the managed endowment pool had an actual allocation of 58.3% to private capital. Numerous other college and university endowment investment offices have cited low private equity valuations for the most recent fiscal year following negative public equity returns for the year ended June 30, 2022.

The rest of the endowment's actual allocation as of June 30 was 20.1% global equities, 8.5% cash/fixed income, 7.7% real assets and 5.4% absolute return.