Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And that sort of one-time effect is then building on the continued growth driven by longer-term trends, including growth in managed accounts and more recently, direct indexing.

Edmund Reese: And David, I’d just add to Tim’s point. Again, equity position growth of 9% is flat to last year and the testing that Tim just mentioned continues to be in line with what our expectations were in our original guidance and what we have as well at that mid to high-single digit level. So we are reaffirming our guidance and outlook on that. And again, the same thing with the fund position growth as well. You saw a little bit of a deceleration sequentially in that. But again, we said mid to high-single digits, and we still expect that level to play out.

David Togut: Understood. Thanks for that.

Operator: And our next question today will come from Peter Heckmann of D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Peter Heckmann: Hey. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to see if you had any thoughts about where we are in the process of moving to direct indexing. It still seems fairly early. But conceptually, could we see managed accounts and direct indexing continue to generate really interesting growth that leads to strong growth in equity positions, but potentially fund positions continuing to slow down and if that could be the case, how do you think about the — any relative change in economics due to mix shift?

Timothy Gokey: Yeah. Thanks, Peter. It’s Tim. I do think that this is one of those things, it’s the latest in a long series of investment product innovations that have help drive sort of the broad trend that we call the democratization of investors on top of things we’re all familiar with, like 401(k)s (ph) and IRAs and ETFs and managed accounts. It’s pretty early days. I think it is even too early to really sort of pick it up in the numbers, you sort of begin to see it as a sort of like the barest of breezes if you’re trying to sort of talk about tailwinds. And I do think it’s one of those things that could gain traction. There’s a lot of benefits for investors in it relative to tax efficiency. So not a big driver today. I think of it as not necessarily something that is going to lead to a — I’d like to be here telling you it’s going to lead to some sort of fundamental change in the growth trajectory.

I think it is something that just really supports the long-term trends that we’ve seen. And if we see it begin to begin to have a real measurable effect, and we’ll begin to talk about it and break it out. But we’re not seeing it really as an independent thing yet, but we are seeing it as one of the things that gives us confidence in the long term.

Peter Heckmann: Okay. That’s fair. And then just on the Secure 2.0 legislation. Can you just remind us that the portions of the business related to retirement plans at Broadridge and how you see that potentially being a tailwind for continued growth in retirement plan participants.