Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE:BEN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Adam Spector: Yeah. Okay. I would say just in terms of scale, our insurance business is about $170 billion now, and that’s not including the flows we’ve talked about from the power-related companies. So it’s a very significant business, as Jenny said. To be successful in a lot of the general account area, you not only need to have investment expertise, but really insurance domain-specific expertise, technology compliance. We’re one of the few firms, we think, who combine both of those. And then the partnership with Power Corp has also allowed us to co-create products with them that we think will be very successful in the marketplace. And you’re seeing some launches there as well. The team there has been — Putnam has been very successful in the DC channel as well as in insurance. And we think bringing those salespeople onto our team now that they have a wider array of products to sell will really hockey stick our efforts there as well.

Matthew Nicholls: And just a little bit more perspective on the $25 billion, Bill, just to be clear. But, right now, for all intents purposes, for modeling purposes, we don’t have any of that in. I mean, we have a little bit, but it’s not really — nothing’s really hit the revenue line yet. We expect, as Jenny mentioned, about two-thirds of this to be kind of investment grade and a little bit emerging market and other corporate credit across a broad range of our specialist investment managers. As you think about modeling, I think it’s probably appropriate to think about the effective fee rate being in the mid-teens. I think Jenny mentioned that as a whole. This will likely to begin in earnest later on this quarter that we’re in now.

So kind of March time — maybe March, April, that sort of thing. And, of course, we will update you when we have large inflows associated with this, we will — we provide that context and make sure we’re transparent with you about when that comes in. But just to be clear, beyond the $25 billion, we expect to grow — there’s a lot of opportunities to grow beyond the $25 billion. And even with this, we’re just alongside other asset managers that also have important relationships with the Power group of companies. So we’re just alongside them. We’re increasing our market share, frankly, where it should be aligned with the — what we — the capabilities regarding the size of our franchise.

William Katz: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Daniel Fannon from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Daniel Fannon: Thanks. Good morning. A couple of clarifications. Matt, just want to confirm the 1Q guide for comp that was, I believe, $815 million around that included $50 million of performance fees. Did the full year guide of the $4.55 billion to $4.66 billion assume a $50 million a quarter performance fee contribution?

Matthew Nicholls: Yes, plus the $93 million that we had this — in the first quarter. So it’s $93 million, $50 million, $50 million, $50 million.

Daniel Fannon: Yeah. Got it. Okay, that’s helpful. And then just on the Lexington, what’s — I’d like to just clarify what’s in the numbers now in terms of AUM and flows that we’ve seen as of 12/31. And then in terms of catch-up fees, we got the disclosure for this quarter and last. But should we assume, given the final close in January, another round of catch-up fees here for the March quarter?

Matthew Nicholls: So there’s no more catch-up fees to book at this point. The fund had its last fundraising in the — by 12/31, and that’s when they sent the press release out that indicated that we have $22.7 billion of additional AUM, and that’s all included in our reported numbers.

Daniel Fannon: And then would BSP’s fundraise be in there as well — on 12/31?

Matthew Nicholls: No, not yet.

Daniel Fannon: Okay, understood. Thank you.

Matthew Nicholls: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Brennan Hawken from UBS. Please go ahead.

Brennan Hawken: Thanks for taking my questions. So you spoke earlier about fixed income and the attractiveness and demand and a shift from cash and short-duration investments. What are you specifically seeing as far as RFP activity? And could you talk about Western and their level of engagement with their client base?

Jennifer Johnson: Yeah. So, Brennan, maybe just a little bit of color kind of on the industry. Everybody talks about the $7.7 trillion in money market funds and what’s going to be transferring from cash into other investments. And, first of all, Western’s money market fund is primarily institutional, and institutions tend to build in the first two quarters and then spend in the second two quarters. Having said that — and we don’t have a meaningful presence in the retail money market business. However, obviously, if you have relationships with those distributors, which we do, that’s where you’re going to capture the transition. So even if you don’t have the money market funds, it doesn’t mean you don’t get the transition. So, we’ve had actually good interest and positive flows in some categories in our fixed income.

Unfortunately, it’s masked. It’s masked a bit by some performance challenges we’ve had in the core strategies. Over half of our top 10 gross selling funds are in the fixed income space. And actually, from a vehicle standpoint, we’re positive flows in ETFs and our muni ladder SMAs. So it’s really important to think about this as being vehicle agnostic. And our fixed income gross sales are up 8%. We’ve had — the greatest portion of our institutional pipeline is actually fixed income in multi-sector credit, high-yield, global income, and Western — to your question about Western, they represent the largest portion of that. So Western is having good conversations. Their clients have been — have a lot of very good performing strategies but have struggled, obviously, in their core strategy.