The fund management giant reported a broadly strong set of figures for Q1, taking some of the market turbulence of recent weeks in its stride, its CEO said.

BlackRock, the world’s largest listed fund management business, today reported that total assets under management rose 17 per cent year-on-year to $6.317 trillion in the first three months of 2018, while net flows for the quarter came in at $56.95 billion.

The US funds behemoth said Q1 revenues rose 16 per cent in Q1 from a year ago to $3.583 billion; net income for the period rose 27 per cent to $1.092 billion. Earnings per share, on a diluted basis, rose 28 per cent to $6.7 per share, it said in a statement. 

Larger than sovereign wealth funds, for example, BlackRock operates a suite of actively managed and index-tracking funds, including exchange traded funds under the iShares brand. Recent years have seen the ascent of low-fee ETFs and a shift from more expensive actively managed portfolios, forcing wealth houses such as BlackRock to shift product offerings. BlackRock and its peers increasingly dominate the asset management arena. As reported last October, US-based asset management firms, with BlackRock standing top of the hill, make up for eight out of the world’s 10-largest businesses of this type, while the largest firms  account for more of the total pie than before, data from Willis Towers Watson found, showing a global total of $81.2 trillion for 2016. The global total represented a 5.8 per cent increase from the level recorded in 2015.

“Paced by a strong January, long-term net inflows of $55 billion, representing 5 per cent annualized organic base fee growth, were positive across active and index strategies,” Laurence Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, said in a statement. “Momentum continued in technology and risk management, with 19 per cent year-over-year revenue growth, further highlighting the strength and diversity of our global platform,” he continued.

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Investors pulled money out of some sectors and pushed into others amid concerns over trade protectionism, heightened volatility and worries over technology, Fink said, alluding to developments such as falls to Facebook’s share price amid client data privacy concerns. 

“Institutional investors, in particular, reacted to these factors, by de-risking and re-balancing. At the same time, we also saw many corporate clients adapting to U.S. tax reform by seeking liquidity to fund future capital investment or more aggressive share repurchases. As a result of these various crosscurrents, BlackRock experienced a significant number of both large inflows and large outflows from institutional clients in the first quarter,” Fink said.

“BlackRock saw continued demand for a diverse range of fixed income strategies, including unconstrained, total return, short duration and emerging market debt, as well as alpha-seeking equity strategies,” he said.

iShares® saw quarterly net inflows of $35 billion.

There were long-term net inflows of $57.3 billion and $3.2 billion from clients in the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions, respectively. These inflows were partially offset by net outflows of $5.9 billion from clients in EMEA. At March 31, 2018, BlackRock managed 63% of its long-term AuM for clients in the Americas, 29 per cent for clients in EMEA and 8 per cent for clients in Asia-Pacific.

There were retail long-term net inflows of $16.7 billion reflected net inflows of $8.7 billion in the United States and $8.0 billion internationally. Fixed income net inflows stood at $10.0 billion in the first quarter. There were $4.2 billion of equity net inflows, driven by money coming into index mutual funds and international active equities. Multi-asset net inflows of $2.0 billion were largely due to inflows into the multi-asset income fund family.