BlackRock Earnings Beat Expectations. The Stock Is Down.
BlackRock’s second-quarter earnings jumped 28% to $10.03 a share, helped by strong fee growth and revenue from technology services, the investment management behemoth reported.
Assets in its iShares exchange-traded fund franchise jumped to $3 trillion from $2.8 trillion in March. BlackRock (ticker: BLK) currently has about 35% of the global ETF market of $8 trillion, according to Edward D. Jones, and has forecast that ETF assets globally will reach $15 trillion by 2025.
Total assets stood at $9.5 trillion, up from $7.3 trillion a year earlier. BlackRock is the world’s largest investment management company.
For the second quarter, earnings climbed to $1.55 billion on revenue of $4.82 billion. Last year, BlackRock earned $1.2 billion, or $7.77 a share, on revenue of $4.39 billion.
Analysts on average had expected BlackRock to report $1.44 billion, or $9.42 a share, on revenue of $4.58 billion, according to Bloomberg.
In a statement, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said: “BlackRock’s comprehensive investment and technology platform continues to evolve ahead of our clients’ needs. Strong annualized organic base fee growth of 10% in the second quarter was driven by our top-performing active platform and industry-leading iShares ETF franchise. We also delivered 14% year-over-year growth in technology services revenue.”
BlackRock had a comprehensive investor day last month, with iShares, the company’s Aladdin division, sustainable investing, and alternative investing all reporting good growth.
In a report after today’s earnings, Edward D. Jones analyst Kyle Sanders wrote: “Results were strong, with broad-based strength across the business. While rising markets are always helpful, we believe BlackRock is best positioned to capitalize on powerful shifts occurring in the asset management industry. Trillions of dollars are up for grabs over the next decade, and we believe BlackRock’s leadership in key high-growth categories such as ETFs, technology, alternative assets and sustainable investing will continue to support industry-leading flow growth over the long term.”
Shares of BlackRock were down 1.4% in Wednesday’s premarket trading. The stock has gained roughly 26% year to date.
Write to Leslie P. Norton at [email protected]