RIA Valuation Insights

A weekly update on issues important to the Investment Management industry

Category

Asset Management


Industry Trends

Value Finally Outperforms Growth After Twelve Year Lull

Value Stocks Are Finally Besting Growth, But Is It Sustainable?

Growth-style investments have outpaced their value counterparts by a considerable margin since the Financial Crisis of 2008 and 2009.  Propelled by an 11-year bull market from 2009 to 2020 and additional lift to tech stocks in a work-from-home environment, growth investing dominated value-oriented equities until just a few months ago.   Now, the long-running trendline appears to be rolling over.   

Small/Mid-Sized Asset Managers Can Stay Relevant

Asset Management Industry Outlook

Over the last decade, investors have generally earned a higher net return by investing in passive vehicles rather than actively managed funds. Passive market share is now greater for U.S. equity investing than active. While large asset managers (i.e. BlackRock), are protected by sheer scale, how do small/mid-sized asset managers stay relevant in this environment?

Alternative Assets

2020 Alternative Asset Manager Update

Are Sustainable Investments the Future of Investment Management?

The market for sustainable investments has grown to over $12 trillion in the U.S. and the movement of investable assets into sustainable strategies is expected to accelerate. In this week’s post, we link to the newly published 2020 Alternative Asset Manager Update authored by Taryn Burgess, CFA, ABV. The update reviews the growth of sustainable investing over the last decade and considers the valuation implications for your RIA.

COVID-19 Coverage

Outlook for Asset Management Firms Amid COVID-19

Falling Asset Prices Threaten Profitability as Spotlight Turns to Relative Performance

Active managers have generally underperformed their benchmarks over the past 10 years, which has driven outflows into low-fee passive products. The extreme financial market volatility and dispersion over the last two months has created major price dislocation and the potential to generate outperformance. The current environment may well be the time for active managers to prove themselves by protecting clients’ assets relative to index performance and justifying their fees.

Will Your Succession be Successful?

A Few Things RIAs Need to Know

We’ve hesitated to put together a whitepaper on succession planning because so many people have already written excellent commentary on the topic. Nonetheless, when we surveyed what had been written about succession for RIAs, we didn’t see the kind of … Continued

Transactions

Q2 2019 Asset Manager M&A Trends

Asset and Wealth Manager M&A Keeping Pace with 2018’s Record Levels

Through the first half of 2019, asset and wealth manager M&A has kept pace with 2018, which was the busiest year for sector M&A over the last decade. M&A activity in the back half of 2019 is poised to continue at a rapid pace, as business fundamentals and consolidation pressures continue to drive deal activity. Several trends, which have driven the uptick in sector M&A in recent years, have continued into 2019, including increasing activity by RIA aggregators and rising cost pressures.

Industry Trends

Are Value Managers Undervalued?

Growth Investing Has Outperformed Value for Quite Some Time Now, and the Market’s Taking Notice

Significant underperformance relative to both the market and growth alternatives has led to continued outflows from institutional investors, which in turn has hampered AUM, revenue, and earnings growth despite relatively favorable market conditions. Since the multiple has also slid for these businesses, it appears that the market is anticipating more of the same. Against this backdrop, we address this post’s original question as to whether or not value managers are indeed undervalued at the moment.

Industry Trends

RIAs Still Reeling from Last Year’s Sell-Off

Despite Recent Uptick, Investment Managers are Underperforming

Ordinarily, we’d expect investment manager stocks to outperform the S&P in a stock market rally.  This isn’t always the case though.  So far this year, most classes of RIA stocks have underperformed the market despite its relatively sharp increase through the first three months. The explanation isn’t necessarily obvious. 

Valuations of Asset Managers Are Slow to Recover

Is the Decline in Active Management a Result of Increased Competition or Mediocre Performance?

While market declines are a threat to the profitability and valuations of any asset management firm, active managers face the additional threat of relative underperformance driving outflows, even in periods of rising markets. Low fee passive strategies have become increasingly popular due in part to both the perceived underperformance of active managers and an increasing focus on fees. But to what extent have active fund outflows been driven by mediocre performance versus competition from passive strategies, and what is the impact on asset management firm valuations?

Current Events

RIP to the Father of Index Investing

John Bogle’s Legacy Endures with the Prominence of Passive Investing

This week we say goodbye to perhaps the greatest advocate of passive investing. John Bogle’s contributions to indexing strategies and ETF investing have had huge impacts on both active and passive management, which we’ll address in this week’s post.

Industry Trends Wealth Management

The Haves and Have-Nots of the RIA Industry

Despite the old maxim of a rising tide lifting all boats, the current markets are clearly more buoyant for wealth management firms than asset management firms.  Many asset managers are trading at or near all-time lows from a valuation perspective, while financial advisory shops continue to accumulate client assets.  For this week’s post, we’ll take a closer look at this trend, and what it means for the broader industry.

Industry Trends Trust Companies

Q1 Shows Glimmer of Hope for Active Managers and Continued Gains for Trust Banks

The First Quarter 2017 Asset Management newsletter has been released. This quarter’s newsletter focuses on the mutual fund sector, which has been plagued by asset outflows into ETFs and other passive strategies for most of the last decade. The first two months of this year do, however, offer a ray of hope as 45% of U.S. based active managers beat their relevant benchmark, resulting in February being the first month of inflows into active products since April 2015.

Active Management Down But Not Out

Fresh off a 111-82 KO from the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday, our hometown Memphis Grizzlies are certainly battered but not totally eliminated from this year’s NBA title race. As this post goes to press, we still don’t know the outcome of Game 2, but it will undoubtedly be an uphill climb for the Grizz as it usually is against their divisional foes in Central Texas. Still, the Spurs/Grizz rivalry over the last ten years has not been nearly as one-sided as the battle for fund flows between active and passive investors in the ETF era.

Valuing RIAs

In essence, RIAs may be both highly profitable and prospectively ephemeral. Balancing the particular risks and opportunities of a given investment management firm is fundamental to developing a valuation. If you haven’t already, read our whitepaper covering this balancing act in this week’s post.

Current Events Margins and Compensation

ESG Investing Comes of Age Despite (or Maybe Because of) Trump

Investment strategies that screen for environmental, social, and governance criteria (ESG) is a still developing product niche that has, until recently, been more about talk than action. The pitch is that investing in businesses that demonstrate broad-based corporate responsibility provides a pathway to management teams who think long term, mitigate risk, and lead their industries. The beauty of an investment product like ESG is client stickiness.

Industry Trends

The Market is Bearish on AUM Growth, but What if the Market is Wrong?

We have written at length about bearish signs in the RIA space, and valuation metrics seem to generally reflect a reduced growth outlook. We wonder, though, if things are really that bad. While, we suspect there is, over all, some phantom fee compression in the industry as assets are allocated to passive instruments and active managers who charge more don’t get the RFP they once would have, the other two themes focus on demographics and market outlook which are not, necessarily, bearish for the investment management space.

Current Events Margins and Compensation

Brexit Just Accelerates Downward Trend in RIA Valuations

Gimme Shelter

Brexit’s full impact on the market is still to be determined, but a quick review of asset manager pricing reveals a valuation gap with the broader equity market that opened over the past twelve months, got much worse in June, and even accelerated over the past week. Sifting through the noise at quarter end, we pose, if market valuations in the industry are getting a haircut, what does that mean?

Mutual Fund Providers Down Sharply as ETFs Continue to Gain Ground

So far this month, the sports world has seen two incredible streaks finally come to an end – Golden State suffered its first regular season home defeat in 54 games, and Real Madrid snapped FC Barcelona’s 39 game unbeaten run in last weekend’s Clasico match-up. Both teams are still poised to retain their respective NBA and La Liga titles this year and break numerous records in the process, assuming their top producers continue their recent form. One streak that remains, albeit less reportedly, is passive funds’ dominance over their active counterparts over the last year.

Transactions

Asset Manager M&A Continues Ascent Despite Sell-Off

Despite the recent setback in the markets, RIA transaction activity posted solid gains for Q3 and into the month of October. The market’s stabilization since the last correction has clearly boded well for sector M&A, and the future appears bright – as long as security pricing holds up.

Practice Management

The Valuation of Asset Management Firms

In this week’s blog, we present a new whitepaper with some summary thoughts on the valuation of RIAs. Understanding the value of an asset management business requires some appreciation for what is simple and what is complex. On one level, a business with almost no balance sheet, a recurring revenue stream, and an expense base that mainly consists of personnel costs could not be more straightforward. At the same time, asset management firms exist in a narrow space between client allocations and the capital markets, and depend on revenue streams that rarely carry contractual obligations and valuable staff members who often are not subject to employment agreements. In essence, RIAs may be both highly profitable and prospectively ephemeral. Balancing the particular risks and opportunities of a given asset management firm is fundamental to developing a valuation.

Investment Management

Mercer Capital provides RIAs, trust companies, and investment consultants with corporate valuation, litigation support, transaction advisory, and related services