Earnings Labs

Acadian Asset Management (AAMI)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 2, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the OMAM Earnings Conference Call and Webcast for the Third Quarter 2016. During the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this call is being recorded today, November 2 at 10 AM Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Brett Perryman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Brett.

Brett Perryman

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to OMAM’s conference call to discuss our results for the third quarter of 2016. Before we get started, I would like to note that certain comments made on this call may constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor provision under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as expect, anticipate, may, intends, believes, estimate, project and other similar expressions. Such statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, the factors described in OMAM’s filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 15, 2016, under the heading Risk Factors and on the company’s current report on Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 20, 2016. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. We urge you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today’s earnings press release, which is available in the Investor Relations section of our website, where you will also find the slides we will use as part of our discussion this morning. Today’s call will be led by Peter Bain, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Steve Belgrad, our Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Peter.

Peter Bain

Analyst

Thank you, Brett. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today, we appreciate the time you spend with us. I’ll make some opening comments and then ask Steve to walk us through the financials in a little more detail. And then, as always we will look forward to conversation with you in Q&A on the call. If we want to just start with the overview and highlights on Slide 3. In the third quarter this year, we delivered economic net income per share of $0.32, which is up over 3% on the year-over-year third quarter of 2015, and up of almost 7% on a sequential quarter basis. Our net client cash flows were $2.6 billion negative in the quarter and the revenue flow through of that was an annualized negative $7.5 million or roughly 1% annualized run-rate based on management fees. We did continue in the quarter our trend of bringing in assets at higher fees than the assets that are going out, weighted average fees on the assets that came in quarter of 42 basis points and only 38 bps on the assets that went out. And we actually saw an increase in activity in the quarter both with respect to inflows and outflows, so more money was in motion during the quarter. We will talk a little bit more in the presentation about that fee split and trend. Our total AUM at September 30 were $234.2 billion, which is a 7% increase on a sequential quarter basis, and over 12% up from the year-ago quarter, included in that is the $8.8 billion that came in when we consummated the Landmark acquisition in the quarter as well. On the investment performance front, our long-term three and five year numbers remain strong, just under 70% of our revenue is…

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst

Thanks, Peter, and good morning, everyone. While the third quarter of 2016 was a challenging one in terms of flows and investment performance, we accomplished a significant strategic milestone with the closing of the Landmark transaction and as markets have recovered the business performed well financially. Looking forward to 2017, assuming a stable economic and operating environment, we’re well positioned to drive earnings growth particularly as Landmark progresses with its business plan. With respect to operating margin, we’re expecting the addition of Landmark to improve margin by 100 basis points to 200 basis points in 2017 compared to standalone, primarily by improving the operating expense to management fee ratio and the variable compensation ratio. I’ll give more specifics as we discuss these ratios further in this presentation. One thing that I would like to point out before we get into the numbers is the additional disclosure and refinements we provided around our ENI reconciliation to U.S. GAAP on Page 18 in the appendix. Given the purchase of Landmark and seed capital in the third quarter, certain items which have always been part of our ENI definition have become more relevant and have been broken out in separate line items for all periods presented. In particular, now that our seed capital is increased, we illustrated separately in reconciliation item #4, the adjustment we make to pull out seed capital gains and losses, and the related financing. These gains and losses create volatility on the income statement, which will only become more pronounced, as purchase additional seed next summer. And these gains and losses certainly should not be capitalized with an earnings multiple in my opinion. Instead, we have provided an additional table in the earning release, table #21 that clearly lays out these benefits and costs for investors. In addition, in…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Craig Siegenthaler with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Craig Siegenthaler

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning. So first I just want to hit on fee pressure and I know you guys actually have the nice trend here with the management fee rates actually ramping up bit. Are you seeing positive fee pressure on any parts of your business? Maybe are you giving fee concessions to win new business? Maybe just provide an update on that topic.

Peter Bain

Analyst

Sure Craig. The short answer is no. We really are not experiencing fee pressure. I think that goes to our focus on the active institutionally-driven market working with very large clients with whom our affiliates have been working for many, many years. So our fee relationships with our clients and with the institutional market are well established. They’re fair, they’re competitive, and we certainly would never and the affiliates would also not simply cut a fee to get a mandate. That’s just not where they are. Their fees are fair, relative for the strategy and the mandate being met. And actually in fairness, you’re right. If you take a look at Slide 11, and you look at that fee rate, really going back five quarters we’ve been able to demonstrate a very steady increase in fee rate. And on the retail side, again, the sub-advisory mandates we hold, we hold at in essence prevailing fee rates. And we will either agree to be hired at fee levels that we think are fair or will pass on the mandate. And I think that discipline is important. So in that score we’re in pretty good shape.

Craig Siegenthaler

Analyst

Very helpful Peter, and then just a follow-up on flows, I wanted to see if you could provide us how RFP activity, finals activity were trending in 3Q in October versus prior periods. I want to see if there is any lift there or how that changed.

Peter Bain

Analyst

Yes. In 3Q, what’s interesting is in terms - I will put it in the context of the whole year so far actually. If you remember, in the first quarter we talked about, it was actually the largest inflow quarter we had in like a decade, we’re north $9 billion in. And our view was that had in fact harvested a decent part of the pipeline. That’s the downside or the upside. We thought Q2 would be a dip, it was. We thought we should engage and see those sales numbers go up in the third quarter, which they did, up from like four-and-change to north of $6 billion. So there is greater activity. And our activity in finals, it’s frustrating because just even on our Global Distribution front. Our team has gotten the affiliates to as many finals in terms of numbers and also AUM in play, as at any time in the past we just frankly haven’t won as many as we have in the past. So in terms of activity levels we are seeing reasonable amounts of money in motion, and we certainly have seen relative to where we had the conversation at the end of the first quarter. We’ve seen the pipeline replenish.

Craig Siegenthaler

Analyst

Thank you.

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Bill Katz with Citi. Your line is now open.

William Katz

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the update and the guidance as well. Just focusing on Landmark for a moment, looks like that came in at such higher in terms of AUM today versus where it was at the time of the transaction. Can you give us a general sense? I guess, they’re in their capital raising mode right now. I’m sure you can’t speak specifically, but qualitatively is there anything that you are seeing that would dissuade you from your initial guidance when you announce transaction?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Bill, I appreciate the artful way you asked the question to save me from legal exposure, that was very kind of you and I appreciate it. Now, look - now Landmark came in just about where we thought that $8.8 billion was pretty much that was the business. So that’s steady as you go. And likewise to answer your artfully phrased question, we continue to hold our views consistent with what we articulated when we announced the transaction in terms of fundraising.

William Katz

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Okay. It’s very helpful. Second question at you is you highlighted you still have ample amount of buyback capacity should we get some visibility from the Parent. At the same time, it seems like M&A channel has picked up pretty significantly across the industry. I presume there is a quality versus quantity dynamic to your answer. But can you give us a sense, at what point would you reorient and just move beyond waiting for the Parent exit strategy, and maybe deploying capital, and maybe a more or accretive higher multiple outcome?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

That’s actually a great question, Bill. Thank you. Look, we - and we’ve had this discussion with the market consistently. We view capital deployment in a very disciplined and very secular way. And if we believed that a simple repurchase would be more accretive in a longer-term relative to the other deployment opportunities, we would pursue it. But the flipside is, if we see a strategically meaningful accretive opportunity to deploy capital in an acquisition, where you have the opportunity to generate not just mathematical earnings accretion, but also potentially franchise strategic improvement resulting in a potential rerating of the multiple, we would absolutely pursue that. We continue that activity. We engage in meetings consistently with potential new partners, and we will never stop doing that. Now in a real world, our Parent has publicly announced they’re going to exit its holding of us. And it’s rational that a potential new acquisition candidate partner with us would have the discussion with us about where does that play out, and maybe they wait and see the endgame there before committing. And we just have to manage through that process in real time, but we will and we are.

William Katz

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Okay. Just one final one, thanks for taking the questions. Just to enquire with you maybe how you sort of classified it. You said you’re not winning as many mandates today than maybe have historically been the case. And maybe it’s difficult to have a full answer. But do you have a sense of what factors are going into the reason why you’re not winning? Is it price? Is it capacity? Can you give us a sense of why you’re not winning those mandates?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Yes, and that’s fair. And let me be clear. The answer and the comment I made was solely with respect to our Global Distribution team, and the competitions and finals that they are getting our affiliates to. I’m not commenting with respect to all of the core activity the affiliates are engaged in. And on that one, I wish I had a definitive empirical answer for you, Bill. It’s certainly not price, it’s certainly not price. I think to the extent we’ve gotten any visibility at all, to some degree it’s a function of the client finally, at the final stage making an ultimate determination of the specific investment process or discipline that they’re looking for. And our managers may not be that discipline. They may go in a different direction. The other one frankly is what we haven’t told is some clients have made decisions about actually their portfolio construction allocation. And in fact, they’ve moved into different asset classes away from what our managers are trying to compete for. Beyond that I don’t really have a whole lot of visibility for you.

William Katz

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thank you for taking all my questions.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Yes. Thanks, Bill.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Carrier with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Michael Roger Carrier

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Great, thanks, guys.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Yes, good morning, Michael.

Michael Roger Carrier

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Just on the - hi, just on the uncertainty around the Parent, and I guess, it makes sense in terms of the capital allocation what you said and maybe in terms of deals that being on hold a bit. But on the core business, in terms of the affiliates, do you think that that process or that uncertainty has much impact on the wins of the business or do you think that’s like ward-off, meaning there is not as much of an impact in terms of the flows, because of that versus the deal activity?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Yes. That’s a great sort of imponderable questions. Certainly we had the conversations with the affiliates about their businesses. I think on balance, it’s not impairing the company, because the reality is I think it’s very well known that Old Mutual plc has announced its managed separation strategy. And that’s a decision made by a strategic shareholder. But the affiliates are continuing to run their business exactly the way they have always in the past. We continue to be the management team driving strategy in the operation of the company and that’s not changing at all. And I think that the clients and the consultants actually do now look at this as a kind of two-stage removed event. So, however PLC elects to exit its holding, the management team here remains in place. The strategy remains in place. The business model remains in place, and the affiliates continue to do exactly what they are doing. So I think on balance, we are okay on that front. Now look, I think it will be useful when PLC ultimately does in fact execute on its exit strategy. I think that will settle that lingering question. But on balance, I think we are managing through it pretty effectively.

Michael Roger Carrier

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thanks. And just as a follow-up, I know your distribution tends to be more on the institutional side, but when you think about maybe the growth outlook or the prospects and given some of the changes that we’re seeing in the U.S. market, particularly on the retail side with DOL and SEC proposals and rules. Does that change anything? I mean, in terms of where your - I don’t know, I guess, your growth plans on distribution you go from here?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Not really, because really if you look at what we’ve built. The asset classes we’ve gone into and the way we’ve structured our sub-advisory relationships on the retail side. Everything we’re doing is actually positioning ourselves to be successful in the world you’re describing. I mean, the DOL rule is going to affect pure retail business and intermediaries. We are a pure alpha provider as a sub-advisor to those intermediaries, and the classes we moved into is reflected by Landmark are in fact the alternative classes, the relatively less liquid classes, and the alpha generating classes, that investors are going to move to in a world where it becomes increasingly difficult I think on the retail side to conduct the business. So if anything, we’ve been very thoughtful about where we think that segment of the market is going and we’ve structured the business accordingly.

Michael Roger Carrier

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Robert Lee with KBW. Your line is now open.

Robert Lee

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Great, thanks. Good morning, guys.

Peter Bain

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Hey, Rob.

Robert Lee

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Hey, a couple of quick ones. Maybe going back to Landmark, and maybe just getting a little too granular and, I mean, understanding they’re entering fundraising cycles, and Just maybe to refresh our memory, so as they start to kind of fundraise looking ahead to next year, are most of their funds kind of drawdown structure? So they’ll get the commitments. But we will actually see it hit AUM over time or is it kind of more PE without having just distinct close at some point of different funds, and we’ll see it kind of a lumpy inflow?

Peter Bain

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Yes. It’s more of the latter, and that as they - we, first of all, always to try to match our reported AUM and flows to revenue. And so, as they have a close on a fund, the flows would come in and that’s at the same time we would also begin recognizing and they would begin earning fees on that fund. There is also a dynamic this in place as you move beyond the first close of a fund into the second, third, et cetera closings that there is a catch-up on fees back to the first close. So you would have not only the lumpiness of NCCF coming in at a fund close, but you would also have a slight lumpiness of revenue, where investors would not only begin chart - begin paying currencies, but we’d catch-up back to the first close of that product.

Robert Lee

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Right. And then I assume there is some step down on the prior generation fund as well.

Peter Bain

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Over time, but that’s not really going to be terribly meaningful in the coming years.

Robert Lee

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Okay. And again with - I know if I can say specifically - but should we assume that at some point as we get deeper into 2017, we could see some of those fundraising start to affluent?

Peter Bain

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

It’s funny. I’d love to answer Michael, but the lawyers were actually pretty serious about not giving targeted time and dates for first closings of funds, simply because you begin to wander into this world of are you offering securities on the call. So we’ve been kind of cautioned on giving deadlines or target dates. I’m sorry about that, but that’s we got.

Robert Lee

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Okay. Fair enough. Just one more question, may be shifting to organic kind of new organic - organically developed strategies. Can you maybe update us on where you see some newer strategies that you’ve been seeding, where you - as you look over the next year or two, you think you have - you feel like that you can start getting some traction kind of fixed income or somewhere else, maybe an update on where you see some of the incremental opportunities to raise capital?

Peter Bain

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Probably a couple standout in my mind. One, we worked with Barrow Hanley pretty consistently over the years, and put in place in emerging markets equity capability that has built a very strong track record and I think that the track record is now achieving a kind of a seasoning, we’re going into 2017. Our sense is that the bearer will likely be in a position to be able to take that strategy out to market, and I think if barrow were able to begin building some traction in the emerging market equity space that would be an important strategic moment for them, and it looks like that might be possible which is encouraging. I guess the other one would be in the alternative space, we worked with Campbell Global to put together a global fund capability with them as well, and it looks again to us like that may will reach that kind of traction point where it would be in a position to have a closing in 2017, and if that were the case again that would be an important strategic diversification movement for Campbell into the global timber space, so both of those are collaborative organic things that we worked on that look like they may will get some traction and come on line.

Robert Lee

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Peter Bain

Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open.

Yes. Thanks, Rob.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Patrick Davitt with Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning guys.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Hi, Patrick.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

As a follow-up to that last Landmark question will come out from a different direction. And you probably can’t answer this either, but I’ll try.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Okay, okay.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Could you give us an idea of what percentage of the previous vintage fund is invested at this point, and how that can tracked over the last few quarters?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

I think, our view is the last set of season funds which really went out in kind of 2013 to 2014. There I guess the way I characterize it, and I think I can’t answer this one, because it’s an existing fund. I would characterize that as essentially fully invested, Patrick.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Okay.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Okay.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Could you give any colors why they haven’t launched the new fundraising?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

I was going to say. I don’t think, I said they haven’t launched a new fundraising.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Okay. That’s helpful.

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Just that we can’t comment on any bright, on any and these are closing.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

They put us in a box on this one, but for appropriate reasons which we understand.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Yes. That’s helpful. And on the management if you rebate and I apologize if you can color on this before. How much AUM is in structures with those kinds of rebate, and could you give us any kind of helping out, to think about it?

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Yes, sure. It’s primarily the Vanguard sub-advisory products, which are about say 7% of revenue overall. It’s about - I think this year is probably about $8 million or $9 million of get back, which is - I think the cap out for it. So when anticipated getting going any higher, and would hope it will certainly get better. Those get backs are calculated on a three year rolling performance basis. So we’ve made up a little bit of ground, but it’s still - it’s sort of meaningfully underwater. And so I think that’s going to be something that will take a little while to rollup, because you have to again it’s a three year type of test. So as we think about going into 2017, I wouldn’t expect a significant improvement to that sort of negative 9-ish or so get back, and I guess, those through the performance of fee line.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

And the benchmark is the SNP?

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

It has on the product the biggest one is related to Windsor II, which is the MSCI Prime 750 product, which frankly is a little bit different than the benchmark that is large cap value was managed to which is really the Russell 1000 Value. That if you compare the MSCI Prime 750, the Russell 1000 Value. For most of last year, it seem to significantly outperform the Russell 1000 Value this year it’s - underperform the Russell 1000 Value, which has helped us.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Great. Okay. That’s very helpful. Thank you.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

All right, sure.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Chris Harris with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Christopher Harris

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Hey, guys.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Good morning, Chris.

Christopher Harris

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

So as a result of DOL, broker dealers are consolidating your relationships across the space. I appreciate you guys are mostly institutionally oriented. But do this trend present a risk to our sub-advisory business at all?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

No. I think, it’s just the continuing reality of our business model and our view of the market, which is you’re going to have to have a real process. And you are going to have to deliver results that are consistent with the mandate for which are higher, and to the extent, the retail space consolidates it sub-advisory relationships, it’s going to give us an opportunity to win, I mean, that’s the reality, I think the managers who are going to have challenges are one whose processes are revealed to be in essence index hovers or closet benchmark hovers, and we’re extremely focused on the genuine discipline and alpha generation capability and investment process at the affiliates. And I think, that you are going to have to have that process to win going forward, and we think that’s appropriate and fair, is how we positioned to the business. So to the extent, we have conversations with our key sub-advisory sponsor platforms, I think there is a conversations we look forward to. Look, I mean, I think if you look at the way that we do the business, and particularly within global distribution, because we’re focused on this distribution channel. We are a meaningful relationship to our sub-advisory clients. And they are meaningfully sized sub-advisory - they are meaningfully sized platforms. And so I think that helps you and all these trends - maybe accelerated by DOL, but look we lift for a long, long time out of the concentration of relationships. And that’s the way we structured the business to be an important relationship to the people we are doing business with.

Christopher Harris

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Right, okay. That’s a good point. Really quick question on the outlook for next year on expenses, what you guys thinking in terms of investment spend, I mean, you mentioned you’re still investing in the business, anything kind of quantitatively you can share.

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Yes. I mean, I think, there are two elements of investment spend, when we think about it. One is investment spend within the existing franchise and existing products that sort of an ongoing type of area. So for instance, Acadian, a quantitative manager is always investing in their business to make sure that they are providing great return for their clients. I think you’ve seen a period of relatively higher expense growth over the last couple of years as that investment is going on. And I think within the existing part of the business, you’ll probably have lower rates of growth into 2017 than you’ve seen in 2015 and 2016. With respect to new product initiatives that the commitments we’ve made and the products we’ve talked about have been multiyear commitments and multiyear spend, and you obviously have certain products that are in different phases of investment. I think in general, it will probably go up moderately in the next year related to a couple of initiatives that are tracking where we expected them to track, but are entering a phase of more investment. But we’re not talking about numbers that are going to necessarily move the dial on any substantial way.

Christopher Harris

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Michael Cyprys

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, thanks for taking the question. Just curious on manage-evolve [ph] strategies, if you could just update on how much AUM is managing that today. What sort of flow trends are you seeing, maybe just on a year-to-date basis. And just more broadly, how you are thinking about growing that part of the business out more meaningfully from here what can be done. From a distribution perspective or vehicle perspective will be great?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

The manage-evolve, it is franchise across the franchise. One of the ones that’s experiencing positive inflow, it’s sort of one the top-five inflow strategies, Michael. And we think that continues to be the case. It is a multi-billion dollar business line now. Acadian really has been a leader in that space for a long period of time. They built it out across a number of different disciplines. So I think our view is to manage volatility space is one that’s important institutionally. The more people understand it, the more they realize it as a substantially greater from our perspective investment disciplined than simply trying to go passive because of the active nature of the management of the volatility please, which really is what most people are thinking about when they worry about risk in the portfolio. And we continue to believe it’s going to be capable of being an engine for growth.

Michael Cyprys

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Great. Any color you could share in terms of how your clients are thinking about manage-evolve strategies up in their portfolios, any color on what sort of allocation investors are kind of putting into this strategy? Which particular clients you’re seeing the greatest traction from within managed wall? And what sort of bucket does this fall into from an asset allocation perspective? Like where are you competing within the asset bucket for this year?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Well, A, I want to be honest with you in saying - no, I can’t slice it that empirically for you and I certainly haven’t studied any consultant reports about recommended allocations of overall portfolio construction metrics into managed volatility. So I don’t want to give you a false sense of precision. I think what is happening in the market and what has happened that has driven this is managed volatility when genuinely actively done through security selection by the way, which is what Acadian is a much more intelligent conversation with an investment committee that’s trying to think through market volatility and returns and risk, and thinking through risk adjusted return. I think there was a knee-jerk when people went through a process of going, gosh, we’re worried about the volatility and the risk in the portfolio, let’s just go passive. And I think what’s begun to sunk in finally, as institutional investors have in essence reached their target passive allocation. And there is an interesting piece of research done on this. In the institutional segment Casey Quirk did a piece of work, where they looked at and spoke with consultants and institutional investors and said, what are you expecting to do with your portfolio over the next five years. And the answer in the institutional space was there is going to be outflow from passive in the next five years. That tells me a couple of things. One, people have sort of hit their passive allocation. But they’ve now had experience with the passive segment and what they realized is going passive doesn’t reduce your risk at all and it doesn’t reduce your volatility at all. In fact it just locks in the same risk and volatility everyone else in the market is stuck with. And as the velocity of money goes into the passive segment more it actually increases that. And so taking a chunk of your portfolio and actually saying, look, we’re going to activity manage the volatility of this component of the portfolio is something that’s beginning to gain and has gain traction. So that’s how investors are looking at it. That’s the role it’s playing in an active institutional portfolio. And I think that’s where we have seen and Acadian has seen the greatest success.

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

I mean, where I think there is also good potential and you see this, I mean, we’re a sub-advisor to a emerging markets managed volatility product. That look if you think about target date funds and the need of investors to manage risk as they get closer to either retirement or meeting their objectives the way that’s traditionally been done is by moving into fixed income, which is worked out okay in a lower rated - when interest rates are going down and it’s getting more valuable. But if you think about over the long-term, to the extent that you can use equity managed volatility products in place of fixed income products, I think that’s a real opportunity as well. And we’re beginning to, as I said, we have a mandate in the sub-advisory side, which I think would benefit retail investors.

Michael Cyprys

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Super, thanks for all the color.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Patrick Davitt with Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Thanks for the follow-up, just a quick one. Should we take your commentary around the kind of wait and see attitude to see what the Parent is doing to mean that you will kind of be on hold with the repurchase until they decide what they’re doing?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Well, structurally, Patrick, the buyback is a bilateral event, right. I mean, the Parent has to decide it wants to sell to us. So it is a function of what the Parent decides to some degree. And then the issue for our board becomes, if the parent would like to sell to us, is it at a price that we believe is value creating for our shareholders as well. So it really is - it’s not a unilateral decision point. It really is a function of where we are, where the stock is and where the parent is in terms of its execution of its exit strategy.

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

And look, the opportunity to be able to have the opportunity to buy something in one chunk and put the money to work that way is beneficial enough. But we think it’s worthwhile to husband the resources and not just try to go into the market and chase low volumes and take away liquidity that the market really needs. So that’s why we’re sort of holding off not going into the market and trying to execute in the public markets right now.

Patrick Davitt

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Great. That makes sense. Thank you.

Peter Bain

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Okay.

Stephen Belgrad

Analyst · Autonomous. Your line is now open.

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Michael Cyprys

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Hey, thanks for taking the follow-up question here. Just on the Global Distribution, I know you expected some challenges about winning mandates on the Global Distribution part. Can you just elaborate a little bit more in terms of how you’re adjusting your process or strategy if at all on the global side and just maybe update us more broadly on how you’re building out the Global Distribution capabilities?

Peter Bain

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Yes, actually, Global Distribution is fulfilling its mission very well, Michael. We’re not adjusting it because we just need to win more. We’ve had a couple of great years. And this year we’ve had plenty of good swings at the plate and then that’s Global Distribution’s mission. So we’re very comfortable with where it is. And in terms of building it out, we continue to look at the different ways. You either enter a new market or you bring new products into that market or you access new channels. On the new channel front we’re looking at the insurance space as an opportunity for us to build the capability to be effective in representing the affiliates in that very specific insurance channel. And in terms of bringing new products into the existing channels certainly the opportunity with Landmark is a very exciting one.

Michael Cyprys

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the conference call back over toe Peter Bain.

Peter Bain

Analyst

Thank you, all. Thanks for the time this morning. We ran a little over an hour. And I know that it’s a busy time. So I will simply tell you that we appreciate your engagement with us. And we look forward to seeing you on the road and elsewhere. Take care.