Eric Colson
Analyst · Bank of America
Thank you, Makela, and thank you, everyone, for the joining the call or reading the transcript. Today, Artisan Partners is managing more assets for more clients across more autonomous investment teams and strategies than ever before. We are compounding wealth for clients. We are creating new growth opportunities for internal and external talent, and we are generating results for shareholders.
In the third quarter, we earned more revenue than ever before in our history, and we recently declared our highest quarterly dividend ever at $0.83 per share. These outcomes results from investments we have made in the firm over long periods of time, identifying, recruiting and retaining great investment talent; investing in new people and reinvesting in our existing franchises; launching high value-added investment strategies that fit with long-term asset allocation trends; building our flexible and resilient operating platform; and developing our high-quality leverage distribution model and team.
In today's highly uncertain and rapidly changing environment, we are operating well. We are getting the day-to-day job done. And at the same time, we are making forward progress with business initiatives that we expect to yield further long-term sustainable growth.
Turning to Slide 2. As previously announced in the third quarter, 2 experienced portfolio managers, Beini Zhou and Anand Vasagiri, rejoined Artisan International Value team and launched the Artisan International Small Cap Value strategy. Earlier in their careers, Beini and Anand worked as analysts under David Samra, the founder and leader of our International Value franchise. Beini and Anand are well versed in the team's value investing philosophy and process. The new strategy is a natural extension for David and the International Value franchise, providing the group an opportunity to exploit an inefficient part of the market and further develop the franchise's expertise and business.
Also, Tiffany Hsiao and Yuanyuan Ji joined the Artisan Global Equity team. We are currently working with Tiffany and Yuanyuan to build and resource their team and design and launch a strategy to invest in post-venture firms in Greater China. We expect this strategy will include both public and private investments, providing investors with differentiated access to the Chinese growth story. The strategy should also fit with long-term demand from sophisticated clients who are increasing allocations to China to capture growth and catch up with China's status as the world's second largest economy.
On Slide 3, you can see where the recent additions fit into the longer-term development of the International Value and Global Equity franchises, 2 of our longest-tenured groups. Our autonomous investment team model is extremely flexible. We try to develop a common set of franchise traits across all the investment teams, but the path and the form that traits take are unique for each team.
David Samra and Dan O'Keefe founded the International Value team in 2002. On the strength of the performance of the flagship International Value strategy, they launched the Global Value strategy in 2007. They developed their franchise and business to the point that in 2018, it made sense to evolve into 2 separate teams, create an opportunity and space for further growth. Earlier this year, Dan's Global Value franchise launched the Select Equity Strategy. Now, David has taken another step with Beini and Anand and the International Small Cap Value strategy.
For 25 years, Mark Yockey has been developing the Global Equity franchise. Today, within Mark's investment ecosystem, we have the flagship first-generation international growth strategy, the second-generation global equity strategy, the third-generation International small-mid growth strategy managed by Rezo Kanovich and the next-generation strategy we are working on with Tiffany and Yuanyuan.
This team with an a team approach allows us to provide the space, autonomy and ownership necessary to attract great talent. At the same time, we are injecting new experience, expertise and ideas into established franchises, which creates new options for growth and should ultimately extend franchise duration.
When we talk about growth, we always say thoughtful growth. That means growth that is consistent with who we are as a high value-added, talent-driven investment firm.
Slide 4 shows some of the areas where we've been thoughtfully growing. It all starts with investments. We continue to add great new investment talent and to reinvest in existing talent. We continue to add degrees of investment freedom within existing strategies and with new strategies. We continue to develop all 3 generations of strategies, and we are exploring the next generation.
The first-generation strategies continue to represent about half of our business, and we expect these strategies to remain an important part of asset allocations for many years to come. Our second-generation global strategies continue to experience strong demand, in particular from non-U.S. institutional investors. Year-to-date, the second-generation strategies have raised $1.6 billion in net client cash flows.
And our third-generation strategies continue to see extremely strong business development, particularly in the U.S. wealth channel, which we expect to be a source of long-term secular growth. Year-to-date, the third-generation strategies have raised $5.7 billion in net inflows, an annualized organic growth rate of 63%. As part of our thoughtful growth mentality, we are trying to bring together great investment talent, investment resources and degrees of freedom and long-term demand.
Within that framework, what might the next generation of Artisan strategies look like? We see public and private securities coming together, multiple degrees of investment freedom in the same strategy and more ways for clients to access our investment ideas and expertise, such as through co-investments. As we match great investors with additional degrees of freedom, they will have the ability to further differentiate themselves, and clients will have the ability to access multiple expressions of our investment ideas and expertise.
Our thoughtful approach to growth extends beyond investment. We have always maintained a lean distribution model that complements our investment-first approach. By keeping our fixed sales costs low, we are not under pressure to generate or manufacture product to feed a distribution machine. Our distribution team is high-quality and flexible. They minimize the time our portfolio managers spend on distribution and they serve multiple client types across our target geographies around the world.
We maintain this approach by focusing on points of leverage. Recently, we have spent more time cultivating and developing strategic relationships with clients and allocators who invest across multiple investment teams and strategies. These clients and gatekeepers know who we are and trust us as a firm. We are working to build on that trust and deepen those relationships. Our firm-wide year-to-date net inflows of $5 billion includes multiple investments from strategic client relationships.
Our investment and distribution operations are enabled by our flexible operating platform. We have methodically developed our people, technology, mobility and resiliency over long periods of time.
We were well prepared for work at home, and we have operated extremely well throughout this extended period. We will continue to invest in this critical part of our business.
Our long-term investment outcomes are shown on Slide 5. Since inception, 12 of our 18 strategies have outperformed their indexes by more than 300 basis points per year after fees. We have generated long-term alpha and outperformed peers in first-, second- and third-generation strategies. We have diversified and broadened our sources of alpha across investment teams, asset classes and generations. Our greatest asset and our greatest source of future growth is the long-term performance shown on this page and the people behind it.
Turning to my final slide. I want to emphasize our focus on thoughtful growth by placing our firm within the larger industry context. On this slide, we've laid out a simplified model of a horizontally and vertically integrated asset management company, a group that packages together investments, solutions and advice to deliver a holistic outcome for end clients, often retail clients. These asset managers are intensely focused on scale, packaging and pricing. Much of the recent industry consolidation is driven by this pursuit of breadth and scale. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's very different from what we do, and we want to make sure that our clients and other gatekeepers, our people and our shareholders understand the difference.
Artisan Partners is an investment firm focused on high value-added investing. The red box shows our part of the investment universe. We focus on talent, investment resources and culture and degrees of freedom. We compete on the quality of our people and our net-of-fee performance and the trustworthiness of our brand. These are the things that we are most focused on. These are the areas where we have a competitive advantage. As long as we continue to get investments right, there will be multiple ways for us to reach end clients and for us to continue to generate long-term sustainable outcomes for all of our constituents.
I will now turn it over to C.J. to discuss our third quarter and year-to-date results.