Cohen & Steers, Inc. (CNS) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cohen & Steers First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Friday, April 17, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Heller, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Cohen Steers. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to the Cohen & Steers First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me are Joe Harvey, our Chief Executive Officer; Mike Donohue, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, and Jon Cheigh, our President and Chief Investment Officer. I want to remind you that some of our comments and answers to your questions may include forward-looking statements. We believe these statements are reasonable based on information currently available to us, but actual outcomes could differ materially due to a number of factors, including those described in our accompanying first quarter earnings release and presentation, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our other SEC filings. We assume no duty to update any forward-looking statement. Further, none of our statements constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of any fund or other investment vehicles. Our presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures referred to as adjusted financial measures that we believe are meaningful in evaluating our performance. These non-GAAP financial measures should be read in conjunction with our GAAP results. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures is included in the earnings release and presentation to the extent reasonably available. The earnings release and presentation as well as links to our SEC filings are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.cohenandsteers.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. My remarks today will focus on our as-adjusted results. A reconciliation of GAAP to as adjusted results can be found in the earnings release and presentation. Yesterday, we reported earnings of $0.79 per share as compared to $0.81 sequentially. Revenue for Q1 increased from the prior quarter by 0.3% to $144.3 million. The change in revenue from the prior quarter was driven by higher average AUM, partially offset by 2 less days in the quarter. In addition, and as we noted in last quarter's earnings call, there were $1.7 million of performance fees recognized in Q4 related to certain institutional accounts. We typically don't recognize such fees early in the year and we have few performance fee accounts. Our effective tax rate during the quarter was 58.2 basis points. Excluding nonrecurring items, our fee rate was 58.4 basis points which is slightly lower than the prior quarter. Operating income was $50.7 million during the quarter compared to $52.4 million sequentially. The and our operating margin was 35.1% compared to 36.4% in the prior quarter. Ending AUM in Q1 was $93.1 billion, which was up from $90.5 billion at the end of Q4. This end of period change in AUM was driven by positive net inflows during Q1, primarily related to open-end funds. In addition, end-of-period AUM was positively impacted by market appreciation of $2.7 billion during the quarter. As a result, average AUM increased during Q1 to $94.4 billion as compared to $90.8 billion in the prior quarter. Joe Harvey will provide additional insights regarding our flows and pipeline shortly. Total expenses were higher compared to the prior quarter primarily due to increased comp and benefits and distribution and service fees expense. Compensation and benefits was higher compared to prior quarter as a result of the year-to-date compensation accrual true-up to actual that reduced compensation expense in Q4. The compensation ratio for the quarter was 40%, which was in line with the guidance we provided. Distribution and service fee expense was up due to the increase in average AUM, and G&A expense remained consistent with the prior quarter. Regarding taxes, our effective rate was 25.5% for the quarter on an as adjusted basis. Our earnings material presents liquidity at the end of Q1 and prior quarters. Our liquidity totaled $343 million at quarter end, which represents a decrease of $60 million versus the prior period. This quarterly change in liquidity is in line with prior years and driven by the annual incentive compensation cycle for the firm, which occurs in Q1. Let me now touch on a few items regarding guidance for the remainder of 2026. With respect to compensation and benefits, we would expect our compensation ratio to remain at 40% as we experienced in Q1. We expect G&A to increase in the mid-single digits for the year as compared to the prior year. Lastly, regarding 2026 guidance, we expect our effective tax rate to remain consistent at 25.5% on an as-adjusted basis. I will now turn it over to Jon Cheigh, who will lead the discussion of our business performance.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning. Today, I'd like to cover three topics: our performance scorecard, our 2026 outlook given the recent geopolitical events, and last, our long-term structural view of the economy, the market regime and some asset allocation implications for investors. Beginning with our performance scorecard. We continue to build on our record of consistent, long-term outperformance. On a 1-year basis, 86% of our AUM has outperformed its benchmark, while our 3- and 5-year outperformance rates are both above 97%. 95% of our open-end fund AUM is rated 4- or 5-star by Morningstar, which is up from 90% last quarter. In short, we continue to meet our primary objective of providing outstanding long-term performance for our investors. Turning to the investment environment. Coming into 2026, we expected both an acceleration and a rebalancing of global growth with a corresponding broadening of market leadership. While that outlook was spot on early in the year, the current Middle East conflict may have brought that market leadership shift into question. U.S. and global REITs were both up about 10% through February, well ahead of flattish equity markets. As we saw market rotation into the relative laggards of the last several years. While events in March raised some of those gains, REIT still posted positive absolute performance for the quarter with U.S. and global REITs up about 4% and 1%, respectively. Listed infrastructure performance was resilient, up 8% for the quarter. Businesses such as utilities and midstream energy continue to demonstrate their criticality in the world of short-term energy scarcity and the continued power buildout, needed to serve increasing industrialization and AI-related demand. Diversified Real assets rose 12% for the quarter, with strong gains in commodities and natural resource equities. As we saw in 2022, real assets have been a clear winner and diversifier for a 60-40 stock bond portfolio. The asset allocation case for real assets continues to be made. Preferred securities and fixed income classes broadly declined slightly in the quarter as renewed inflation concerns indicate that monetary policy could be tighter for longer. So as we update our economic and market outlook for the rest of 2026, our expectation is that the Middle East military deescalation that began several weeks ago, and will continue, including just this morning over the coming -- over the course of the coming weeks and months. We know it will have its starts and stops. But as long-term investors, our focus is on the trajectory of where we are headed. As a result, our initial 2026 view of broadening economic growth and financial markets remains intact. Now thinking beyond 2026, we believe investors must see recent developments, not as a one-off or a surprise. But instead, as another chapter in a book, which will continue to shape markets for the next 10 years or more. For some time, we have stated that the global economy is undergoing a structural transition one that looks meaningfully different than the prior 30 years. And there are four major themes that we expect will serve as important drivers of asset allocation shifts. First, deglobalization or what we would call geopolitical fracturing. For 20 years, the global economy enjoyed friendly trading relationships and uninhibited delivery of just-in-time resources. In the 2000s, this drove a buildup of global supply chains, primarily in Asia, but a [ deindustrialization ] for much of the developed world. For nearly 10 years now, we've seen repeated reminders that this system, while leading to lower consumer goods prices and higher profit margins was fragile and exposed the global economy to tail risks. In the last 6 years, we've seen four consecutive supply shocks, the pandemic, followed by the War in Ukraine, then tariffs and now the conflict in the Middle East. These are not one-off events. But again, an outcome of shifts in global power dynamics and alliances. This geopolitical fracturing will drive significant fixed asset investment boom greater than what the 2,000 saw from China, driven by reindustrialization and remilitarization. The second major theme is AI and technological disruption. Artificial intelligence is a transformational force on its own. But importantly, it is not a software but rather a hardware story. AI leadership will ultimately be about compute capacity and the marginal cost will likely be about the cost and availability of power. The third theme is inflation uncertainty. In the last decade, inflation consistently undershot expectations. In contrast, inflation in recent years has consistently surprised to the upside, confounding forecasts that expected a quick return to the old normal of low and stable prices. Even as headline inflation has moderated from recent peaks, underlying pressures remain. As you all read in our forthcoming capital markets assumptions, Cohen & Steers forecast consumer inflation to average 3% annually in the U.S. over the next 10 years. Below recent peaks, but well above the 1.6% experienced in the last cycle and significantly higher than the Federal Reserve's long-term 2% target. While AI may produce a productivity boom, which could prove highly deflationary, the investment needed to produce that deflationary boom is highly inflationary. The job of any central banker over the next 10 years will be challenging. Our conclusion is that while inflation is likely to be higher than markets expect. The precise path and pace of inflation represents a major market uncertainty and risk factor. The final important trend is the end of low interest rates. Some of this is about inflation and some is about persistent fiscal deficits. Importantly, we also believe that the market continues to underestimate that we will live in a more capital-intensive world, we took interest rates and credit spreads wider. Hyperscalers shifting from being highly cash flow positive -- [ CASM ] of this shift. Given these four major themes in the next phase, some of last cycle's winners may remain winner, but areas of structural change tend to disrupt market leadership new faces emerge, incumbents decline and entirely different parts of the economy of these shifts are natural resources and the picks and shovels of the global economy. Notably energy, infrastructure and the plumbing that supports construction, transportation and power delivery. This represents a tremendous investment opportunity but also one that comes with challenges of higher and more volatile inflation, as I mentioned earlier. So for our clients, our advice is simple. First, diversification not just in terms of asset classes or listed versus private but instead diversification of investment exposure to different economic drivers, inflation regimes and factors. Second, hard assets, including real assets must be a meaningful allocation sourced from equity and fixed income as a diversifier and as a total return opportunity. Third, investors should use a broader toolkit with some private exposure when it provides unique exposure or an illiquidity premium. But in a highly uncertain world, where the old models may not work, the cost of illiquidity is very high and should be used thoughtfully rather than just for quarterly statement diversification. We believe the first quarter is the continuation of the market's recognition of this major turn in leadership, which will unfold with the remaining chapters of this book. And with that, let me turn it over to Joe.

Thanks, Jon. You may be able to hear a fire arm in the background, everything is okay, we're going to proceed. Today, I will review our key business trends in the first quarter and provide an update on our growth initiatives. While we started the year with accelerating fundamentals on February 28, the world changed with U.S. military operations and Iran. As is typical in these situations, business activity slowed for a period as investors attempted to calibrate how long the conflict will last and what the short- and long-term ramifications could be for economies, geopolitics and asset allocation. If the U.S. economy Pre-Iran was reflationary with an upward bias in growth, consensus post war is for stagflation with the key unknowables being how much and for how long. Not to be forgotten, prewar investors were very focused on the existential risk of AI on certain industry groups in addition to credit and liquidity risk and private credit. We believe our liquid real asset strategies fit the so-called halo trade very well, that is heavy or hard assets, low obsolescence with liquidity becoming a more valued investment characteristic. The first quarter's fundamental highlights include net inflows of $497 million a strong one unfunded pipeline of $1.7 billion, characterized by good velocity with continued fundings and new mandates, stable fee rates strong absolute performance and neutral relative performance, while 1-, 3- and 5-year relative performance continues to be excellent. We made good progress with our growth initiatives, including active ETFs, offshore SICAV open-end funds, our non-traded REIT and our recently launched listed private real estate for institutions. Flow highlights by investment strategy include: multi-strategy real asset inflows totaled $142 million, the best quarter since third quarter of 2022. Preferred Securities generated $133 million of net outflows for its strongest quarter since the fourth quarter of '21. And global listed infrastructure recorded its fifth straight quarter of net inflows totaling $96 million after a record year in 2025. The firm-wide net inflows of $497 million represent positive organic growth for 6 out of the past 7 quarters. We recorded our seventh straight quarter of net inflows into open-end funds, with U.S. open-end fund inflows of over $300 million and broad-based contributions of over $100 million into each of our U.S. real estate, preferred securities and our multi-strategy real asset strategies. Our active ETFs continued their momentum with $224 million of third-party net flows in the quarter. Our international SICAV continued their streak of net inflows in 25 of the past 27 quarters. The SICAV recorded $62 million this quarter across a range of countries most notably in the U.K. and South Africa. The most popular SICAV allocations were to our multi-strategy real assets and global listed infrastructure strategies. Looking at institutional trends, our advisory channel had its second consecutive quarter of net inflows with $210 million in the quarter, comprised of five new mandates totaling $287 million partially offset by $76 million termination. Sub-advisory experienced $269 million of net outflows in the quarter with $164 million in outflows from Japan. While we experienced net outflows in Japan sub-advisory for the past 2 quarters, as real estate flows have been challenged industry-wide amidst flows into local bond funds and equity funds, we have slightly improved our industry-leading market share in Japan. The other sub-advisory outflows were due to normal rebalancing by existing clients, partially offset by two new mandates funding $83 million. Looking through the Iran conflict, I like our core strategies as it relates to inflation, deglobalization, AI, rotation to heart assets, among other trends. As we continue to experience inflation, we believe our multi-strategy real assets portfolio is a great solution, which investors are increasingly recognizing. With the long-term criticality of energy back and focus our future of energy strategy, which invests in both conventional and renewable energy could be upgraded to more than just a tactical allocation. Resource equities probably have the best supply-demand future of any strategy I can think of. And the Iran conflict has clearly demonstrated the strategic importance of these businesses due to the profound impact that resource scarcity can have on resource pricing and markets. Real estate returns could be tempered by stagflation, but remember, valuations have reset versus normalized interest rates. The fundamental cycle has turned positive and investors are rotating into tangible assets. Our global listed infrastructure strategy has shown both strong absolute and relative performance and is a beneficiary of the capital investment cycle underway. In addition, we have all been watching the growing concerns in the private wealth channel about liquidity strengths in private vehicles and private infrastructure is probably the most illiquid private strategy being brought to wealth. We, therefore, see global listed infrastructure as a winner and wealth, either as a stand-alone allocation or as a complement to private with proper liquidity protection. Our corporate strategy for active ETFs is going very well. Total AUM for our first five ETFs is currently $675 million. Flows are strong, investment performance is good, and we are gaining traction and scale. Our platforming efforts for ETFs are accelerating. And in the first quarter, we received our first placement on a major broker-dealer platform. We announced the conversion of our future of Energy open-end fund to an ETF which should occur sometime midyear. We intend to launch a version of our multi-strategy real assets portfolio later this year, and we filed for ETF as a share class as many other managers have done. We want full optionality to deliver all of our core strategies in the ETF structure. Our nontraded REIT Coasters income opportunities REIT has established a portfolio of 11 properties owned or under contract totaling $650 million in assets and continues to provide investment performance at the top of the real estate peer group with 10.6% annualized returns since inception against a 4.3% peer average. Our focus on open-air shopping centers has helped drive performance as occupancies of 97% on average translate into very strong pricing power for landlords. A key question for CNS REIT short term is how redemption constraints in private wealth vehicles will affect investor appetite for evergreen vehicles generally. As an industry, we must position these allocations as private strategies with liquidity provisioning as available. And emphasize the importance of liquidity frameworks to protect investors and effectively deploy a long-term investment strategy. In the case of real estate, it is possible that since the return cycle has returned positive -- has turned positive, the category to garner allocations that previously were taken by private credit. The early data in March show increased redemption activity in private credit and an uptick in sales in real estate and infrastructure. Time will tell. We remain constructive on the long-term benefits of blending listed and private real estate and wealth portfolios. And believe we offer compelling solutions across the liquidity spectrum for investors. We've previously discussed the launch late last year of an LP vehicle that invests in core private property funds and listed REITs together. The goal is to deliver a better core allocation to institutional investors using an indexed approach to core funds, combined with listed reach to enhance returns without adding too much volatility and implying an asset allocation overlay. We now have $250 million of fundings or commitments and the strategy is earning the support of a growing list of asset consultants. I wanted to also comment on our short duration preferred strategy. We now have three open-end vehicles with the launch of a SICAV and an active ETF over the past year to complement our $1.9 billion open-end mutual fund and our $1 billion closed-end fund. Our open-end vehicles have yields just shy of 6%, durations of 2.5 years and investment-grade credit profiles of BBB-. Taxable investors in the U.S. realized an additional 100 basis points of tax equivalent yield. Relative to corporate bonds of similar duration, short duration preferreds provide nearly 300 basis points of additional tax equivalent yield to compensate for just three notches of credit quality moving from A- to BBB. As yields on cash and other fixed income allocations have declined, these strategies are starting to see more investor interest. Related in our core preferred strategies, we saw a return to positive flows in the quarter, perhaps as a substitute for private credit. I wouldn't be surprised to see investors accept a lower headline yield with tax benefits for a portfolio of strong, transparent credits dominated by banks, insurance companies and utilities, in the midst of greater uncertainty and less transparency around credit quality within private credit. I'll close with a brief update on distribution, which we've highlighted as a priority for 2026 and 2027. We've made great strides on our plan to invest in distribution, including increased coverage of RIAs and expanded international coverage. All key hires have been made, including a new Head of Japan, a newly created Chief Operating Officer for distribution and additional RIA sales roles. We also promoted [ Brad ] is path to lead wealth and brought in a wealth sales leader on [ Brad's ] team. Our approach to expanding the sales team from here will be success-based, meaning additions will be tied to organic growth. That concludes our prepared remarks. Julianne, please open the lines for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from John Dunn from Evercore ISI.

First on the advisory channel. You mentioned it's been 2 straight inflow quarters. Do you think you've moved to kind of a more sustainable place? And is it coming from more existing clients or new ones? And are you seeing potential for clients looking at multiple strategies?

Thanks, John. As we've been talking about for the past 3 or 4 quarters, we've seen an improvement in our institutional advisory business as broad conditions have become more favorable, more flexible in investor portfolios. An end toward upping allocations to fixed income and clients continuing to deal with liquidity in their private parts of their portfolio. But we now have a very strong pipeline, I think, for the third straight quarter at $1.7 billion. I talk about the velocity, meaning in the quarter, we were awarded $74 million of new mandates. There was another $45 million that was won and funded in the quarter. And then we also had another $490 million fund in the quarter. So that's good velocity and demonstrates that things have been loosening up in the institutional channel. We also just see more from an intangible perspective, increased activity by clients. It's not RFP business anymore, but we've seen a couple of large RFPs recently. So combined with the outlook that John laid out for our investment strategies, we're optimistic that the institutional advisory channel will continue to perform better and better.

Got it. Maybe a little more on ETFs. I mean just -- could you give a flavor of how you're finding clients' acceptance of the vehicle? And are you seeing any cannibalization? And then maybe just could you describe kind of the demand of the different buckets in wealth management? And any potential for any activity for institutional down the road?

The tone in active ETFs is very good. You can see that as our flows ramp. And most importantly, it starts with delivering strong performance, which we have done. And the design of these ETFs are to present our core strategies. For distribution considerations, some of them have some slight differences versus our core strategies, but our performance has been very good. The so-called use cases make us very bullish on these vehicles. It starts with the RIAs, many of whom are converting their businesses to use exclusively ETFs compared with open-end funds. We're gaining scale, so that allows us to be placed into models. And as I mentioned in my remarks, with our real estate vehicle, which is now the largest and is what we're best known for, we've achieved platform placement on a major broker-dealer providers. So I would say I'm very bullish on this vehicle. Everything that we're seeing validates the decision to invest in this. And as I said, we're going to continue to get all of our core strategies in these vehicles. As it relates to institutional interest, they're going to need to scale up. We can see -- we've had discussions with different asset consultants about using the vehicles. So I think there are some use cases, but large institutions generally want to have a separate account.

Right. Okay. And then you went through the component pieces of the private real estate effort. Are you seeing rising demand? And since you don't have a lot of legacy assets and you're entering or ramping up in a good part of the cycle. Is that a big part of the pitch? And maybe where do you expect demand to come from?

I'm not sure I understand the question, John. But as it relates to the private real estate business, when you look at private allocations in wealth, real estate has been the laggard. Private credit has been the leader, as I mentioned, that inflected in March, we'll see if that continues to play out. Infrastructure continues to have good growth. But we believe that based on our views and other views on the real estate cycle that you can see a rotation into the real estate strategies. We're seeing a little bit of that, but it's still early. Our approach to the wealth channel is that we believe that investors should have an allocation to both listed and private, and we're trying to coach our clients on how to do that and how to optimize those portfolios. With our nontraded REIT, as I mentioned, we have -- we're at the top of the leaderboard in terms of performance. And as we gain scale, we believe we'll have the ability to get platformed on more RIA as well as [ wirehouse ] platforms in the future.

Yes. Yes, that's what I was driving that. And then maybe just one more, thinking about the theme of rotation of some money moving to non-U.S. strategies. Global real estate was positive this quarter. Are you seeing any like interest in diversifying? And is that -- could that drive positive flows for global real estate in this year and next?

We have been seeing more of that. Go back 1 year, 1.5 years, there weren't a lot of flows into global strategies except for global infrastructure. So I'm talking primarily about global real estate. That was primarily related to U.S. exceptionalism and related stock market performance. But as the world has turned geopolitics have turned, and we've started to see better performance in international markets broadly. We've seen more interest and flows into our global real estate strategy. So I would expect that to continue. It's magnitude. I can't say, but I definitely would expect to see our global portfolios have more interest.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Mac Sykes from Gabelli Funds.

Joe, I wish -- I wanted to ask a question about sort of historical context of shifts to real estate strategies. And I guess, as we think about some of the items you've mentioned this morning. When you're looking at educating capital allocators at some of these bigger platforms that do shifts in these models, what are some of the catalysts for that? Is it sort of adviser interest, is it returns that have just happened, so outperformance of the asset class interest rate. I guess, if you could just dig into some of the things we can watch for in anticipation of more sizable allocations to real estate.

Mac, this is Jon Cheigh. Well, first of all, of course, we're talking with all of the intermediaries about real estate. But of course, all of our asset classes, including infrastructure, preferreds and natural resources. But specifically to real estate, look, it's a combination of investors thinking about the interest rate cycle as well as the fundamental or supply and demand cycle. And so I've said a few times that when you look over the last 3 or 4 years, sometimes people would say, "Oh, well, real estate is done poorly because interest rates are higher." And that's really only half the story. The other reality is that we had too much new supply that got built. So fundamentals weakened. So over the last several years, REIT earnings have probably grown 2%, 3%, 4%, while the S&P was growing 10%, 11%, 12%. So yes, it's an interest rate story, but it's also a fundamental story. So when they revisit the story today, what they're looking at is the S&P is a lot more expensive from a valuation standpoint than it was 3, 4 years ago. It seems like the earnings growth is beginning to decelerate and we all know about the market concentration within the S&P and in some cases, concerns about the significant amount of CapEx that's occurring. So there's -- how is the S&P looking on a price-to-earnings basis versus on a free cash flow basis because you know just as well how capital-intensive the S&P 500 is becoming at the top end. So some of it is as far as real estate versus broader equities is valuations look better. The interest rate adjustment has happened. So being in this 4% to 5% -- 4% to 4.5% range is the new normal, as I talked about. But what we're also talking to them about is the reacceleration of earnings or fundamentals. So that 2% to 3% growth of REITs will probably be more like 5% or 6% this year, 7% or 8% next year. So I'd say that's I'd say the fundamental inflection is probably the bigger thing that our investors are focused on. And this kind of goes back to one of the earlier questions on shifts we're seeing on the advisory channel. We've had a lot of conversations with investors for the last few years. And I think they understood the valuation story, but they were focused on is today the right day? Why 2024, why 2025, why 2026? And real estate fundamentals are slow moving. They're not going to go from being below average to above average in 1 quarter. And so it's taken a couple of years. We've digested some of that excess supply. And that's why I think the story for 2026 to 2027 is about improving fundamentals and stable interest rates and attractive valuations. And that's why we're seeing some of those shifts, whether it's in the public markets but also within the nontraded REIT side, again, a lot of money went into private credit. But as Joe talked about, as that money is looking for the next opportunity you're beginning to see it in the flow data, but we're certainly starting to hear it of -- well, real estate lag, other things have gone up. It seems like a place to pivot back to. So I think we're early in that pivoting process.

Just one other question on the private credit side, as you compete, I think a lot of the sales channel adviser-driven component has been some of the fee structures with some of these products. coming with pretty large fee structures and incentives to the adviser. And with your products, actually much more rationally priced and compelling, I believe. But how do you sort of compete with that where the adviser centers? Maybe a more compelling yield perspective from you and liquidity and all that stuff, but yet they come with lower adviser incentives in terms of the sales component.

Well, I'm not too familiar with the adviser incentives that you're talking about. But what we think about every morning we would get up is delivering investment performance and managing risk. So we -- as it relates to the private real estate strategy need to deliver a good total return with a balance between current income and capital appreciation and not take undue risk.

So as it relates to the fee structure for that vehicle, we've made it very investor-friendly compared with the peer group.

[Operator Instructions] we have no more question [Audio Gap].

Thank you, Julianne. We look forward to reporting our second quarter results in July. Meantime, if you have any questions, please reach out to [ Brian Meta ], and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.