Federated Hermes, Inc. (FHI) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings. Welcome to the Federated Hermes Q1 Analyst Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Ray Hanley, President of Federated Investors Management Company. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to all. Thank you for joining us. Leading today's call will be Chris Donahue, CEO and President of Federated Hermes; and Tom Donahue, Chief Financial Officer. Joining us for the Q&A are Saker Nusseibeh, CEO of Federated Hermes Limited; and Debbie Cunningham, our Chief Investment Officer for Money Markets. During today's call, we may make forward-looking statements, and we want to note that Federated Hermes' actual results may be materially different than the results implied by such statements. Please review the risk disclosures in our SEC filings. No assurance can be given as to future results, and Federated Hermes assumes no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements. Chris?

Thank you, and good morning. I will review Federated Hermes business performance, Tom will comment on the financial results. We ended Q1 with record assets under management of $907 billion led by gains in equity and money market strategies. Equity assets closed Q1 at a record high of $101 billion. During Q1, equity assets increased by $2.9 billion or 3% from year-end driven by $2.2 billion in net sales. Gross equity sales reached a record high of $9.1 billion in Q1. Equity sales results continue to be led by our MDT fundamental quant strategies, MDT equity and market-neutral strategies together had a record $5.8 billion of gross sales and over $3.5 billion in net sales in Q1. For the second quarter through April 24, these MDT strategies had net sales in combined funds and SMAs of $687 million. Now looking at Fund performance rankings as of March 31, 7 of 9 MDT fund strategies are in the performance quartile of their Morningstar categories for trailing 3 years. We also had net sales in 32 equity fund and SMA strategies during first quarter, including, of course, a variety of MDT offerings and the ASX Japan Fund and the strategic value SMA. MDT's offerings were mid-cap growth and large cap growth plus 5 others. Importantly, for our global efforts, the MDT U.S. Equity UCITS fund launched in June of '25 has seen strong demand from clients outside of the U.S. Net sales in this strategy were $177 million in the first quarter, and the fund has grown to about $800 million in assets. Looking at overall equity fund performance at the end of the first quarter and again using Morningstar data for trailing 3 years, 51% of our equity funds were beating peers and 30% we're in the top quartile of their category. For Q2 through April 24, combined equity funds and SMAs had net sales of $606 million. Now turning to fixed income. Assets ended Q1 at just under $100 billion, down $329 million from year-end. Fixed income had Q1 net redemptions of $422 million. However, we had $25 million fixed income funds and SMAs with net sales in the first quarter, led by 3 Ultrashort Funds, Total Return Bond Fund, the collective and the fund combined short-term income and our core ag and core+ SMAs. Regarding performance at the end of the first quarter and using Morningstar data for trailing 3 years, 41% of our fixed income funds were beating peers, 21% were in the top quartile of their category for Q2 through April 24, combined fixed income funds and SMAs had net redemptions of $214 million. In the alternative private markets category, assets decreased slightly in Q1 compared to year-end as the impact of FX rates offset net sales of $82 million. The M2 MDT Market Neutral Fund and recently launched ETF combined for $341 million in net sales. Positive net sales were also achieved in trade finance strategies. We held the final close of our European Direct Lending 3, the third vintage of our European direct lending fund in the first quarter. The fund raised $780 million. For reference, EDL 1 raised $330 million, EDL 2 raised $700 million. We are now in the market with global private equity co-invest fund, the sixth vintage of the PEC series. To date, we've closed on about $300 million. PC 1 to 5 raised approximately 400 to 600 each and PCV raised about $500 million. We are also in the market with the European real estate debt fund a new pooled European debt fund. As previously announced, on April 9, we completed our acquisition of an 80% interest in FCP Fund Manager LP, a privately held U.S. real estate manager. The acquisition added $3.2 billion of managed assets at closing in April. SCP brings U.S. multifamily housing expertise complementing our long-standing U.K.-based real estate capabilities. Across our long-term platform, we began the second quarter with about $1.1 billion in net institutional mandates yet to fund into both funds and separate occurrence. Approximately $1.4 billion on a net basis is expected to come into private market strategies, including direct lending, private equity and trade finance. Fixed income is expected to have net sales of about $1.1 billion with a core plus win of about $1.8 billion partially offset by about $800 million redeeming from a government bond strategy. Equity strategies are expected to have net redemptions of about $1.4 billion with net global equity expected redemptions of $3 billion, which offsets MDT's additions of $1.7 billion. The global equity redemptions are mainly sub-advised assets from an institutional client who notified us of their intention to internalize the management of these assets. We continue to have a strong relationship with this client in the EOS part of our business. The client has made a strategic decision to internalize, not driven by performance, which has generally been ahead of benchmark. Moving on to money markets. We reached another record high at the end of Q1 for total money market assets, which increased by $2 billion to reach $685 billion, reflecting seasonal patterns, money market separate accounts increased by $8 billion. Money market fund assets decreased by $6 billion in Q1 compared to the year-end total. Market conditions remain favorable for cash as an asset class. In addition to the appeal of relative safety and periods of volatility, money market strategies present opportunities to earn attractive yields compared to alternatives like bank deposits and direct investments in T-bills and commercial paper. Our estimate of money market mutual fund market share, including sub-advised funds was about 6.9% at the end of Q1, down from 7.0% at the end of 2025. Now let's have a little discussion on digital assets and what we're doing there. We are focused on this area as an infrastructure evolution, not a speculative asset class. We are working on digital initiatives designed to enhance distribution efficiency settlement speed, transparency, operational automation and global reach while maintaining regulatory fiduciary and governance standards. Importantly, digital structures must enhance access, efficiency and integration into modern treasury portfolio and collateral workflows. They must operate within regulatory frameworks preserve investor protections and provide valuation integrity. Through deep engagement with our operational partners, we are well positioned to properly evaluate governance, ownership representation transfer restrictions and risk management implications of tokenized funds as we build out our digital capabilities. While we are initially prioritizing products aligned with our core strength in liquidity management, we, of course, expect over time to see digital products develop for ETFs or other mutual funds, private market vehicles across many or all market classes. The firm's digital initiatives include the upcoming launch of our money market management digital treasury fund which is expected to support both traditional and on chain distribution. The initial reserve shares class will provide a nontokenized genius compliant structure geared to institutional investors and stablecoin issuers seeking high-quality reserve assets. We are also developing an on chain share class intended to place official books and records on the blockchain infrastructure once a fully digital transfer agency model is available. This dual-track approach offers flexibility between traditional custody and fully on chain models. So we have selectively engaged with regulated digital asset intermediaries focusing on tokenized funds as regulated financial instruments. Initial use cases emphasize cash on chain liquidity solutions with a longer-term view towards supporting additional asset classes as market structures evolve. As we have previously mentioned, we are participating in the launch of a collaborative initiative between BNY and Goldman Sachs that will involve mirror tokenization of money market fund shares to improve transferability collateral utility and real-time ownership tracking of money market fund shares. We are also expanding digital engagement beyond U.S. money markets towards a global strategy. In the U.K. and Europe, we are exploring digital sterling liquidity products and assessing tokenization for broader regulated fund distribution. We are participating in tokenized offerings where Federated Hermes funds are used as the underlying assets rather than being directly tokenized. This includes our alliance with racks, the first FCA-regulated digital Securities Exchange to offer tokenized access to a UCITS money market fund. The platform enables professional investors to hold beneficial ownership tokens across multiple blockchains and excess money market liquidity directly on chain. We are exploring similar partnership opportunities. Finally, looking at recent asset totals as of a few days ago, managed assets were approximately $902 billion including $668 billion in money markets, $107 billion in equities, $101 billion in fixed income, $22 billion in alternatives, private markets and $3 billion in multi-asset. Money market mutual fund assets were $487 million. Tom?

Thanks, Chris. For Q1 compared to the prior quarter, total revenue decreased $3.9 million or 1%. Fewer days resulted in $10.5 million of lower revenue. Q4 revenue included $8.2 million of real estate development fees. Higher Q1 money market average assets provided $8.3 million of higher revenue, while higher equity average assets added $5.6 million. Total Q1 carried interest and performance fees were $388,000 compared to $1.6 million in the prior quarter, approximately $283,000 of the Q1 fees were offset by compensation expense. Q1 operating expenses increased by $5.4 million or 2% from the prior quarter, due mainly to seasonally higher compensation and related expenses of $8.5 million higher incentive comp expense of $3.5 million and higher distribution expense of $3.4 million from higher average fund assets. Transaction costs from the FCP acquisition were about $1.5 million in Q1 compared to $1.3 million in Q4, nearly all in the professional service fees category. Now looking ahead to Q2. Additional FCP transaction and related costs incurred in Q2 already include $4.2 million in purchase price treated as compensation and related expense and $4.6 million of primarily FCP lender consent fees recorded in professional service fees. For a total estimated transaction-related EPS impact of $0.11 for Q2. Also for Q2, we expect that FCP will add approximately $12 million in revenue and $11 million in operating expenses including a preliminary estimate of $3.8 million of intangible asset related expense for Q2. Now back to Q1. In the other expense line item, the Q1 decrease was mainly due to [indiscernible] in Q1 compared to Q4. The effective tax rate was 26.1%. We estimate the tax rate to be in the 25% to 28% range for 2026. At the end of Q1, cash and investments were $645 million. Cash and investments, excluding the portion attributable to noncontrolling interest were $607 million. We often talk about our desire to use free cash flow of the business to drive value over time for our shareholders in 3 primary ways: acquisitions, share repurchases and dividends. All 3 of these methods have been utilized in a meaningful way so far in 2026. During Q1, we purchased 1.2 million shares of FHI stock for $66 million. In April, we used $216 million in cash and $23.1 million in FHI Class B stock for the initial purchase price of the SCP controlling interest acquisition. For payment in May, the FDI Board of Directors declared a dividend of $0.38. The quarterly dividend increased $0.04 up nearly 12% from the previous call [indiscernible] our 113th consecutive quarterly dividend. [indiscernible], we would now like to open the call up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question for today is from Ken Worthington with JPMorgan.

Chris, you spent a lot of time thinking about digital cash. A couple of questions on this. What portion of your existing clients today do you think care about and will utilize digital money market funds versus traditional cash product structures over time. And if you think out about -- think out about a decade what portion of the entire cash market do you think cares about tokenized money market funds versus other forms of tokenized cash?

Out 10 years is pretty tough to see. Right now, it's a very low percentage of the clients that are asking for demanding or wanting these tokenized products. And so what you see with us and with others is a grand effort to get ready for tomorrow. If you want to say you're feeling us protecting our franchise, you're right. If you want to say you're feeling us with a little fomo in it, you're right. This is not the usual customer demand. We got to have a type deal. But over time, as you see the digitization of things catching on, we are going to be there. So over 10 years, I think it would be a routine deal but it's really hard for me to say how much it would be. And I would let Debbie offer her get as to 10 years.

Wow, for 10 years, that's a long time. That's visionary, which I'm generally not. And to add to what Chris was saying, I mean, if you build it, they will come, that's sort of the attitude now with that historically as sort of a premise success has followed. So I don't know, maybe probably less than 25% of retail customers. But I think from an institutional customer standpoint, you're looking at something that maybe is in the 25% to 50% utilization. Once all the comfortability is there with the fiduciary aspects of it that Chris was mentioning at the beginning.

And I suppose this one more, Ken. And that is that, remember, the basic product is nearly liquidity of [indiscernible] However, all the fancy stuff works. That's [indiscernible]. And the next thing is if they don't have fundamental trust in the whole thing, then it doesn't work. So you got to work on those 2 things. in addition to all of the toys that are being created.

Great. I think what you're doing is great, just whatever my 2 cents. On the $3 billion, Chris, you mentioned on the global equity withdrawal, I don't think you mentioned timing. This is the timing of that? And how do the fees on that mandate compared to, say, like the new MDT audit wins?

Okay. That's probably a Q2 departure and the fees on that were lower than the average bear. Is that what you're asking?

Yes. Perfect.

Your next question is from Bill Katz with TD Cowen.

This is Robin Holby on for Bill Katz. Could you remind us of the time line on SCP's next fund launch and the demand for real assets that you're currently seeing from LPs?

Yes. Robin, this is Tom. The fund launch, so they're investing in Fund V right now, and I think they're at about 30% invested. So they've got a figure out what's the right timing, what's the best timing in order to continue to invest that and they won't start Fund VII until they're well down the path to finishing Fund VI. So that will be maybe midyear in 2027. And on the STP transaction, I just wanted to correct the number. I said on the purchase price that was treated as compensation, I think I said $4.2 million, it's $6.2 million. That will come in the second quarter. So also on since we closed, we had [indiscernible] here and our team of product marketing and a bunch of other people getting geared up and studying and preparing for the launch of Fund VI and we're pretty excited about it, even though it's some time down in the future.

Great. And then as a follow-up, could you speak to the demand for MT's ETF suite? Are the ETFs attracting a new customer? Or is it much of -- or is month of the demand coming from existing customers that like the ETF wrapper?

Well, since we go through intermediaries, we're using a lot of the same intermediaries, but we're expanding that footprint through more RIAs, which are very attentive to the ETF. So it is a combination of old intermediaries, new intermediaries, the underlying clients who are actually the owners, we don't see that much. But what we are seeing is a bigger push for what we call portfolio construction or PCS, where you're seeing our intermediary clients wanting to see how these things fit, how they work and how they make solutions. And so that's another overlay in a more general answer to your question.

Your next question for today is from Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research.

Debbie, last quarter, you suggested that money fund organic growth could be a bit lower this year. It's tough to tell what's going on in money funds the last couple of months, obviously, given the tax loss. So with more signs the Fed could be unfold all year, I'd be curious to get your updated thoughts on the potential more rotation into the asset class from either retail or institutional or both, given that change in outlook?

Sure. Thank you. It hasn't changed much. I mean we've seen double-digit growth in the high teens and then in the lower teens in both 2024 and '25, '26 I, in my opinion, is going to be more in the single-digit growth area. But I do think it's something that a safe haven standpoint and from just a general utilization with yields in the 3 government yields, $3.72 to $3.75-ish area, prime yields, $3.86 to $3.90. With tax-free, taxable equivalent, you're still looking depending upon what -- whether it's state tax free or just federally tax-free, yields in the 4%, 5% and 6% from a taxable equivalent standpoint. So those are real long-term returns in a very, very large product. So I think the growth will continue. I think it probably -- we find new use cases as some of these digital product innovations are rolled out for the funds. And I think that the traditional as well as new clients into the asset class will grow just not as quick as it has in the '24 and '25 time frame. I mean at assets reaching -- it depends on who you're looking at, whether it's Crane, iMoney [indiscernible], but somewhere in the $7.5 to $8.2 trillion range as a peak. I think that continues to grow steadily over the $8 trillion range. But the larger it gets the more -- obviously, the percentage growth, even if it's the same dollar amount, starts to go down.

Okay. That's helpful. And then it looks like the money funds had a really strong day yesterday, the last day of the month. So curious if the AUM number you gave would include that or not?

No. The AUM number we gave would have been as of Wednesday, actually.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. And I will now turn the call over to Ray Hanley for closing remarks.

That concludes our call, and we thank you for joining us today.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.