BlackRock Adj. Profit Tops View, But Revenues Miss; Boosts Dividend 13%

(RTTNews) - Publicly owned investment manager BlackRock, Inc. (BLK) reported Thursday a profit for the fourth quarter that declined three percent from last year, despite revenues edging up, reflecting a decline in performance fees. Assets under management grew eight percent. Adjusted earnings per share topped analysts' expectations, while quarter revenues missed their estimates.

BlackRock also said its Board of Directors approved a 13 percent increase in quarterly dividend, and authorizes repurchase of an additional 6 million shares under existing share repurchase program.

The New York City-based company reported net income attributable to the company of $813 million or $4.77 per share for the fourth quarter, lower than $841 million or $4.86 per share in the prior-year quarter.

Excluding items, adjusted net income for the quarter was $821 million or $4.82 per share, compared to $851 million or $4.92 per share in the year-ago quarter.

On average, 19 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $4.70 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Total revenue for the quarter edged up to $2.784 billion from $2.778 billion in the same quarter last year, but missed eleven Wall Street analysts' consensus estimate of $2.89 billion.

Investment advisory, administration fees and securities lending revenue increased to $2.40 billion from $2.28 billion, while investment advisory performance fees declined to $144 million from $268 million last year.

At the end of the quarter, the company's assets under management or AUM stood at $4.65 trillion, up 8 percent from $4.32 trillion at the end of the prior-year quarter. AUM also grew 3 percent sequentially.

Long-term net inflows for the latest quarter was $87.82 billion. Long-term net inflows were positive across all regions, with net inflows of $61.7 billion, $14.8 billion and $11.3 billion from clients in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, respectively.

Cash management AUM increased 5 percent to $296.4 billion, while advisory AUM decreased 6 percent to $21.7 billion from last year.

Operating margin for the quarter improved 30 basis points to 41.1 percent from last year's 40.8 percent.

Further, the company said its Board of Directors approved a 13 percent increase in quarterly cash dividend to $2.18 per share of common stock, payable on March 24 to shareholders of record at the close of business on March 6, 2015.

The Board of Directors has also authorized the company to repurchase an additional 6.0 million shares under its existing share repurchase program for a total up to 9.4 million shares of BlackRock common stock.

BLK closed Wednesday's regular trading session at $345.75, up $0.17 on a volume of 0.72 million shares.