Franklin Resources, Inc. ($BEN)

Welcome to Franklin Resources Earnings Conference Call for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. Hello, my name is Nicole, and I will be your call operator today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Selene Oh, Head of Investor Relations for Franklin Resources. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our quarterly results. Statements made on this conference call regarding Franklin Resources, Inc., which are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These and other risks, uncertainties and other important factors are just described in more detail in Franklin's recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in the Risk Factors and the MD&A sections of Franklin's most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Jenny Johnson, our Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Selene. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to review Franklin Templeton's second fiscal quarter results. I'm joined by Matt Nicholls, Co-President and CFO; and Daniel Gamba, Co-President and Chief Commercial Officer. We'll take your questions shortly, but first, I'll highlight key results and themes shaping our business. This was an excellent quarter for Franklin Templeton, with $16.9 billion in long-term net inflows across public and private markets, reflecting the strength and breadth of our diversified global platform. We delivered record gross sales and generated positive long-term net flows in every region, reflecting sustained client demand and strong local engagement. Importantly, each of our key growth drivers, private markets, retail SMAs and Canvas is our customization platform. ETF and solutions contributed meaningfully to these results. This quarter is a clear example of the power of our multi-year strategy in action. We are ahead of our 5-year plan and remain focused on delivering strong investment outcomes, deepening client relationships and continuing to evolve our capabilities to drive sustainable, long-term growth for our clients and shareholders. In my travels meeting clients around the world, one message is consistent. Our clients look to Franklin Templeton as their trusted partner for what's ahead. One firm offering the reach and resilience of a global platform together with the distinct expertise of our investment groups. As client expectations continue to evolve, the more asset owners seek multifaceted partnerships with fewer firms that can deliver across asset classes, styles and regions. We believe our business is well suited to meet that demand. We are seeing a clear structural shift in how clients allocate capital and partners, including increased demand for vehicles such as active ETFs, customization and tax managed solutions. [indiscernible] prioritizing firms that can deliver across public and private markets, offer global consistency in how they invest and operate and bring together capabilities into comprehensive outcome-oriented solutions. This is not a short-term reaction to market conditions. It reflects a more fundamental change in expectations for scale, breadth of capabilities and the ability to deliver them in an integrated way are increasingly defining competitive advantage. Against this backdrop, we remain focused on executing as one Franklin Templeton. This means bringing together our strength as investment specialists, innovation drivers thought leaders and strategic partners seamlessly in every client interaction. To that end, we continue to simplify our go-to-market approach to better serve clients and capture opportunities across the business. Ultimately, our strategy center in helping clients to see better outcomes by staying focused on performance, solutions and partnerships. We are continuing to build a business that is more resilient, more relevant and positioned to deliver long-term value for our clients and shareholders. Now turning to our results. This quarter marks another step forward in the successful execution of our strategy and reflects the growth potential of our business. We delivered another consecutive quarter of positive long-term net flows of $16.9 billion, driven by multiple diversified investment groups with continued progress across our key areas of investment and growth. This momentum is reflected in long-term inflows of $118 billion, up 28% quarter-over-quarter and 38% over the prior year quarter, excluding reinvested distributions. Gross sales increased across all asset classes, highlighting the strength of our global distribution platform and the progress we are making across the business. Looking ahead, our institutional pipeline of won but unfunded mandates remained strong at $20.2 billion, consistent with the prior quarter, supported by steady funding rates and ongoing replenishment from new wins. Our assets under management of $1.68 trillion remains well diversified across asset classes, client segments, regions and investment groups. Public markets continue to be a core strength and an important driver of growth. Multi-asset AUM stands at $207 billion and generated $9.5 billion in positive net flows, marking our 19th consecutive quarter of positive flows in that asset class. These results reflect growing client demand for outcome-oriented comprehensive solutions that span public and private markets. Across equities, net outflows were $4.7 billion. Investor activity remained selective, and we saw positive net flows across large-cap value and core systematic and single-country ETFs infrastructure and sector strategies. In fixed income, net outflows were approximately $300 million during the quarter. However, excluding Western, fixed income flows were positive $3.6 billion, marking a ninth consecutive quarter of positive long-term net flows. Momentum continued in multi-sector, munis, stable value and global fixed income strategy. Turning to alternatives. Franklin Templeton is a leading manager of alternative assets with $283 billion in alternative AUM. Our breadth and scale continue to position us as a partner of choice for clients seeking differentiated sources of return and access to private markets. We fundraised $14.3 billion in alternatives this quarter, including $13.2 billion in private market assets, which was diversified across alternative credit, secondary private equity, real estate and venture funds. Fiscal year-to-date fundraising in private markets reached $22.7 billion, already in line with full year 2025 levels, positioning us to exceed our $25 billion to $30 billion annual fundraising target, which was already adjusted upward start of our fiscal year. Within alternatives, private credit continues to be an area of focus. While market attention has increased, the opportunity remains highly differentiated across strategies and risk profile. Our alternative credit capabilities in the U.S. and Europe are focused on the middle market with a disciplined approach to underwriting and credit selection and include diversified portfolios that have less than 10% exposure to software. Alternative credit represents $96 billion in AUM and was a significant contributor to fundraising this quarter. Looking across our broader alternatives platform, we continue to see strong momentum in secondary private equity, where investors are increasingly focused on liquidity solutions, portfolio rebalancing and access to high-quality assets at more attractive entry points. We are also seeing a pickup in demand for private real estate, including in the wealth channel as investors position opportunities emerging from the current market environment. Franklin Templeton's private markets $8 billion core evergreen products spanning secondary private equity, real estate equity and debt and private credit continue to gain traction. These products had positive net flows contributing approximately $1 billion to fund raising in aggregate in each of the last 2 quarters. Across the platform, clients are increasingly engaging with us for broad and differentiated investment vehicles, and we're seeing that demand translate into sustained diversified growth. ETF AUM reached a new high of $61.6 billion, a 67% increase from last year with $4.5 billion of net inflows, our 18th consecutive quarter of positive flows. Active ETFs now represent 45% of ETF AUM, further extending our active management strategies into new vehicles. This is evident in areas such as the conversion of 10 of our muni funds into ETFs in Q1, which generated over $600 million in positive net flows this quarter or the success of our Putnam focused large-cap value ETF, which is close to $10 billion in AUM. Delivery and personalization at scale continues to represent a compelling long-term opportunity. Advancements in technology are enabling us to extend capabilities traditionally associated with separately managed accounts more efficiently and consistently across a broader client base. A leader in retail SMAs, we managed $168.3 billion in AUM and generated $2.7 billion in net inflows during this quarter. With more than 40 years of experience we are well positioned to deliver at scale through our breadth of capabilities along with our custom indexing platform Canvas. Canvas continues to gain momentum and reached record AUM of $22.9 billion, a 27% increase from the prior quarter with positive net flows of $5.3 billion, reflecting strong client interest and personalization and tax efficiency. Since its acquisition in 2022, Canvas has been net flow positive in each quarter and continues to scale across all distribution channels, supported by our over 200 partners and expanding adoption across retail, our AA aggregators and traditional RIAs. This growth underscores a broader shift in the industry where tax efficiency is becoming increasingly central to portfolio construction and the adviser client relationship. Including Canvas, our tax managed products now represents $110 billion in AUM. As the industry evolves, we continue to invest in areas of long-term innovation and digital assets remain a key focus. Earlier this month, we announced plans to acquire 250 Digital, an active cryptocurrency investment management firm and to launch Franklin Crypto. Alongside Franklin Templeton digital assets, we are bringing together crypto-native expertise with Franklin Templeton's global distribution to target institutional growth. Franklin Crypto will expand Franklin Templeton's existing crypto and blockchain venture capital investment offerings and will broaden the firm's digital assets investment management platform. From a regional perspective, our growth remains globally diversified with positive net flows in all regions. Internationally, Franklin Templeton manages nearly $500 billion in assets with a positive long-term net flows of $5.5 billion in aggregate. Non-U.S. gross sales grew 29% quarter-over-quarter with particularly strong momentum in EMEA and APAC. As a leader in emerging markets, Franklin Templeton was appointed trustee and manager of the National Investment Fund of Uzbekistan in January 2025, supporting the country's privatization agenda and governance reforms across state-owned enterprises. In April, UMF confirmed plans to proceed with a dual listing on the London and Tashkent Stock exchanges marking an important step in advancing Uzbekistan's capital markets and broader privatization strategy. This engagement reflects our role as a trusted partner to official institutions and continues to drive deeper relationships with central banks, sovereign wealth funds and government-related entities. Now turning to investment performance. Investment performance remains competitive, supporting both client retention and organic growth. Over half of our mutual fund and ETF AUM is outperforming its peer medium over the 3- and 10-year periods and approximately 2/3 over the 1- and 5-year periods. This strength is further supported by our municipal strategies, where 95% of AUM is outperforming its peer group over a 3-year period. Similarly, over half of strategy composite AUM is outperforming -- over all time periods and 71% in the -- In fixed income, 83% and 82% of AUM is outperforming benchmark mark over the 1- and 5-year periods, respectively, reinforcing the depth and durability of our investment capabilities. Turning briefly to our financial results. Adjusted operating income was $475 million, increasing 8.5% quarter-over-quarter and 25.8% from the prior year quarter. These results reflect the continued execution of our strategy with disciplined expense management alongside targeted investments in areas of growth and innovation, positioning the firm for sustained long-term performance. Taken together, our performance this quarter underscores the strength of our platform and the progress we are making against our multiyear strategic priorities. We are building a more diversified, higher growth business with multiple drivers of organic growth, and we're seeing that momentum continue to build, positioning us to deliver long-term value for our clients, shareholders and employees. I want to thank our employees around the world for their continued dedication and focus on serving our clients. Their efforts are fundamental to the successful execution of our strategy and the progress we're delivering across the firm. With that, I will open the call up to your questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Alex Blostein from Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to start with a question around private markets growth. So obviously, good momentum in the quarter to $13 billion. I was hoping you could break that down by sort of key strategies as well as whether Lexington, their flagship fund contributed to that at all? And as you look out for the rest of the year, what are likely going to be some of the bigger drivers for the rest of 2026 in private markets fundraising?

Sure. Great. Thanks for the question, Alex. So as you recall, last year, we had set a target out of $13 billion to $20 billion in the Alt space arrays, and we ended up raising $22.9 billion, I think. And this year, we raised that to $25 billion to $30 billion just we would expect to actually be above the $30 billion. And when you look at this quarter, the -- and I can't give you any details on Lexington's flagship funds, but I'll give you some insights in it. Our largest contributor was actually our private credit managers, but Lexington was meaningful. Lexington is in the market with their flagship fund, and it is -- they're finding -- they're right on track there's demand for secondaries, but they're also in the market with other products they're co-investor middle market, which all contributed as well. There are no catch-up fees in this quarter. you'll get a specific update on Lexington's flagship fund when they do a filing probably towards the end of '26. All of our alternative managers contributed to this quarter's momentum. There are over 30 vehicles that contributed. So it's a very diverse, what we think is a strong quarter and we felt very good about the flows across the board.

Great. You saved me a follow-up on the catch-up fees there. I did want to ask about the comment you have in the release around just the dry powder. You gave us the total AUM [ $263 ] billion in private markets. Some of it is feepaying, some of it is not feepaying. So is it possible to break down like the non-feepaying piece and help us think through the timing of when that's going to come in into the fee rate run rate?

So -- it obviously varies with each manager. Alex, let us get back to you with kind of what we're willing to sort of say publicly on that. So we'll have give us a little bit here.

But Alex, fee earning AUM out of balance is about 90%, 89% approximately. Do you want to...

I think [Technical Difficulty]

Our next question comes from Glenn Schorr with Evercore.

So question maybe on Canvas and tax optimization strategy. Seeing a lot of growth you commented on yours. I'm just curious with -- there's a lot of competition, but there's also really low penetration. So I wonder if you could talk to about what you see for further growth in terms of penetrating the current base of clients, any capacity issues you might see? And then very importantly, how would you differentiate in a crowded field, meaning leveraging that brand and distribution relationship that you have?

Yes. So what I would say is, first of all, I think one of the differentiators of Canvas versus the others, I was like I said, it was built by quant people as opposed to tax people. And so it's much more about the technology, which gives a lot more flexibility going forward. And so I think Canvas is being selected in many cases because people recognize that it has the really kind of impressive technology. When we added the managed option solution over it, it's giving us a lot more creativity around product development. So things like you have high basis concentration of stock and you can use to manage options, component of it to be able to make a more tax-efficient portfolio. So we're -- I think we're winning because of the actual vehicle -- or not the vehicle but the technology there. What started out as a direct indexing opportunity has evolved into an ability to take that technology as an overlay and create tax-managed, tax-efficient over active strategies. And so our conversations are now not just do you want this as a platform to manage separately managed accounts or direct indexing, but we'd love to use it as a way to optimize the tax efficiency of our active strategies. And so they're open up to a lot of partner conversations. I don't know, Daniel, do you want to add something to that?

Yes. So I will add two aspects to the success we're having actually on the tax alpha and tax optimization space, which is one space that's really growing very, very fast for the industry. And we're absolutely capitalizing on that. I'll say, number one, clearly, our retail SMA presence being so big at close to $170 billion makes us very uniquely positioned, including, of course, the legacy business that we have on the SMA side. And on the Canvas side, there's two elements to highlight. One is the tax optimization that we do is quite unique and differentiated because we do receive in-kind positions from -- to do that. And we're very flexible in how we do the optimization and clients are absolutely looking at that. And the other part is -- we add a lot of simplicity and we're very innovating. Canvas includes, as Jenny mentioned, not only direct indexing, but we also have risk factor overlays. We have options for income within the same platform, and we have added now fundamental third-party manager tax optimization, including for our different fundamental -- we're adding that. On top of that, we're adding long short or long short has already been built into that. We have 130-30, 140-40, all in the same platform. And finally, we also are having -- and we actually added already municipal bond ladders in the same platform. So the simplicity is giving us substantial momentum to the degree that it's actually grown at 72% CAGR, and it's grown actually 10x since acquisition at $23 billion. So I think the momentum will continue. The AUM doubled over the past 12 months, and we expect that to continue given how differentiated the platform is.

Our next question comes from Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America.

Maybe if we can just move to the next one. We'll get Craig back on. It seems like there's a technical problem with that line.

Our next question comes from Dan Fannon with Jefferies.

Matt, I just wanted to follow up on the guidance that you gave. There's been some change from last quarter, but you also echoed reiterated the things you've been saying around flat with fiscal year '24 and '25. So wanted to just get us some clarification around the moving parts. And then also in the quarter, there was an announcement of some voluntary retirements across the equity portfolio or equity division. I assume that's incorporated in this guidance and maybe the outlook for next year, but just wondering if that's incremental or not?

Yes. The voluntary part is included in our full year projection. First of all, I don't go through the quarter guidance, and then I'll talk about the annual as part of that. So on the third quarter guide for our effective fee rate, we're guiding mid- to high 37s, so very consistent, stable with the second quarter. Compensation, we're guiding $830 million, assuming $50 million performance fee at a 55% payout. IS&T is $155 million, which is in line, maybe a little bit higher than last quarter based on AI investments specifically. Occupancy, we're at $70 million in the guide. And G&A, we expect to be a little bit higher at $210 million to $215 million, but this does include elevated fundraising related fees, but -- or expense of around $23 million, $25 million and an additional $9 million to $10 million for advertising and marketing. In terms of the full year, as outlined on Page 14 that you referred to in the IR deck, this does assume flat markets from now and excludes performance fees. We continue to guide approximately in line or slightly above, slightly above fiscal year '25 expenses, excluding performance fees. This assumes current market levels, higher sales and fundraising that we've presented today and seen and stronger performance. Stronger performance, meaning we have some compensation-related expenses tied to better performance as formulaic driven. So that's going up a little bit. But for further perspective, we end up at the level illustrated on the page, which is about 1.5% higher versus 2025. We would expect investment management fee revenue to increase at 4x that rate at least. Meaning if the expenses increased by 1.5%, we would expect investment management fee revenue would be expected to increase by at least 6% year-over-year, all else remaining equal. And this is consistent with previous commentary on margin expansion going into our fiscal year end that would result in fiscal fourth quarter margin in the high-29s and for the year in the '27 for the full year, both representing meaningful margin expansion ahead of Plan and on our way to 30% plus margins later in 2027, all ahead of plan that presented last quarter.

Our next question is from Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research.

There's been a lot of press focus on secondary PE strategies and the policy of marking up deals immediately upon close. Much of that has been focused on other companies, but could you give us more color on how much of Lexington's fund performance is driven by that initial markup versus natural appreciation? And then more broadly, do you see this increased attention or the increased attention on this practice impacting regulatory scrutiny or demand for the asset class?

The issue that happened there was actually because I think the manager kind of changed the policy and maybe was a little unclear in how that sort of went down. I think that created a huge amount of noise. Here's what. Traditionally the -- in secondaries, the markup, the discount markup is about 20% to 25% of total return over the life of a fund. So that gives you a sense for -- most of the appreciation really comes in the asset itself. And that's the beauty, I think, of somebody like Lexington, who's got -- is a premier buyer of these deals. They get to be pretty selective as far as what deals they choose and they have a ton of information. I mean they have information on 55,000 private companies. And so they're really tracking and getting to decide which underlying funds, they believe are going to have the best upside opportunity, and that's how they're really underwriting it, and then they obviously negotiated discounts. So that gives you kind of a sense.

And our next question comes from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to ask about AI. I was hoping you could update us on how you're using AI across the organization today. Some of the use cases that have been most impactful so far in some of the key learnings that you've had and if you're able to help quantify any of the benefits that you're seeing that would be interesting. And as you look out over the next couple of years, can you talk about some of the steps that you're taking to further embed AI throughout the organization. I know, Matt, you mentioned some uplift on expenses in part from AI investments, maybe you could elaborate on some of those investments and how you're thinking about longer-term benefits?

Yes. So we look at AI, look, having run technology. I don't think that there are many companies that they can sit there and say that the AI has yet to be material in their organization and everybody is doing a ton of stuff in it. So I'm proud of the work that we've done because we were early adopters in what is this multi-agent orchestration of AI, and that was the intelligent hub, what we call Intelligent Hub, which was our platform used for distribution. The way if I were to bucket the AI efforts, I would say with respect to distribution and investments, it's all about growth opportunities with respect to operations and technology operations, it's about efficiencies and in technologies, it ultimately will be about getting more through the pipeline. So with this multi-agent intelligence sell start there, this is the one that we announced the partnership with Microsoft, and they came in and helped us build it. And I think it's a very simple problem with a complex technical solution. The simple problem is how do you ensure that your salespeople are seeing the right clients and having the best conversations. That goes in and it pulls data from your CRM system from your product system, external product systems, maybe social media. Those are multiple agents and LLM models tend not to be great with analytics, so you have to marry them with others. We are seeing early on uplift of our wholesalers our salespeople essentially seeing 10% more clients. I'm not going to share sort of the preliminary numbers, it's too early to sort of dictate whether that's translated directly into additional sales. But from just the efficiency of the administration, and it is looking like we are also getting an uplift in sales from those, and we're rolling that out more broadly. Our investment teams are using it a little bit depending on the team, but we have hackathons done by our investment teams. They create agents. Those agents are put in the central library. We've been doing this for quite a while. I can't remember the number that we have. And so another investment team may decide, I'm going to pull this agent out. We also created a virtual research analyst that sits in one of our investment teams where they have fed in kind of the views of -- and the philosophy, and it will question it'll come up with sales or investment ideas and it will actually -- if you're thinking about making an idea, question like, have you thought about these things, you say these are important. And it's done a review of historical trades. And we have multiple different ways in which our investment teams are leveraging it and learning from it. The most important thing, I think, is we've created this centralized group to share expertise on AI so they get the learnings from each other. We have work -- this is something we're focused on to the extent that we've outsourced is looking at the length of our outsourced deals because we don't want just to have the AI efficiencies accrued to the outsourced still. So that's a part of our vendor management program. And then in places that we have the operations in-house, reconciliation, other things, RFPs, we are seeing some efficiencies. It's still very early and we're measuring in our technology group, for example, how much code is being written by AI. So that gives you kind of a feel for how we're using it across the firm.

Yes. In terms of how we're spending money, I mean, Jenny already touched on it, but to that question. We have a fully staffed dedicated team, as Jenny mentioned, that's centralized. But within that team, we have individuals focused on, as Jenny mentioned, investment sales functions, so that it becomes a fairly significant group internally. And then each of these groups is focused on both the effectiveness piece and the efficiency piece. So there's a revenue part of this, and then there's a cost part of this. And we're doing our best. It's very early days. We're doing our best to track the dollars we spend versus the dollars that we either save or that we gain through the process of using AIN adoption.

Our next question comes from Bill Katz with TD Cowen.

I just have a couple of nits added together, maybe equals one full question. On the tax minimization -- tax optimization side, there's been some discussion around potential adverse tax rule for Exchange 351. It seems a bit arcane to us, but it's been coming up a lot in investor dialogue. A, how real is that as a real change? Or is that more of a disclosure issue and would that have any kind of impact on the business? My second question is just on Lexington 11. I think you previously raised $22 billion, and I know Matt just gave some guidance around some platform fees or placement fees into the new quarter or so. Is there any reason to think that, that next fund won't be equal of size? And then thirdly, just in terms of capital return, a little bit of fully question. Just wondering if you could talk a little bit about your priorities looking ahead?

I'll just quickly just jump on the Lexington and then I'll turn it over to Matt on the tax. So no reason to believe that, that is not at the size of the last fund. As I said, they are happy and on track, and there's good demand for secondaries. And we do not see any cannibalization with the evergreen funds that we've done in secondary. So I think that's going smoothly. Matt, do you want to cover the... I think the everyone what was the tax -- 351, what was that...

Yes. It's a bit arcane, but apparently, in the index ETF world, there's some discussion between, I think, ICI and the IRS -- tech on this call. Just in terms of adverse ruling about tax optimization under the exchange. And would that limit maybe the use of options and so forth as a way to shield income but it's been coming up as a watch point given the really rapid growth in tax...

Here's what I would say, and I don't know specifically on that everything I am on the ICI Board, and we do talk a lot about -- The mutual funds have a sort of unequal tax treatment versus an ETF because you get to do the in-kind. I don't think -- there's always a worry that, that goes away. The reality is it's actually unfair. Why should your average person in a mutual fund who tends to be your smaller investor actually have to pay capital gains just because the fund experienced capital gains versus what their individual ownership is like they would if they owned a stock. So that has always been something that has been a disadvantage a bit on mutual funds. And I think that the ICI that that's one that's always discussed, I'm not aware of discussions about the ETF losing theirs as much as the hope with the ICI that you actually make the mutual fund more fair.

I will only add that none of our major ETFs use options overlays in the way in which they are constructed. So we haven't been hit with that question given the nature of our current ETFs that we have. We do have an excellent options capability within our SMA business, which we call most, and we've seen substantial demand on that. So on SMA is clearly on individual securities, there's no such discussion. But clearly on 351 Exchanges in ETFs, we are not part of those -- we don't have to products structured like that.

Yes. And actually, I just looked it up on perplexities and I have a better understanding what -- so there are people -- there are some strategies for high net worth where people will contribute and exchanges. And we have not really participated in that. That is one that you could and it could impact ETF share classes as part of a mutual fund. We'll see how that evolves.

Our next question comes from Brennan Hawken with BMO Capital Markets.

Two questions, just circling back on the alt fundraising. So thanks for providing the Evergreen AUM, which you've reached now. Maybe could you talk about what sort of flows you're seeing on a quarterly basis and how we should think about that? And then just a follow-up on Lexington. You referenced that you'd be giving an update at year-end. Can you help us understand why it would be year-end? Is that your updated expectations for the first close?

I think that the on Lexington, I think that they're -- like I said, they're actively fundraising. They'll decide kind of on the timing of their first filing. It hasn't been year-to-date, so it will be the second half or towards the end of the year.

Jenny, you made our fiscal year-end, now about fiscal year-end. Because -- that could be an update in July or something like that.

And then on the Evergreen, we have said that we're raising about $200 million a month across our 3 -- We have over $1 billion, we have 3 over $1 billion, and we're continuing to see that same kind of demand about $200 million a month into the 3 Evergreen strategies.

And that's remained consistent recently with some of the...

Yes, yes, yes.

I think important to say that we don't have a big BDC or large exposure to software within the platform. So we've continued to raise in line or even higher across all our evergreens. Secondary like real estate debt, real estate equity. So over the last 2 years, we continue to go in line with the penetration that we have on the wealth business. So substantial growth, and we haven't seen any slowdown from our end.

Our next question is with Ben Budish from Barclays.

Maybe just continuing to follow up on the alts fundraising. You mentioned, I think, earlier that most of it came from credit in the quarter, obviously, not from BDCs. Can you unpack a little bit what pockets of credit you're seeing the most demand? And then just a quick housekeeping one on the G&A. You mentioned there's some sort of onetime fundraising expenses associated with the larger flagships. Just curious if we should think about those as recurring or kind of near-term elevated, but maybe not in the run rate for next year or perhaps they come back with more flagship fundraising, any help there which would be great.

That's the expenses. I'll get that done quickly. That's really -- I wouldn't say it's onetime because you may have other quarters that also have elevated fundraising. But $23 million to $25 million is obviously a large number, and that would be onetime associated with good fund raise expectation with, let's call it, higher fee-type alternative asset funds.

So -- and on the alt fund raising, so we mentioned -- remember, on the credit side, we have both BSP as well as what was formerly Alcentra, but we're calling BSP Europe. So we had good strong fundraising for both of those. Part of it was CLOs, but honestly, there were probably -- remember, they have an opportunity fund. They have a real estate debt fund. They have special situation. So we got contributions from really across the board, and I think there's at least 15 different kind of funds that had some sort of contribution to the credit. It also -- I mean, interestingly, we're seeing clearing with real estate that's starting to pick up real estate and Clarion has tremendous performance there. But I think as people have been nervous and we're wondering, there's $20 billion in redemption requests on real estate managers out there. That money is probably going to go somewhere else. People like sorry, on the private credit managers out there, people like real estate because it not only gives a good source of income, it has a hedge, it's inflation hedge. And so I think that's why we're seeing this pickup in interest in real estate. And then our venture group has done well, too. So I think the key message here is this is a very diversified portfolio diversified -- rate as opposed to a real concentration. There are literally over 30 entities that raise money for -- in our alt space.

And I want to point one more point, Jenny, to what you're talking about, which I think this quarter, we've had positive contribution from every single region, which is very important. And in the old always, we have seen growing demand outside the U.S. with 40% coming from outside the U.S. sources, about 16% from EMEA and 23% for APAC. As an example, we successfully launched funds, new vehicles in Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, with a strong momentum in Japan, which is a key market for us given -- and we're putting increasing resources there. And in EMEA, we are now servicing 11 markets, which is like 5 more markets than a year prior given increasing demand for our LTEs across all 3 capabilities, including ventures.

And our last question comes from Ken Worthington with JPMorgan.

We're seeing ETF distribution fees being requested by intermediaries and being dismissed by some of the larger or largest ETF managers. How is Franklin thinking about ETFs and distribution fees? And do you see the potential for ETF access to drive market share shifts in ETFs potentially favoring Franklin?

Well, since Daniel's career started at the BGI at the early days of ETFs, so I'm going to let him answer this one.

Yes. So thank you for that question. I'll say that ETF is one of the most exciting developments that we have here in Franklin Templeton. Our platform reached $62 billion at the end of the quarter, and that's double what we have 18 months ago. Our flows, the organic growth of the flows just fiscal year-to-date, which is only two quarters, 49%, and we're growing really across the board. The three main drivers for ETFs, active ETF -- the industry is talking about it, 45% of what we have. It grew 70% relative to a year ago. We have reached our focused large-cap value ETF, is nearing $10 billion, and it's doubled in 6 months, and we have plans to launch every major fundamental PM with a large franchise will manage their own ETF. The other part that I think is worth mentioning is we converted 10 muni mutual funds the last quarter. And now that's a full growth platform and is helping growth not only ETF, but also muni mutual funds, muni SMA, which is excellent. The other driver is single country and regional ETFs that represents 30% of the platform. They all had excellent inflows and we grow over 3 billion flows into these country ETFs, including Korea, Japan, Taiwan and keeping our heritage in managing local assets, we will continue to develop and launch more country and regional ETFs. And the third driver is systematic and smart data that is 20% that is managed by our Franklin Templeton investment solutions. We have the Franklin international low volatility high dividend ETF approaching $5 billion. We will continue to do that. And clearly, we have a great track record on ETFs, and we are doubling down on that. Of course, a lot of our capabilities come from excellent relationships and partnerships with our clients. We have a U.S. wealth platform that is almost $800 billion and is one of the largest with hundreds of salespeople covering and educating our sales advisers. Of course, we review our business with all our platforms regularly. And as we evolve our platform and value to clients, we will prioritize our platforms that deliver the most value to us. So on the ETF discussions, we are clearly creating business plans with our partners. And those that have the most impact investing in education, sales and support and impact the business will continue to be major partners, and we will continue to discuss how can we grow our business together. So clearly, EPS is one of the areas where you're going to hear much more from us going forward.

And so just to the last point that Daniel is making. Look, platforms always want to have more revenue share, like that's just the reality. ETFs are not structured in the same way that mutual funds were and platforms, depending on the platform, they can influence growth and opportunity for ETFs or not. And so if the platform is actually going to be able to have some positive influence then that's a discussion we have to the extent that they can't influence ultimately in the end, then we wouldn't consider any of those fees.

Got it. And because some are not going to participate in or don't want to participate in the fees, do you think it drives share to shift from those that are willing to partner with distribution from those that are not?

Different platforms have different influence, right? And so if you can heavily influence? Yes. There'll potentially be some amount of shift on what you can influence. But the reality is the financial adviser is getting more and more independent. And to the extent that they're on one of these platforms and they're an RIA, they don't care what the platform is telling them. They're going to sell what they sell. And so it ends up being really kind of -- that's where having a huge work sales force is so important because it's hand-to-hand combat. If they choose the model from the platform, then the platform influences it. But most of the big RIAs who are big ETF users actually decide on their own.

Quick point of clarification from an earlier question that we wanted to just clarify. I think Alex asked the question around alternative asset versus nonfee generating. Just to be clear that 90% that we talked about approximately 90%, that's potential to earn fees on that. The fee generating -- current fee-generating AUM is about 80%, and that's on the full $283 million...

And it varies depending on bulk management so the blended.

Yes. I just wanted to make sure we clarify that.

Our next question comes from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank.

Great. Actually one on Franklin Crypto. Jenny, if you could just talk a little bit about what target market your -- what market are you targeting for that in the different product types as you evolve your Franklin digital assets? And then also on the tokenization of money funds to fund, your view on to what extent we'll see the development of tokenized money funds accelerate given obviously, the use cases in the yield cases, especially within the digital asset platforms?

Yes. Great. So first of all, why do I love blockchain because it's a really efficient technology that drives down cost. So that's a good thing for us as an industry and for our clients. But you have to have a wallet to actually hold a token, while it's just a cryptography that matches to that token, but you just have to have it. And all of our traditional distributors, very few of them actually have a wallet. So you have to go to the exchanges. So when you ask me where is the kind of immediate opportunity. It's an exchange -- a crypto exchange of cracking and a coin-based finance that have wallets there. And two things are happening. One is they're -- it's an obvious place to integrate Benji. So people want to put money into cash. If it's in their stable point, they don't earn any yield, so they can shifted into a money market fund and earn yield on that. So that's an obvious opportunity for us. The second thing that's happening, and you just take the top 5 exchanges, they have 1 billion wallets there. So from a new client base, kind of interesting, and they're thinking about offering traditional products there. So we have launched, I think, 8 ETFs, tokenized ETFs on one of the exchanges and five on the other, and we're talking to other exchanges. So we've got 8 on Kraken and 5 on Onduo. And these are just in case those investors are interested in more traditional products. And so you couldn't hold an ETF or a mutual fund unless it was tokenized and because they have no other way of holding it. So we think that's an interesting new opportunity for us. And the other thing is you saw that we're bringing a small team, 250 Digital, and they actually are -- they kind of have institutional -- think of it as a crypto venture fund. And what we found is there are institutional investors who would like exposure to the space, but aren't comfortable with a small firm. And so now that they're -- we think that -- and they don't start until this fall. But when they start, we'll get some demand from institutional clients who are interested in investing in kind of a venture part of the crypto space.

And to the punchline, I guess, is that we should expect an acceleration of your tokenized products as you roll this out over the next few quarters, let's say?

Yes. I mean, look, these things are always a hockey stick, right? So right now -- it just depends on how much adoption, say, the tokenized ETFs get in the on those exchanges. We are seeing some traction where we are in programs where the Benjie product is an option, and we're starting to see some traction there. But I think it takes a little time to kind of sell people and educate on this space.

We think somebody was trying to get in earlier with a question on capital management. So why don't we just start to that we have time. So I think the question was on our capital management priorities. So I'll start and maybe, Jenny, then you can -- so the capital management priorities, we -- obviously, our dividend is always top of the list in that regard. We want to make sure the dividend is in place and continue to protect the increased dividend that we have each year. Our organic growth is taking up more capital than it has done in the past. So I'll see capital and co-invest balance sheet allocation has increased again to $2.9 billion, up from $2.8 billion last quarter. As I mentioned in the previous quarter, we expect that to be close to $3 billion by the time we recent end of the year. We've always repurchased our employee-related stock grants to make sure we hedge our shares out to basically zero out for the year, to keep the same amount of shares outstanding. Then obviously, we have opportunistic share repurchases. And then M&A is -- I think you all know, it's just very, very super active. There are some areas of focus here, mostly distribution related. I'd say, Jenny, may want to make some additional comments on this. But distribution related, a little bit bolt-ons related to alternative assets, in particular, overseas. We're quite involved in reviewing those things. But I'd say most of the M&A of inorganic activity is around partnership, strategic activity in connection with distribution.

Great. I think you covered it very well, Matt. Operator?

Okay. And this does conclude today's Q&A session. I would now like to hand the call back over to Jenny Johnson, Franklin's CEO, for final comments.

Well, listen, everybody, thank you for participating in the call today. And once again, we are a people business, and I want to thank all our employees for their hard work and dedication to the company, and we look forward to speaking with all of you again next quarter. Thank you.

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