T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. (TROW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and thank you for joining us today on short notice. I'm Linsley Carruth, Director of Investor Relations at T. Rowe Price. We'll start today with brief remarks from Bill Stromberg, Chair of the Board of Directors of T. Rowe Price Group, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the firm's Management Committee; and Rob Sharps, currently President, Head of Investments and Group Chief Investment Officer. And then we'll open it up for your questions. Please submit your written questions using the Q&A button at the bottom of the Zoom screen. And as a reminder, this call will cover the leadership transition announced earlier today. We will not be commenting on or taking questions on our 2Q earning results. Please save these questions for your individual calls with our finance team, or feel free to contact me for any other questions on Q2. I'll now read our forward-looking statements. This presentation and other statements that T. Rowe Price makes may contain forward-looking statements with respect to T. Rowe Price's future financial or business performance, strategies or operations. We caution that forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which change over time, and actual results could differ materially from the forward-looking statements. We ask all investors to carefully consider the risks described in our 10-K and our other public filings before investing. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Bill.

Thank you, Linsley, and thanks everybody for joining us today on the call. Before we begin to review and take your questions, I'd like to reaffirm that our commitment to our stockholders, to our clients and our associates is our highest priority. To review, after a very fulfilling 35-year career with T. Rowe Price, I have decided to retire at the end of the year. With our Board's full support, I'll remain non-executive Chair of the Board of Directors. Very pleased to announce that effective January 1, 2022, Rob Sharps will become President and CEO and take over as Chair of the Management Committee. He'll also join our Board of Directors at that time. Rob's appointment as CEO is the culmination of a thoughtful, multiyear succession planning process and clearly signals our confidence in him as the right leader to guide T. Rowe Price through its next chapter of growth. We are excited about Rob's new role and his ability to position us for continued -- continuing as a premier global asset manager, one that delivers value to our clients and attractive returns to stockholders over the long term. With Rob in his President and CEO role, supported by the rest of our exceptional management committee and our dedicated associates, T. Rowe Price could not be in better hands, and we're really excited about the path forward. Rob will now make a few comments.

Thank you, Bill. First, I'd like to congratulate you on an incredible career. You've been a remarkable leader and you've impacted T. Rowe Price collectively and so many of us individually in countless ways. Your influence on T. Rowe Price's culture, its associates, its clients and shareholders will be felt for years to come. I'm extremely fortunate to have made my career at T. Rowe Price and to have served our clients and shareholders as an investment analyst as a portfolio manager and as a leader over the last 24 years. I'm grateful for the confidence that you Bill, the Board and our associates have placed in me as our next CEO. I'm confident that we have substantial opportunities ahead of us, and I'm really excited to lead our business forward. In addition to continuing to deliver against our core mission of generating world-class investment results and excellent client service. I very much look forward to progressing the strategic agenda that we recently laid out at our Investor Day, including the launch of T. Rowe Price Investment Management, broadening and deepening our ESG capabilities, transforming our retirement plan services business through the recently announced partnership with FIS, continuing to evolve our target date offerings, delivering on our product road map, including ETFs and ensuring that diversity, equity and inclusion remain a strategic driver for our business. But before turning it back over to Bill, I'd like to summarize some other changes in the leadership team that are also effective January 1. Eric Veiel, Currently, our Co-Head of Global Equity, Head of U.S. Equity and Chair of the U.S. Equity Steering Committee will take on leadership for our entire global equity platform and become the sole head of Global Equity. Eric has been a great partner to me and is well prepared for this opportunity. I'm very excited for him. Josh Nelson, currently associated Head of U.S. Equity will succeed Eric as Head of U.S. Equity, Chair of the U.S. Equity Steering Committee and joined the management committee. And Justin Thomson will continue as a member of the management committee and head our non-U.S. equity business. So very excited to work closely with these 3, but also with our management committee broadly and all of our associates around the globe. With that, Bill, I'll turn it back to you.

Thanks, Rob. Independent of the leadership transitions that Rob just mentioned, we also have a few other changes we'd like to announce today, Céline Dufétel, our Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer will be stepping down from her roles effective July 31 to pursue a leadership position with a fintech company. She'll serve in an advisory role with T. Rowe Price until August 31 to ensure a seamless transition. And on behalf of everyone at T. Rowe Price, I want to thank Céline for her many, many contributions. Jen Dardis, currently Head of Finance, will become CFO and Treasurer, and join our management committee effective August 1. As a leader of the firm's finance and strategy functions and with prior experience in investor relations, business development and M&A, Jen's a natural successor to Céline as Chief Financial Officer. She's made tremendous contributions to our organization in her 15-year tenure, including partnering with the management committee to refresh the firm's strategy. Jens also successfully led strategic reviews of our key businesses, and strengthened our financial planning and analysis capabilities, sharpening our financial discipline in the process. With a deep understanding of all aspects of the company, she is very well prepared to provide strong financial stewardship and take this next step to CFO. On an interim basis, Céline's COO responsibilities will transition to Robert Higginbotham, a member of the firm's management committee and Head of Global Distribution, who also has oversight responsibility for global product. Robert, who already works closely with many members of the COO leadership team has managed a number of the firm's operational and business enablement functions and has prior leadership experience overseeing global technology platforms. We'll also begin an internal and external search for a new COO. Our Board and the management committee appreciate that there are important changes happening at the firm. The good news is that we are well prepared for them. Our collaborative culture, coaching and leadership development programs create significant opportunities for leaders across the firm to interact and assume increasingly responsible roles, supporting our near- and long-term succession planning processes. Importantly, the firm will continue to execute on strategic initiatives that should position the firm for long-term success. I'd like to now turn it back to Linsley and we'll start responding to your questions about these transitions.

Thank you, Bill. As a reminder, please submit your written questions using the Q&A button at the bottom of the Zoom screen. And also, we're joined here today with Bill and Rob also with Jen Dardis; and Robert Higginbotham, who is on the line to take any questions you may have for them. First question is for Rob, Alex Blostein from Goldman Sachs asks, as an incoming CEO, what are your top priorities over the next 1 to 2 years? In particular, how are you thinking about potentially enhancing T. Rowe Price's competitive position inorganically in areas of faster growth within asset management, such as private markets, SMAs, ESG, among others?

Alex, thank you for the question. I don't think it will come as any surprise that in terms of priorities, investment performance for us will always be job one. Beyond that, though, I think you listed a number of things that our priorities and to some extent, are already in flight. With regard to private markets, we already have a substantial capability in investing in private placements across a number of our strategies, and we continue to invest in our capability there, while evaluating ways to engage more deeply in private markets and alternative strategies in a dedicated way. And that approach is both organic and potentially, inorganic. From an ESG perspective, we've built our team under Maria Drew's leadership. I think we've been very diligent and rigorous in the development of our approach to ESG integration where our work by the end of this year will be largely complete, but obviously ongoing. We've worked hard to develop a framework for impact investing. And earlier this year, launched Global Equity Impact, our first dedicated impact strategy. and have plans to launch other portfolios, utilizing that impact framework. We also have efforts in flight around ETFs. We have live semitransparent active ETFs in marketplace right now and have plans to launch active transparent fixed income ETFs later this year. SMA has been an area of emphasis for some time and have a number of strategies available in model account form and are growing that business nicely. I would say on the distribution side, we continue to focus very hard on building our business in Asia Pacific and broadening our reach to the broker-dealer and adviser channel. So a number of strategic priorities here where we have momentum building, and I feel very good about our prospects.

Thank you, Rob. Next, we'll move to a question from Ken Worthington of JPMorgan. Does T. Rowe Price plan to maintain a split Chairman, CEO longer term?

This is Bill. We felt like -- the Board felt like this was the right arrangement for now. The Board does not have a preset plan for what will happen when my role as Chair of the Board ends. I think our Board is wide open to discussing all potential arrangements, but really considers the facts and circumstances at the time, when making that call.

Thank you, Bill. Another one for Rob. Next, we're going to go to Glenn Schorr from Evercore. Sounds like we shouldn't expect any change to the firm's strategy. Wouldn't expect any. Can you talk about where you are in terms of the separation and creation of TRPIM? And if you feel that you have the management depth to continue that process?

I'll start here. Glenn, you're correct in assuming that there shouldn't be any changes in the firm's strategy. The succession plan here is designed for continuity and stability for our clients and our associates. I've been partnered with Bill and the rest of our management committee and leadership team on the development of the strategy and the implementation of all of the initiatives that I addressed earlier. So there won't be any meaningful change in direction. In terms of T. Rowe Price Investment Management, I think we've made tremendous progress. I think we've at this point, feel very good about the research platform, both for T. Rowe Price associates and T. Rowe Price Investment Management and are on schedule with regard to separation in 2022. We've -- at this point, I think, build out the entirety of the research platform are in the process of ramping up coverage. Those teams are working together. They've begun working in separate space. So really feel very good about the progress that we've had there, thus far.

I'd agree with Rob. We're green on all aspects of the program right now. And as Rob said, one of the key elements we had to get in place was strong talent to make sure that our coverage would ramp in a really good way, and that's exactly what's happened. Very pleased about the talent and the diversity of the talent that we brought in the door.

All right. Next question will be from Brennan Hawken at UBS. What additional color can you provide on Céline's transition. She was doing well and liked by investors. And a CFO transition that is abrupt 2 days is not comforting. So what drove it? And are there any issues to flag in the financials?

I would agree that Céline's transition is short in terms of notice, but I wouldn't call it necessarily abrupt. Abrupt to me implies that something might be a foot or wrong and that sort of thing. And that is not the case at all. I think when it comes time for where Céline is headed, to become public news, I think you'll all see that she has an enormous opportunity in front of her, one that's good for her and her family. She has done a very good job for us. She's raised our game in a variety of areas and made all of us better in the process. I feel very, very good about Jen Dardis succeeding Céline as CFO. Jen's been with us for 15 years and probably knows the plumbing and various value chains inside of T. Rowe Price as well as anyone at the company. She has broad experience and I think is already -- was on a path to develop as Head of Finance and broaden longer term. So we're really delighted that Jen is taking that spot. Céline's COO responsibilities, which are been in place since February showed us pretty cooly just how strong and important that role can be. So we'll do a search externally and internally to have a COO in place. And Rob will lead that search, and I will look forward to announcing that as we get closer.

Thank you. Next, we're going to go to Mike Cyprys. How are you thinking about M&A to enhance the growth profile of T. Rowe in terms of accessing new products, capabilities and customer sets? How important is that? And where might that be on your priority list? Rob will start with you and then ask Jen to make some comments as well.

Yes, Linsley, given consolidation in the industry, as you might expect, we've been kind of deeply engaged in evaluating the opportunities that present themselves to us. I think we have a framework that prioritizes potential partners. It would be very important to us that they'd be cautiously aligned, that they bring new capabilities, that strategically, we could be additive as a partner, whether that means expertise and resource or distribution reach. And that it brings new and different capability to our organization. I think we have the potential to do a tremendous number of things organically, but are obviously willing to accelerate those opportunities through acquisition.

And thanks, Rob. And I think we've also been building out those capabilities. We've been talking about those for several years. This isn't something that we do sort of quickly or lightly. I think foundation of this is making sure that we build relationships over time and we find people who are culturally aligned, as Rob said, and that takes some time to build out this relationship.

Thank you. And the next question will be going to Robert Higginbotham. Dan Fannon asks, the COO role was only established for Céline in February 2021. Can you remind us what this role is of hers and how it works overseas? I'm sorry, I'm paraphrasing a little there, Sam, on your question.

Sure, Linsley. Thanks, Dan. So the COO role covers 2 of our significant operations functions. One, looking at our investment operations capability and one, looking at our global client operations capabilities. It also includes all of our technology teams around the world. We have a change management function that helps us run all of the significant change programs across our organization. We have a global risk function. And then we also have a corporate real estate and workplace services. So essentially running all of our real estate and our buildings and physical facilities around the world. So that's the scope of the group today, Linsley.

Thank you. And Rob, you've talked a little bit about ESG, but we have another more detailed question on it. So I'd like to pose that one as well. This is from Brian Bedell at Deutsche Bank. Congrats to Rob and the other on the leadership changes. Question for Rob. Can you talk about your long-term vision for ESG at T. Rowe? Specifically, on creating dedicated sustainable investment products in addition to ESG integration into the investment process and your view on growth in the long-term demand for these products across direct intermediary and 401(k) channels in the U.S? And perhaps, we could have Rob start and maybe Robert would like to say something on that as well.

Yes. Maybe I'll leave the Perspective with regard to long-term demand across channels for Robert and talk a little bit about the capabilities we've developed there and how we hope to deliver them. I think we've taken a very rigorous and authentic approach to ESG integration. We've been heavily focused for kind of over a decade on building our capabilities around governance. And we've added increasingly capabilities around responsible investing. As I've said earlier, we laid out an ambitious program to certify ESG integration across our range of strategies and have made a tremendous amount of progress there. And our responsible investing indicator model is the foundation of that. The responsible investing research team is deeply partnered with our fundamental teams across equity and credit. And kind of ultimately, I think we've got an approach that is differentiated and will stand out. In addition to that, we've launched sustainable offerings across a number of our CCAP range, and we'll have, by the end of the year, mid- to high teens number of our strategies available in that sustainable range. As I've said earlier, we've also worked very hard to develop our impact investing framework. Hari Balkrishna as lean PM has been working for almost 2 years now on bringing that framework to light. And we went live with a Global Equity Impact in March of this year. On our product road map, we have a handful of additional impact-oriented strategies that we believe will bring to the market over the course of the next 6 to 12 months. Robert, do you want to comment a little bit on demand, both geographically as well as across channels?

Sure, Rob. Happy to. Brian, thank you for the question. Look, I think like many market participants, we saw the demand for ESG start initially in the institutional business and initially in EMEA from a regional point of view. And that has flowed pretty rapidly from the institutional business in EMEA right through to the intermediary business, both driven by, I think, just client appetite, but also clearly driven by regulatory developments out of the EU. It's also clear, I think that institutionally, the trend is flowing both east into Asia Pacific and West into North America, not just the U.S. but also Canada. And I think in the U.S., we're also seeing it and drill down further into the intermediary market. So it certainly feels real and substantial. It certainly feels sustained, partly prompted by regulation in the EU, but also very significantly driven just by, I think, by client preferences elsewhere in the world, where regulation is less of a force.

Great. And we have a couple of questions from Bill Katz with Citi, that I'm going to string together. I think we've addressed the question on shift of strategy, Rob already, but he also asks any shift in compensation in light of the changes.

No.

That was the quick one. So we'll move on to the other ones. Again, I think we've addressed that -- he also in the inorganic question, but he does have a final question around update thinking on aspirational 1% to 3% long-term growth goals. How to think about the puts and takes of the platform with further shifts. Any changes there?

I'll start. I think 1% to 3% organic growth as an aspirational goal over time continues to be reasonable for our business. I think it's a level of net new business that we can take on while continuing to deliver excellent investment results for our clients. It's a level of growth that will create opportunities for our talent and our associates. I would say, it's a goal that kind of -- there will obviously be puts and takes in different market environments. This year, with the strength in U.S. equity, in particular, we have faced some client rebalancing that's been a headwind. But I think given the growth opportunity in our multi-asset business and target date franchise, the growth opportunity outside of the U.S., the growth opportunity that we have in fixed income, if we execute well against our agenda, then we should be able to meet that goal more often than not, on a go-forward basis. If in the end, we're able to amplify our growth through organic or inorganic efforts within the alternatives or private market space, then obviously, that would be an additional help with regard to meeting that goal.

Anyone like to add anything else?

I think that covers.

We are at the end of the questions, unless anyone has a last minute question that will complete us for the day. And I don't see any addition. We do have one more question coming in. Thank you, Brian Bedell. If there's time, just if Rob wants to opine on ESG and 401(k), does he see 401(k) plans sponsors adding a dedicated ESG investment choices and would T. Rowe Price, I'm guessing he meant to go on to say, participate in this. And again, perhaps Rob and Robert may both have opinions on this.

Sure. I'm happy to...

There's questions around...

Yes, sure, Brian. Look, I think progressively, yes. We see by a sporadic conversation, but I would not say it's broad-based and sustained through time at this stage. I see no reason why 401(k) plan sponsors might not consider having an ESG option within their lineup. I think it will be things that they will have to obviously consider with the nature of their participants and the nature of the plan. So progressively, yes. But nothing broad-based and sustainable that we see yet over and above individual conversations with clients.

Then with that, thank you for joining us today. A recording of this call will be posted on our IR site later today. We appreciate your time, and we're complete.