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

Good morning. My name is Daniel, and I will be your conference facilitator today. Welcome to T. Rowe Price's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be available for replay on T Rowe Price's website shortly after the call concludes. I will now turn the call over to Linsley Carruth, T. Rowe Price's Director of Investor Relations.

Hello, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter earnings call. The press release and the supplemental materials document can be found on our IR website at investors.price.com. We'll start our call with our Chair and CEO, Rob Sharps and CFO, Jen Dardis, discussing the company's results. Dee Sawyer, our Head of Global Distribution, will then share an update on our ETF SMA and model businesses. Then we'll open it up to your questions at which time will be joined by our President, Co-Head of Global Investments and CIO, Eric Veiel. We ask that you limit it to 1 question per participant. I'd like to remind you that during the course of this call, we may make a number of forward-looking statements and reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the forward-looking statement language and the reconciliations to GAAP in the supplemental materials as well as in our press release and 10-Q. Discussions related to the funds is intended to demonstrate their contribution to the organization's results and are not recommendations. All investment performance references to peer groups on today's call are using Morningstar peer groups and for the quarter that ended September 30, 2026. Now I'll turn it over to Rob.

Thank you, Linsley. I'm joined today by Dee Sawyer, Head of Global Distribution; who will share an update on our ETF, SMA and model portfolio businesses, areas where we are investing, innovating and gaining traction. Before we hear from Dee, I'll share a few thoughts on the quarter and then Jen Dardis, our Chief Financial Officer, will take you through our financial results. We ended the quarter with $1.86 trillion in assets under management and $28.3 billion in net outflows. Looking ahead, we anticipate some sequential improvement in net flows in the fourth quarter with outflows moderating from third quarter levels but remaining elevated. Regardless, we're making notable progress with improving performance, innovative product launches and continued advancements across our partnerships. Let me start with investment performance. Over 50% of our fund assets beat their peer groups on the 1-, 3- and 10-year time periods. The 5-year time period fell short of that mark with 44% of fund assets outperforming. Results improved notably from last quarter for the 1- and 3-year time periods, particularly in equities, with 48% and 58% of fund assets outperforming their peers, respectively. For the 5 and 10 year, 37% and 60% outperformed. Our Large Cap Growth Suite delivered a strong quarter, with all 3 funds beating their peer group, reversing the underperformance we saw in the prior quarter. U.S. equity research remains a top quartile performer for the 3-, 5- and 10-year time periods and the 1 year just missed coming in at the 26 percentile. Both capital appreciation and global stock beat their peer groups across all reported time periods. Capital appreciation is top decile for the 5 and 10-year and global stock is top decile for the 1 in 10 year. Fixed income performance remained strong with 85%, 74%, 76%and 82% of fund assets beating their peer groups for the 1-, 3-, 5- and 10-year time periods, respectively. Global multisector floating rate in several municipal strategies stood out. In target date, 80% of assets outperformed their peers for the 1- and 3-year time periods, 55% for the 5 year and 98% for the 10-year. Nearly all the Target data assets outperformed in the third quarter, driven by the retirement Glidepath higher relative equity exposure, a tactical underweight to bonds and our allocation to inflation mitigating assets. Shifting to alternatives. Performance across OHA strategies was strong in Q3. Among the underlying drivers with strength in software exposures, both public and private, this dynamic contributed to strong performance across private credit, both in institutional and wealth and CLOs as well as positive relative performance in loans and multi-asset credit. Distressed and opportunistic funds also generated gains driven by positive idiosyncratic developments. In addition to strong investment performance, there were a number of other highlights from the quarter. In August, we announced that we plan to acquire FM investments with the closing expected early in 2027. FM is a fixed income asset manager and ETF specialist with approximately $20 billion in assets under management across exchange-traded funds, institutional separate accounts and both taxable and municipal separately managed accounts. With this transaction, we will enhance our fixed income platform and accelerate growth in our ETFs and solutions. This is consistent with our overall approach to M&A, extending our capabilities with limited overlap, strengthening our competitive position and adding top talent. We're also growing our fixed income franchise organically, where we had another strong quarter with $3.4 billion of net inflows. Earlier this year, we extended our platform with 2 TRO price managed CLOs. The most recent CLO, which closed in August issued approximately $400 million in notes. We are also making progress through our strategic partnerships. As part of our relationship with Aspida, we launched the first index strategy in a Aspida's fixed index annuity suite, which extends our investment capabilities into the growing retirement and insurance marketplace. We also reached several milestones in our collaboration with Goldman Sachs. We launched 2 interval funds in the quarter, the T. Rowe Price Goldman Sachs private markets fund launched early in the quarter and is now available on several external platforms. All Equity Access Fund received SEC approval in late August and launched in early September. The fund brings together our public equity research and late-stage venture investing experience with Goldman Sachs Asset Management's institutional private equity expertise. We added a sixth model the Goldman Sachs T. Rowe Price dynamic ETF and alts portfolio, which includes the private markets interval fund as a building block. And we continue to build momentum toward the launch of our Target Date sister series. T. Rowe Price Goldman Sachs Retirement Blend Plus. We have an active pipeline of interested plan sponsors with several progressing toward implementation. The product is operationally ready, and we are working closely with these sponsors to finalize launch time lines. In early October, Robinhood announced plans to bring tokenized versions of actively managed ETFs on chain for eligible investors outside the U.S. We're pleased that Robinhood has chosen T. Rowe Price's active ETF strategies to be first. This initiative offers a valuable opportunity to learn how tokenization is developing and how investors may engage with established investment strategies in new ways. Being able to explore this opportunity with Robinhood reflects the growing strength of our active ETF capabilities and our commitment to innovation. We're also advancing our use of AI through our strategic relationship with anthropic. The relationship is expanding our enterprise capabilities by giving portfolio managers and analysts access to Claude and co-work and developers access to Claude code. AI is moving into the core of how we invest, helping our teams enhance research, synthesize information and create capacity for the judgment that drives client outcomes. We're moving beyond broad adoption toward AI-enabled workflows with measurable business value across investments, distribution and operations. Every application is governed by the firm's standards for responsible use and built to keep human judgment and accountability at the center of our work. We also refined our AI leadership model embedding AI leaders in investments in global distribution and charging T. Rowe Price Labs, our enterprise AI innovation hub with evaluating and scaling AI across the firm with strong governance and risk oversight. While the environment for active equity is difficult, we are broadening how clients can access our capabilities and investing in the partnerships and technology that will differentiate us over time. I remain confident in where we're headed. I want to thank our associates for their focus and commitment to our clients. And now Jen will share an update on our financial results.

Thank you, Rob, and hello, everyone. I'll review our third quarter financial results before turning the call over to Dee. Our adjusted diluted earnings per share for Q3 2026 was $2.86, up from $2.57 in Q2 2026 and $2.81 in Q3 2025. The increases over both prior periods were driven by higher average AUM. A lower share count was also a factor in the year-over-year increase. As Rob mentioned, we had $28.3 billion in net outflows during the third quarter. This was driven by continued outflows from our strategies and mutual funds. Multi-asset net outflows were $7.6 billion, primarily from our target date strategies. This included a previously disclosed large redemption from a defined contribution plan in our active target date series in September. Fixed income and alternatives were positive during the quarter, and we saw net inflows from clients in APAC. Within our expanding ETF lineup, net inflows were $3.8 billion, bringing year-to-date ETF net inflows to $11 billion. These results demonstrate the breadth of client demand across several areas of our business. Moving to the income statement. Our third quarter adjusted net revenue was $2 billion, up 5.3% from Q3 2025 and up 5.1% from the prior quarter. Investment advisory revenue of $1.8 billion was up 5.8% from Q3 2025 and 3% from the prior quarter on higher average AUM, partially offset by a lower effective fee rate. Adjusted carried interest was $63.1 million compared with $15.2 million in Q2 2026. This includes carry earned on OHA's private credit products in addition to our late-stage venture fund that launched in Q1 2026. Our Q3 annualized effective fee rate, excluding performance-based fees, was 37.8 basis points compared with 38.1 basis points in Q2 2026. About 2/3 of the decline was driven by the continued growth in our Target Date Blend and hybrid suite with the remainder reflecting ongoing outflows from U.S. equities and vehicle mix shift. These trends continue to reflect client demand for solution-oriented products and lower fee vehicles. We continue to invest in these areas and broaden our range of offerings. Looking at expenses. Q3 adjusted operating expenses, excluding carried interest expense, were nearly $1.2 billion, down 1.6% from Q2 2026 and up 5.7% from Q3 2025. The decrease from the prior quarter reflects lower compensation and related costs. The third quarter of 2026 also included the reversal of about $10 million of accrued technology-related expenses for work that's now expected to occur in future periods. The increase from Q3 of last year was primarily due to expenses that track with AUM and revenues, including higher compensation and related costs and higher distribution and servicing expenses. Based on the third quarter's average AUM, we continue to expect 2026 adjusted operating expenses excluding carried interest expense to be up 4% to 7% over 2025, $4.6 billion. We are trending towards the middle of that range. Turning to capital management. Our balance sheet remains strong with $4.9 billion in cash and discretionary investments. From this position, we can continue to invest in growth initiatives and seed capital support our dividend and opportunistically repurchase shares. And now I'll turn it over to Dee.

Thank you, Jen. I'm pleased to join today's call to highlight how we're expanding the ways clients can access our investment capabilities through EPS and model portfolios. Across our global wealth channels, clients tell us that they want more choice, more personalization, more tax efficiency and more control. And advisers need ways to deliver that consistently and efficiently across our entire client base. ETFs, SMAs and models are a few of the ways we are meeting these needs. Our active ETF franchise has become an important growth platform for us with strong recent flows and market share momentum in the rapidly growing active ETF marketplace and we're investing in our ETF franchise by adding sales roles to further this growth. We've launched 6 new ETFs in the third quarter, 2 new fixed income ETF securitized income and dynamic emerging market bond, 3 new equity ETFs, mid-cap equity research, SmallCap and biotech and our active crypto ETF. That brings our lineup to 39 ETFs, including 11 with more than $1 billion in assets under management. Our total ETF AUM has grown to $33.8 billion, up from just $6.9 billion, 2 years ago. That growth, which was driven by over $23 billion of net flows over those 2 years demonstrates strong demand for the products we've launched. We generated $3.8 billion in ETF net inflows this quarter, and we've averaged over $1 billion a month since the start of the year. We are pleased that our organic growth rate has outpaced the active ETF industry every month since March, and we're now the 13th largest active ETF manager. Put us together, and it tells you 2 things: We're gaining share in a market that's growing quickly and we're winning in a market where assets remain concentrated among a relatively small number of firms. Our goal isn't to maximize the number of ETFs we offer. It's to build a coherent lineup around client portfolio needs, focusing on areas where we have differentiated capabilities and a credible path to scale. That starts with covering the core. We have offerings across the major categories, asset classes and style boxes that form the foundation of most client portfolios. This includes our fully transparent growth, value, international equity and small mid-cap ETFs that all reached 3-year track records in June as well as 12 taxable and municipal fixed income ETF. From there, we innovate to meet client needs, adding satellite and differentiated exposures where we have a strong investment proposition behind them. That includes our active Crypto EPS, which is an actively managed multi-token exchange-traded products, sector ETFs that include technology, health care, natural resources, financials and the recently launched biotech ETF. And our multi-sector income ETFs that leverages our deep credit research capabilities to identify differentiated sources of income across a broad range of fixed income markets. In addition to new stand-alone ETFs that we've launched, selective mutual fund ETF conversions are a key priority. We are focusing on funds where the ETF wrapper has the potential to improve outcomes for existing fund shareholders, including potentially lower costs and greater tax efficiency while maintaining continuity of the strategy and performance history. And now that there is regulatory approval, we are considering opportunities for ETF share classes, however, we hear from intermediaries and other industry participants that the broader ecosystem is not yet fully ready to support dual share classes at scale. We're also starting to extend our active ETF capabilities beyond the United States, and we're doing it in the same disciplined way we've built our U.S.-based lineup, starting with the core. In Europe, we're beginning with core equity building blocks in the largest categories. Earlier this month, we launched Integrated Global Equity and integrated U.S. Equity enhanced index as UCITS ETF. These first 2 ETFs built on proven strategies. By combining quantitative and fundamental research insights, our integrated equity approach broadens the source of potential alpha as well as enabling downside protection. We plan to launch additional core exposures first and then move into more differentiated thematic outcome-oriented strategies. Additionally, Robinhood announced pending regulatory approval, they are planning to launch a stock token that has economic exposure to T. Rowe Price active ETFs. SMAs are another important way we're delivering our active capabilities into the wealth channel. And in SMA, the client owns the underlying securities directly rather than shares in a pool of fund. That distinction matters for tax management and customization. We've expanded our SMA lineup, launching U.S. core bond, U.S. short-duration bond, U.S. investment-grade corporate bond, active core U.S. equity and diversified mid-cap growth SMAs in the third quarter, bringing us to 44 externally available SMA strategies. On scale, SMA assets reached $20.6 billion as of the end of September, up from $16.8 billion at year-end, driven in part by $2.2 billion in net flows to our SMAs year-to-date. We now have roughly 36,000 funded SMA accounts, up over 50% from the prior year and more than double where we were in mid-2023. Currently, these strategies are available across 40 wealth and platform relationships, and we continue to add new relationships and expand the number of strategies available across existing platforms. At the heart of it, we're combining T. Rowe Price's fundamental active investment capabilities with technology that can personalize implementation at the individual account level. That means to the extent possible, daily tax of harvesting, tax-aware transitions, concentrated physician management, client-specific restrictions and tax reporting. We use each client's own cost basis and realize gains as we seek to preserve the active exposure they look to us to provide. As Rob mentioned, we're excited about the pending F/M acquisition. This will accelerate growth in both our ETF and SMA businesses, building on the strong momentum that I've described. I'll turn now to model. which are becoming 1 of the most important ways advisers construct and manage client portfolios, and therefore, create a significant distribution opportunity for both our EPS and SMA. We participate in models in 2 ways. First, we build our own tier price developed asset allocation models that combine our investment building blocks into complete portfolio solutions. These include our risk-based and completion models. In our retail direct business, T Rowe Price developed models, which use our mutual funds and ETFs building blocks are the foundation of our retirement advisory services. Through our financial intermediary partners, these models help advisers deliver consistent portfolio construction, while they retain responsibility for the broader client relationship. We also have a team within our multi-asset division that works with advisers to develop custom models based on their objectives or constraints. Second, our products show up as building blocks inside other firms' models. Our ETFs, SMAs and other capabilities get selected as components within intermediary or partner models. For example, in the third quarter, our international value SMA was selected for placement in a large wealth management firms model. And winning a position inside a model is a different kind of win than winning an individual account. It's broader and more repeatable as it extends across many accounts and has the potential to build over time. In addition, Models are an important part of our collaboration with Goldman Sachs. T Rowe Price products, including OHA-managed strategies are building blocks across 6 Goldman models. Overall, we aim to earn a place in the portfolio construction frameworks that advisers rely on to manage client portfolios. Let me close with 4 key points. Clients increasingly want choice, personalization, tax efficiency and greater control. Advisers want scalable ways to deliver those capabilities to their clients. T. Rowe Price's combining deep active investment expertise with ETFs, SMAs and models to meet these needs. We're investing thoughtfully to build durable growth platforms for the long term. We believe ETFs, SMAs and models represent important long-term growth opportunities for T. Rowe Price. They let us meet clients where clients want to invest and help advisers deliver increasingly personalized solutions at scale. Importantly, they let us extend to T. Rowe Price's active investment management expertise to more clients through a broader range of solutions. We see substantial runway ahead in ETFs, SMAs and models, and we're committed to continuing to invest in the capabilities that will sustain back growth. Now we'll open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Glenn Schorr with Evercore.

I thought that was a very helpful conversation with ETF SMAs and models. It's interesting because I have a similar question for the institutional side. So I wanted to pick your brains on how we should be thinking about LP thought process as we go into next year. So the active to passive trend is probably a dominant thing is going to continue. But levering the conversation you just had on ETFs, SMAs and models, LPs are also thinking about having control and taking a big portfolio solution approach. And so as they're balancing big AI CapEx to chain, the move up in interest rates. I'm curious on how you see allocations changing as we head into '27. Is it the same also? Or are these same themes taking place. I'm just curious how much of that conversation applies to the institutional side.

Yes, Glenn, thank you for the question. I think the facts and circumstances of each individual institutional clients often are different. And it's hard to discern an overall theme. At a high level, as you said, the shift from actively managed equity portfolios to index-based portfolios is something that's been underway across client type for some period of time. I think that's partly reflective of the composition of market returns and perhaps is something that's likely to continue. I think we have seen a resurgence in interest in broader strategy approaches, more interest in value-based approaches we've kind of shifted away from the returns being dominated just by hyperscalers and broadening out to all of the beneficiaries of AI CapEx. I think there is also a greater interest in fixed income, as you said, rates are higher. I think there's a greater sensitivity to inflation. So among certain client types, we've seen a real interest in portfolios that provide exposure to inflation hedges or asset classes that will be resilient in an environment where you have more persistent inflation. Within alternatives this year, I think we've seen kind of more interest in infrastructure or more interest in secondaries than we certainly have in traditional PE and in private credit. I do think that there is pretty significant opportunity from a private credit perspective. I guess the last thing I would say is that there is, I think, significant opportunity in late-stage venture, which is an area where we're active given a lot of the really dynamic newer businesses and business models that AI is enabling.

Our next question comes from Alex Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

So lots of interesting growth dynamics underneath the surface. So Rob, I was hoping if you take a slightly broader step back and, sort of, you think about all the new wrappers and new partnerships, new initiatives. And as you think about T. Rowe's organic growth over the next kind of 2 to 3 years, how much do you expect these initiatives to ultimately add to the organic growth profile, acknowledging that obviously, the active equity business continues to be still somewhat challenged.

Yes, Alex, thank you for the question. I mean we're clearly navigating significant structural change. And we do expect pressure on active equities and mutual funds to persist. I think we fully recognize these trends and we're investing to compete successfully as the industry evolves. And as these comments reflected, I do think we're seeing tangible results, not just in ETF, SMA and models, but I would point out in fixed income, we've had 11 quarters of net inflow. As you noted, we continue to expand our alternative offerings, late-stage venture the collaboration with Goldman, a lot of growth opportunity with OHA. We're strengthening distribution to go-to-market and connect with clients in all of those areas. And we're also broadening our retirement offerings. I would say in each of these areas, we have the opportunity and, frankly, need to be bigger. We need to deliver great performance, which will allow the more mature businesses to be more stable. And then we need to scale these businesses where client demand is growing. I will also say that given the growing importance of distribution, we have a significant opportunity to invest in our direct business and our record-keeping platforms and our advice capabilities to drive great, more direct wealth and workplace experiences with our clients. So we're very focused on all of these. And I'd say not to confuse the near-term flow outlook with our confidence in the business over time. I do think that we have a very solid foundation, and we have the opportunity to return the business to growth. There are, as I said, we're getting traction in a number of these things. They need to be bigger. I think we have the opportunity to make them bigger organically, but we'll also use M&A as a tool where appropriate. And again, selectively, I'm with a high bar to allow us to evolve the overall portfolio and business mix.

Our next question comes from Dan Fannon with Jefferies.

So sticking with you, Rob and kind of your comments around the sequential improvement in flows. Just unpacking that a bit, is that just kind of the lack of a large redemption, which happened in the third quarter? Or is there some gross sales trends that maybe are improving that you could talk about, obviously, ETFs, I would assume as part of that. And then also just in the fourth quarter, typically, there is some DC changes. And wondering just how that pipeline looks at this point in time as well.

Yes, Dan, thank you. Yes, as you said, we do expect sequential improvement in Q4 relative to Q3 and relative to Q4 '25, but I think given the trends in active equity in particular, we would expect flows to remain at an elevated level relative to the run rate that we experienced in the first half of the year. October is weak, but we see based on the pipeline, better results in November and December. As you said, there's a lot of year-end related plan activity. And that makes Q4 difficult to predict in the sense that there are instances where operationally those things can slip into early next year. But we have a really good engagement with clients and I think a very healthy set of opportunities across the business to at least partially offset the ongoing active growth equity and mutual fund related headwinds. In terms of the specifics sequentially, we did have RDF plan termination in Q3 that impacted the results. It's probably worth spending a few minutes on the target date flow dynamic. I think there are 2 trends that we see impacting retirement date flows. The first is participant flows where contributions and distributions are increasingly reflecting an aging participant base. So you have baby boomers retiring, taking distributions or rolling plan balances over into IRAs and often particularly given the market dynamic over the last couple of years, those balances are quite large. That means that there's less of a tailwind from participant net contributions than there has been in the past. And I think that's an industry-wide trend that's likely to persist for a couple of years. What that means is that our growth opportunity will be more dependent on winning net new plans. And the second trend I would say is in that area, we're seeing tremendous interest in blend and hybrid right now. I would say, across our lineup, we feel very good about the investment performance over all time frames. But kind of particularly, I think if you look at 98% of our AUM outperforming over a 10-year time horizon, we feel it's a very compelling value proposition. We'll continue to innovate in the retirement area with retirement income-oriented solutions with the Goldman Sister Series incorporating alternatives into the target date building blocks. So we see substantial opportunity in retirement solutions going forward. But I think it would be fair to characterize our target date flows is more dependent on winning new plans which means there'll be more uneven. And you saw that unfold over the difference between Q2 and Q3, where in Q2, we brought on a sizable new plan. And in Q3, we had, as I said, a sizable termination.

Our next question comes from Michael Cho with JPMorgan.

I just wanted to drill down on the active ETF conversation. Do you appreciate all the discussion and comprehensive overview there on the active ETF. You noted that T. Rowe is the 13th largest factor ETF manager. When you think about some of these initiatives in place in terms of magnitude of impact, can you just help us think through the execution road map from a distribution perspective from taking here on T. Rowe on 13 on list to maybe getting to top 5, if that's even the goal.

Sure. Thank you for the question. So as I said earlier, we do have 39 ETFs in the market, which represents 72% of the Morningstar category. So we feel really good about our lineup, but we will continue to add to our lineup, particularly where we see opportunities to meet client needs. And you've seen that we have really good momentum in the lineup that we have. We have 11 ETFs that have more than $1 billion in AUM, and we have -- even if you look at our net flows for the past year 4 ETF have $1 billion in net flows over the course of the year. So we feel really good about where we are. We are particularly focused in terms of kind of where we are on the leaderboard. What we really want to make sure is that we have a lineup that is meeting client needs and that we continue to see the strength in our lineup by the assets, and then that closes that as a result of meeting those client needs. So we don't have a particular goal in terms of the leader board, but we are looking to continue to accelerate our overall flows, and we have good momentum and expect that to continue over time.

I would just say, I think we do expect to move up the leader board in the sense that I think we have a significant opportunity to gain share in the category. We're -- our growth over the course of the last couple of years has been substantial. And as we've broadened our lineup as we scale that line up as we get more placement on wealth platforms as we get more placement in models as more of our ETF models are placed on those platforms. We think there's a very significant opportunity to move up the ranks. Although, as Dee said, there isn't a specific objective to be top 3 or top 5. I think we have a big opportunity to gain market share. I would also say that we've been able to build this business largely organically without converting existing mutual fund assets or doing ETF as a share class. But as Dee said in her prepared remarks, those are also opportunities, and we'll do that where but we think that it's the right thing to do for the underlying client and where we have the opportunity to preserve a track record and potentially access a broader base of clients and client interest for a set of strategies that have particularly compelling underlying investment results. And I think there are a number of things in fixed income that we're evaluating in that regard right now.

Our next question comes from Alex Bond with KBW.