The publicly traded parent of a midwestern mutual fund firm is cutting more than 150 jobs soon, even as they ramp up their relationship with a key partner.

Philip James Sanders Waddell & Reed, Inc. CEO, Chief Investment Officer

On Tuesday, Overland Park, Kansas-based Waddell & Reed (parent of Ivy Funds) filed a notice about plans to lay off 158 employees. That same day, on Waddell's Q2 earnings call (as transcribed by Seeking Alpha), chief financial officer Ben Clouse told analysts that the cuts "will be substantially completed by the fourth quarter of 2019." Waddell has 1,332 full-time employees, so the cuts amount to 11.86 percent of its headcount.

The Kansas City Business Journal reported on the news.

Clouse added that Waddell will take "pretax restructuring charge in the range of $4 million to $6 million" over this quarter and the next. He tied the cuts to Waddell's plans, revealed in June, to "outsource the transactional processing operations of [Waddell's] transfer agency" to long-time ally SS&C Asset Manager Solutions (fka DST Asset Manager Solutions).

Also on Tuesday, the Waddell team reported Q2 2019 earnings of $0.45 per diluted share and revenue of $270.2 million, beating expectations by $0.08 and $2.72 million, respectively. The firm ended Q2 with $71.9 billion in AUM. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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