MutualFundWire.com
   The insiders' edge for 40 Act industry executives!
an InvestmentWires' Publication |
Thursday, May 2, 2013 Three Things to Know From Artisan's Earnings It's been less than two months since Artisan Partners [profile] IPOed. How are they doing so far? On Tuesday the Milwaukee-based mutual fund shop issued its first ever quarterly earnings report, this one for Q1 2013. Artisan reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.47, $0.06 lower than the analysts' estimate RTTNews. Assets under management climbed 25.1 percent year-over-year to $83.2 billion on March 31, 2013. In Artisan's earnings call, chief financial officer C.J. Daley credited the AUM jump to $6.6 billion of net client cash inflows and 10 percent in "organic growth," despite 15 percent in market depreciation. The Milwaukee Business Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also covered Artisan results. When perusing Artisan's earnings release and the earnings call transcript on Seeking Alpha, several interesting points grabbed MFWire's attention: POINT 1: This Was Their First Earnings Report and Earnings Call, Ever! POINT 2: Artisan's PMs Are Generating Strong Long-Term Results POINT 3: Colson's On the Hunt For More PMs Now to drill down on those three points. POINT 1: This Was Their First Earnings Report and Earnings Call, Ever! Artisan president and CEO Eric Colson, and CFO Daley, both stressed that these are Artisan's first publicly issued results. Colson took the opportunity to educate the analysts on the call by regaling them with Artisan's history and philosophy. Robert Lee of KBW even congratulated the duo on their first earnings call. POINT 2: Artisan's PMs Are Generating Strong Long-Term Results Top-notch PMs delivering top-notch performance is Artisan's all about, Colson told the analysts, and he highlighted Artisan's performance success so far: I want to talk about our investment results. As I mentioned earlier, we major investment success over a generally defined four market cycle. We focus on longer periods, because ultimately our teams invest in businesses, and business owners think about where they want to be in three, five or ten years. Owners don't run a business three months at a time. So, when we think about the performance success of our managers, we operate very similarly.POINT 3: Colson's On the Hunt For More PMs Marc Irizarry of Goldman Sachs asked Colson his plans for "talent acquisitions." Colson responded: Certainly, Marc. There is no set timing that we can pinpoint and say that we are going to do one or two teams every year. Comments earlier were around the amount of information and data that's coming through the public process provided us more exposure into the marketplace, so our networks expanded. We will continue to come through those networks and we will continue to work with individuals and teams to see if they are fit with our organization, but as of today, we have a few teams that we are looking at and talking to, but no specifics on any on boarding.Later on the call, Cynthia Mayer of Bank of America Merrill Lynch recruited to the subject of finding and acquiring talent, asking if Artisan has "anybody focused on that full time." Colson gave insight into Artisan's search process: It is primarily comes to my desk, but we obviously have our analysts and our portfolio managers out talking to individuals and in many cases they give me names of people that impress them. Our founder Andy Ziegler is a strong founding board for ideas and if the name does come across, he would certainly pass along to myself and that new team, but new idea generation of Andy is limited. It's more of a sounding board and it's really the idea that come from a network. There's a strong group head hunters to bankers to peers that recollect ideas and bring to my desk and then we have a group that evaluates the opportunity.See the Seeking Alpha transcript of Artisan's earnings call and the earnings release for more on how Artisan's doing. Printed from: MFWire.com/story.asp?s=43777 Copyright 2013, InvestmentWires, Inc. All Rights Reserved |