BlackRock’s 1Q ETF Flows, Revenue Slide

Fund flows dipped 60% from the year-ago quarter as investors fled to safety.

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BlackRock Inc.’s iShares unit, the largest exchange-traded fund issuer in the world, saw a big drop in cash flowing into the unit as market volatility sent investors into low-risk products like money markets.  

The New York-based firm’s iShares unit pulled $22 billion into its ETF products during the first quarter, according to a statement, nearly 61% lower from the year-ago quarter’s $56 billion of inflows. That decline pinched the unit’s equity and fixed income revenue, which dropped 5.5% to $1.37 billion from the same period last year.  

Still, inflows into bond ETFs pushed up so-called long-term net inflows, which includes mutual funds and ETFs, to $103 billion, beating the Bloomberg estimate of $84.1 billion. 

Whipsawing markets, bank runs and back-to-back-to-back Federal Reserve interest rate hikes pushed investors into safer investments in the first quarter. That portfolio rebalancing meant fewer risky stock ETFs were purchased, and more bond and money market products were sold.  

“More and more deposits are leaving, and they’re going into ETFs and into any form of cash and money market funds,” Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said on a conference call. 

Fixed income ETF revenue rose by $6 million to $295 million, while fees and other revenue from equity ETFs fell by 6.9% from nearly $1.2 billion in the year-ago quarter.  

The firm’s bond ETF unit took in $34 billion of net inflows and “accounted for over 60% of total fixed income ETF trading volume during the quarter,” according to Fink.  

Equity ETF assets under management rose to $2.2 trillion compared to the $2.1 trillion at the end of 2022. Fixed income ETFs grew to $810.8 billion from $758.1 billion during the same period.  

The rest of the company similarly posted a mixed bag of results.  

Overall assets under management dipped 5% year over year to $9.1 trillion. Still, inflows from across the firm’s products jumped to $110.3 billion from $86.3 billion during the same period last year.  

BlackRock’s net income fell 18% from a year earlier to $1.2 billion, or $7.93 a share, beating Bloomberg analysts’ estimate of $7.67. Revenue dipped to $4.2 billion, down 10% from the $4.7 billion for the same period the year prior. Shares of the company jumped 3.1% to $691.33 Friday.  

 

Contact Shubham Saharan at [email protected]       

Shubham Saharan is a markets reporter at etf.com. Before joining the company, she reported for Bloomberg and the Financial Times. Saharan is a graduate of Barnard College of Columbia University.