Clients pulled £3.2bn from Ninety One’s funds in the six months to the end of September, as the asset manager said it is a “risk-on” business operating in a “risk-off” environment.
Interim results for the company released this morning (November 15) showed an 8 per cent decrease in assets under management during the period, driven by the net outflows as well as negative market and forex movements of £8.4bn.
The outflows mark a sharp change for the asset manager, which saw its inflows soar to £5bn in the year to the end of March.
Chief executive of Ninety One, Hendrik du Toit, said the company is a “predominantly long only” one, inherently exposed to the price volatility of the financial assets in which clients’ capital is invested.
“We know that successful investing is about taking sensible risks over the long term to generate excess returns,” he said.
The main outflows were from the group’s equities offerings, with £2.2bn withdrawn in the half year, compared with net inflows of £1.8bn for the same period in 2021.
Multi-asset vehicles also saw steep outflows, of £825mn, which Ninety One said was largely from UK adviser clients.
Redemptions from fixed income were more muted, with £346mn withdrawn, and alternatives were the only asset class with net investment, with net inflows of £5mn.
This drove performance fees down to £11mn for the period, with pre-tax profit down 16 per cent to £111mn, although £6.6mn was made from a forex gain due to US dollar transactions where the pound weakened against the dollar.
Du Toit said the business is cautious about the near term market conditions.
“Our working assumption is that we will be operating in challenging markets for the foreseeable future,” he said.
sally.hickey@ft.com
