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Investors poured $64.5 billion into BlackRock's iShares
exchange-traded funds business during the quarter, up from $24.3
billion a year earlier.
That helped the company end the quarter with $5.4 trillion in
assets under management, up from the preceding quarter, when
managed assets totaled $5.1 trillion.
BlackRock's net income rose to $862 million, or $5.23 per share,
in the first quarter, from $657 million, or $3.92 per share, a
year earlier.
Excluding items, the company earned $5.25 per share. That beat
the $4.89 forecast of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
The investment management industry is being reshaped by a move
of investors toward cheaper products, especially index funds.
Yet BlackRock has been rewarded by Wall Street in part because
its iShares franchise offers relatively low-cost funds that are
in high demand.
Still, BlackRock's higher-fee business of actively picking
individual winners in the market is under pressure. Last
quarter, BlackRock's active funds posted $1.8 billion in
withdrawals.
The asset manager announced a plan last month to cut jobs and
fees while relying more on computers to assemble its investment
portfolios, a flurry of changes meant to jumpstart its lagging
stockpicking franchise.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Diptendu
Lahiri in Bengaluru and Simon Jessop in London; Editing by
Shounak Dasgupta and Alden Bentley)
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