BlackRock Q1 Earnings Call Highlights
BlackRock reported its Q1 2022 earnings and hosted a conference call with analysts yesterday that mentioned money market, bond funds and stablecoins several times. (See the earnings release here and Seeking Alpha’s earnings call transcript here.) CFO Gary Shedlin says, "BlackRock generated total net flows of $86 billion in the first quarter, representing 3% annualized organic asset growth with $114 billion of long-term net inflows partially offset by $27 billion of generally seasonal cash management outflows.... We incurred approximately $75 million of gross discretionary yield support waivers in the first quarter. However, waivers for our flagship funds were essentially removed following rate hikes by the Bank of England and Federal Reserve in March. Recall that approximately 50% of gross fee waivers are generally shared with distributors, so the benefit to base fees is partially offset by higher distribution expense." Shedlin also tells us, "As Larry will discuss in more detail, earlier this week we announced the minority investment in Circle, the operator of the market infrastructure for USDC, a dollar-based fully reserved stablecoin and one of the fastest-growing digital assets with more than $52 billion in circulation. Circle's technology currently enables the frictionless and real-time transfer of payments and is being explored for other applications across the financial ecosystem.... BlackRock's cash management platform saw net outflows of $27 billion, driven by redemptions from offshore prime and U.S. government money market funds, in line with the broader money market fund industry. BlackRock has steadily grown our share of the cash management industry by leveraging our scale and delivering innovative distribution and risk management solutions for clients. We are an existing manager of the cash reserves that underpin USDC, and we look forward to partnering with Circle to expand that relationship and become their primary manager in the future." CEO Larry Fink comments, "Earlier this week, we announced that BlackRock made a minority investment in Circle, a global Internet payment firm and the sole issuer of USD coin, a dollar-based fully reserved stablecoin, which is one of the fastest-growing digital assets in the world. BlackRock is already the manager of USDC cash reserves, and we look forward to begin expanding our relationship to become the primary manager of the cash reserves." During the Q&A, Fink responds, "Tactically, investors can move out of longer durations to lower duration or shorter duration. Obviously, if cash and money market funds begin yielding 2%, 2.5%, you'll see movement away from maybe longer-dated funds into shorter-dated funds. So let's be clear, movement within fixed income is quite large."
