The asset manager BlackRock reported record second-quarter revenue and profit on Thursday as investors used the company’s products to navigate a difficult interest rate environment.
BlackRock said its net income in the second quarter was $729 million, or $4.19 a share, up 32 percent from %554 million, or $3.08 a share, in the period a year earlier and about 15 percent from the previous quarter. The results handily beat the $3.81-a-share profit that analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected.
The company’s gains from a year earlier were driven largely by the broad rally in the stock market, which pushed up the value of BlackRock’s products, especially its exchange-traded funds known as iShares. Over the last three months, BlackRock benefited from investors who were looking for products that would shield them from the expected change in stimulus policy from the Federal Reserve and the rise in interest rates that has produced.
BlackRock customers put money into funds that can hold multiple asset types and active bond funds that charge higher fees. Over all, BlackRock products registered $11.9 billion of net inflows. The company took in $2.5 billion in revenue, up 11 percent from $2.2 billion a year earlier.
The firm’s chief executive, Laurence D. Fink, said in a statement that the company is “seeing the early stages of a rotation within fixed income as investors increasingly focus on the duration of their fixed-income portfolios, with flows moving into actively managed, unconstrained products.â€
The company’s results were somewhat of a departure from recent quarters when the biggest inflows went into the iShares E.T.F.’s. During the second quarter, iShares experienced overall outflows of $963 million.
