Pershing takes in $18B in net new assets; revenue, fees fall

BNY Mellon Pershing bank picture Bloomberg April 22, 2019
Christopher Lee/Bloomberg

BNY Mellon’s Pershing, which represents the biggest line of business in the bank’s newly created Market and Wealth Services unit, gathered up almost $20 billion in net new assets in the first quarter, but revenue and fees were down as a result of business lost last year to recruiting and M&A deals.

In its Investment and Wealth Management unit, wealth management revenue was up, as were client assets. The rise in revenue was due to market gains and higher net interest revenue. Client assets benefited from net inflows as well as higher markets.

Earnings were down in Market and Wealth Services as well as in Investment and Wealth Management, where revenue fell. Revenue was flat in Market and Wealth Services.

On the conference call with analysts, the outgoing CEO of BNY Mellon, Todd Gibbons, spent some time talking about Pershing X, a business unit the bank created last year to develop technology that will provide a wide variety of services to RIAs and broker-dealers.

“In Pershing X,” he said, “we continue to make solid progress since announcing the initiative back in October. Following on last quarter’s acquisition of Optimal Asset Management, this quarter we made several key hires, which completed the filling out of our leadership team. And we folded Albridge’s wealth reporting and data aggregation tool under the Pershing X umbrella.” In this way, said Gibbons, who is set to retire Aug. 31, the engineers of Albridge Solutions will be able to speed up development of the platform.

For the key takeaways from BNY Mellon’s earnings announcement and call, scroll down through our slideshow. For coverage of Pershing’s previous quarterly earnings, click here.

Pershing net new assets, revenue and fees

Pershing took in $18 billion in net new assets in the quarter. Clearing accounts grew at a 4% annualized growth rate. Revenue was down 6% to $570 million and investment services fees also fell 6%, to $433 million. The year-over-year decrease in revenue reflected lost business, as well as an active first quarter for transactions in 2021.

Market and wealth services

Pershing represents the biggest line of business in the Market and Wealth Services unit at 47%. Total revenue was flat, income before taxes fell 10%, but the pre-tax operating margin was 41%.

Wealth management revenue, assets and fees

Revenue was up 4% to $306 million, reflecting higher net interest revenue and market values. Client assets rose 4% to $305 billion, driven by market gains and cumulative net inflows. For the investment and wealth management unit as a whole, total revenue was $964 million, down 3%. Income before taxes fell 24%. Investment management fees were flat at $848 million.

Investment and wealth management assets rise

AUM was up 2% to $2.3 trillion. Emily Portney, chief financial officer of BNY Mellon, said the increase was due to cumulative net inflows into cash and long-term products as well as higher market values, partially offset by the unfavorable impact of the stronger U.S. dollar. “As it relates to flows in the quarter,” she said, “we saw $1 billion of net outflows from long-term products and $11 billion of net outflows from cash.”

Pershing X

In response to an analyst’s question about Pershing X and what kind of return it expected from its investment here, Gibbons said profitability is probably a few years away. “As we have disclosed before, we are not expecting this to drop much to the bottom line over the course of the next couple of years,” he said. “This is an investment in positioning Pershing and the aggregate wealth management platform services platform for the future. And so this is an investment in the medium to long-term. We think it’s important, our customers very much want it, and we are excited for it.”
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