By Iain Withers and Sinchita Mitra
LONDON (Reuters) -British asset manager abrdn fell to a full-year pretax loss and reported a slide in client funds for 2022, as global markets turmoil and runaway inflation weighed on its finances.
But the company beat low analyst forecasts for its earnings, sending its shares up as much as 6% in early trading. The stock was last up 1% at 0815 GMT.
A rout in equity and bond markets last year, exacerbated by rising geopolitical tensions and the war in Ukraine, have squeezed investment manager earnings.
Abrdn reported a 615 million pound ($741 million) pretax loss for the year ended Dec. 31, compared to a 1.1 billion pound profit the prior year.
Chief Executive Stephen Bird said 2022 had been “one of the toughest investing years in living memory”, but added the firm was resilient and had posted an annual profit on an adjusted operating basis of 263 million pounds.
This beat the 241 million-pound figure forecast by analysts, according to consensus figures compiled by the company.
Abrdn’s assets under management fell 8% to 500 billion pounds from 542 billion pounds, while the company reported a further year of net outflows of client funds.
Bird is two years into a three-year plan to try to turn around the firm’s ailing fortunes, after years of outflows and temporarily dropping out of the FTSE 100 index of major British firms last year.
Abrdn announced a 14.6 pence per share full-year dividend for investors, broadly in line with analyst forecasts.
The company also said it had agreed to sell its discretionary fund management arm abrdn Capital to Liechtenstein-based private bank LGT for 140 million pounds.
The sale involves the transfer of around 6.1 billion pounds of assets and about 140 employees, the company said.
Bird, who joined abrdn in 2020, has tried to cut costs and expand the business into mass-market retail investing through the acquisition of interactive investor.
The company, which was once known as Standard Life Aberdeen, was formed through the merger of Aberdeen and Standard Life in 2017.
Separately, wealth manager St. James’s Place demonstrated its appeal among retirement savers and investors, posting net inflows of 9.8 billion pounds in 2022 and funds under management of 148.4 billion pounds, down from 154 billion pounds in 2021.
“….we achieved the second-best year for new business flows in our history as our advisers performed admirably in helping clients feel confident in their finances and remain on track for the future,” CEO Andrew Croft said in a statement.
($1 = 0.8300 pounds)
(Reporting by Iain Withers in London and Sinchita Mitra in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely, Sinead Cruise and Sharon Singleton)
