Virtus Inv (NASDAQ:VRTS) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Friday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Summary
Virtus Inv reported an 8% increase in sales, driven by U.S. retail funds, separate accounts, and global funds, despite overall net outflows of $8.4 billion.
The company expanded into Private Markets through its investment in Keystone National Group, enhancing its asset-centric private credit capabilities.
Assets under management decreased to $149 billion, a decline from $159 billion, primarily due to net outflows and market performance.
The operating margin was reported at 24%, with adjusted earnings per share at $5.38, affected by seasonal employment expenses.
Future initiatives include launching new ETFs and expanding distribution of diverse investment strategies, with a focus on improving net flows and capitalizing on quality-oriented equity strategies returning to favor.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good morning. My name is Dede and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Virtus Investment Partners Quarterly Conference call. The slide presentation for This call is available in the Investor Relations section of the Virtus website at www.virtus.com. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the Virtus website. At this time. All participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker’s remarks there will be a question and answer period and instructions will follow at that time. I will now turn the conference to your host, Shawn Roark.
Shawn Roark (Host)
Thanks Dede and good morning everyone. Welcome to Virtus Investment Partners discussion of our first quarter 2026 financial and operating results. Joining me today are George Elward, our President and CEO, and Mike Engerthal, our Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Before we begin, I’ll refer you to the disclosures on slide 2. Today’s comments may include forward looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties described in our news release and SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially. We will also reference certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in today’s news release and financial supplement on our website. Now I’d like to turn the call over to George thank you Sean and good morning everyone. I’ll start today with an overview of the results we reported this morning and then Mike will provide more detail. Although the first quarter was challenging from a net flow perspective, reflecting our meaningful exposure to quality oriented equity strategies which have remained out of favor with several areas of strength during the quarter that were overshadowed and we also advanced key growth initiatives. Key highlights of the quarter included an 8% increase in sales with growth in U.S. retail funds, separate accounts and global funds Positive net flows in several strategies including high conviction growth equity, multi sector fixed income listed real assets and event driven positive net flows in ETFs and global funds. Expansion into Private Markets with our investment in Keystone National Group and continued return of capital including 10 million of share repurchases, we remained active in broadening our product offerings to meet the evolving client demand and expand our growth opportunities over time. The investment at Keystone on March 1 added a differentiated asset centric private credit capability and our sales teams are actively focused on expanding distribution of their compelling strategies to retail and institutional clients. Keystone focuses on senior secured amortizing fixed rate financings backed by tangible assets. We believe their approach offers attractive stability and defensive characteristics for investors seeking a private credit allocation or a broader income oriented solution with a different risk profile than many traditional direct lending vehicles. Keystone expands our private market capabilities which also include those of Crescent Cove as well as our overall alternative offerings that include managed futures and event driven strategies. We continue to launch attractive actively managed ETFs including emerging markets dividend ETF from our systematic team, a real estate income ETF from Duff and Phelps and a growth equity ETF from Sylvan. We expect to continue to be active in developing and introducing new products over the upcoming quarters. Looking at our first quarter results, assets under management were $149 billion at March 31, down from $159 billion due to net outflows and market performance, total sales increased 8% to $5.8 billion with a 26% increase in sales of equity strategies in large part from some of our strategies that do not have a quality orientation by product. We had higher sales of US Retail funds, retail separate accounts and global funds. Retail separate account sales increased 19% with higher sales in each month of the quarter and on April 1st we reopened this mid cap core strategy that had been soft closed in 2024. Total net outflows were 8.4 billion and across products the outflows were almost entirely driven by equities. I would note that the majority over 80% of the net outflows were in the first two months of the quarter as net outflows improved significantly in March. Looking at flows across asset classes, the equity net outflows largely reflected the continued style headwind for quality oriented strategies including a meaningful institutional global equity redemption and the previously disclosed rebalancing of a lower fee retail separate account model only mandate to a passive strategy. Fixed income net flows were essentially breakeven for the quarter as positive net flows in multi sector convertibles and preferreds were offset by net outflows in investment grade and leveraged finance. Multi asset strategies were also essentially breakeven while alternative strategies had net outflows of $0.4 billion primarily driven by managed futures. In terms of what we saw in April, as previously mentioned, overall trends improved over the course of the first quarter and April flows were more similar to March for US Retail funds, both sales and flows improved in April over March and HTF sales and net flows were at their highest level since September for retail separate accounts. While we do not have as much transparency given a large portion is model only, we do anticipate better flows in the second quarter and are pleased to have recently reopened the SMID Cap core strategy on the institutional side, known wins actually modestly exceed known redemptions for the first time in a long time. Though as always, institutional flows can be very lumpy and hard to predict. Turning now to our financial results, the operating margin was 24% and reflected the impact of seasonally higher employment expenses. Excluding those items, the operating margin was 30.3%. Earnings per share as adjusted, a $5.38 declined from the fourth quarter, primarily due to $1.26 per share of seasonal employment expenses. Excluding those items, earnings per share as adjusted declined 6%. Turning to investment performance, as we previously discussed, recent performance reflects our overweight and quality equity. However, we did see improving relative performance in the first quarter in our equity strategies. Fixed income and alternative strategies have consistently strong performance with 78 and 71% respectively, beating benchmarks for the three year period. Over the longer ten year period, 54% of our equity, 73% of our fixed income and 71% of alternative strategies beat their benchmarks. In terms of our balance sheet and capital, we ended the quarter with cash and equivalents of $137 million. Other investments of $269 million and $200 million …
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