Federated Hermes (FHI) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: MDT Inflows Lift Equity AUM

Key Takeaways

• Federated Hermes ended Q3 2026 with record equity assets under management of $110.5 billion. Positive net inflows of $1.9 billion were partly offset by lower market valuations.
• MDT strategies generated a record $6 billion in gross sales and $3.2 billion in net sales. Seven of nine MDT fund strategies ranked in the top quartile of their Morningstar categories over the trailing three years.
• Fixed-income assets ended the quarter at $99 billion. Net sales totaled $700 million, but lower market values reduced assets by $1.8 billion.
• Total money market assets declined by $27 billion, or 4%, from Q2. Management attributed the decrease to September corporate tax payments, the Federal Reserve’s mid-September rate move and seasonal liquidity changes in large state pools.
• Q3 revenue increased $4.6 million, or 1%, sequentially, while operating expenses fell $15.9 million, or 4%, largely because Q2 included $11.2 million of FCP acquisition costs.
• Federated Hermes entered Q4 with approximately $6.5 billion of net institutional mandates won but not yet funded. Management expects equity additions, mainly MDT, and private-market inflows to outweigh anticipated fixed-income redemptions.

Core Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

Equities and MDT

MDT was the main growth driver. Its equity and market-neutral strategies recorded $6 billion of gross sales and $3.2 billion of net sales. Institutional separate accounts, including sub-advisory mandates, added $1.5 billion of Q3 net sales, nearly all in MDT strategies.

Federated Hermes reported net sales across 33 equity fund and SMA strategies. Based on Morningstar data for the trailing three years, 56% of its equity funds outperformed peers and 33% ranked in their category’s top quartile. Combined equity fund and SMA net sales reached $242 million from the start of Q4 through October 23.

Management said institutional demand was diversified across all-cap core, large-cap value, small-cap growth, large-cap core and large-cap growth strategies. MDT ETF and collective investment trust products also recorded net inflows.

Fixed Income

Twenty-two fixed-income funds and SMAs generated net sales in Q3. Leading products included the Sterling Cash Plus Fund, Ultrashort Bond Funds, Total Return Bond ETF, Conservative Microshort Fund and C.W. Henderson Short-Term Muni SMA.

Institutional fixed-income separate accounts produced $924 million of net sales, driven by a large public entity with recurring sizable inflows and outflows. For the trailing three years, 49% of fixed-income funds outperformed peers and 21% ranked in the top quartile of their Morningstar categories.

Combined fixed-income funds and SMAs recorded $2 billion of net redemptions through October 23. This included a $1.7 billion redemption from a Total Return Bond strategy client that chose to take more risk within a multibillion-dollar mandate.

Money Markets

Money market fund assets declined 3% sequentially, while separate-account assets fell 8%. The company’s estimated money market mutual fund share, including sub-advised funds, decreased to approximately 6.6% from 6.7% in Q2.

Management said Federated Hermes maintained its emphasis on daily liquidity at par rather than extending maturities beyond its comfort zone to capture incremental yield. The company said its money market fund assets had subsequently increased by $3.7 billion through October 28.

A few days before the call, total managed assets were approximately $890 billion, including $654 billion in money markets, $112 billion in equities, $98 billion in fixed income, $23 billion in alternative/private markets and $3 billion in multi-asset strategies. Money market mutual fund assets were $489 billion and averaged the same amount during October.

Private Markets and Digital Assets

The MDT Market Neutral Fund and ETF generated combined net sales of $180 million. Federated Hermes was also marketing its sixth global private equity co-investment fund and a new European Real Estate Debt Fund focused on senior and whole loans.

In digital assets, the company is working with Prometheum to distribute tokenized securities through its SEC-registered, FINRA-member broker-dealer infrastructure. Other initiatives involve BNY, Goldman, Archax and Conduit Digital Holdings. Management emphasized that its current priority is tokenized liquidity products and that these efforts are intended to prepare infrastructure for future demand rather than respond to strong current client demand.

Management Guidance

• Federated Hermes estimates its full-year 2026 effective tax rate will be between 25% and 28%.
• Management expects equity mandates in the institutional pipeline to fund over the next two quarters. The company entered Q4 with approximately $6.5 billion of net institutional wins not yet funded.
• The expected pipeline includes about $7 billion of MDT equity additions and approximately $1.2 billion of net private-market inflows across direct lending, private equity and trade finance. Expected fixed-income net redemptions are approximately $1.7 billion.
• The CFO expects compensation expense to rise in Q4 as the business grows. Distribution expenses will primarily depend on money market asset levels, while systems and communications spending is expected to remain elevated.
• Management highlighted an operating margin above 30% and expressed an objective of maintaining that level, but provided no 2027 expense forecast.

Risks and Areas to Watch

• Lower market valuations offset positive Q3 net sales in both equities and fixed income.
• Federated Hermes’ conservative liquidity positioning in money market funds can create temporary performance and flow gaps when competitors extend maturities to capture additional yield.
• Large institutional mandates can produce sizable inflows or redemptions, as demonstrated by the $1.7 billion Total Return Bond redemption and recurring movements from a large public entity.
• Institutional separate accounts and sub-advised mandates carry lower fee rates than traditional 40 Act mutual funds. Management acknowledged that pipeline funding could dilute the blended fee rate.
• Tokenized products remain an infrastructure investment rather than a material demand-led growth driver, according to management.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Money market flow gap: Management attributed weaker Q3 flows relative to some competitors partly to its refusal to extend maturities beyond internal liquidity and credit limits for incremental yield. It said flows were beginning to normalize in October.

SMA momentum: The company linked strong SMA sales to long-term MDT performance, broad distribution and a diversified institutional pipeline rather than a single product or channel initiative.

Tax-aware strategies: Management confirmed that Federated Hermes is working with firms on tax-aware structures that may be added to existing mandates. It also highlighted the MDT market-neutral strategy as an existing long-short offering with consistent net inflows.

Fixed-income demand: Management expects shorter-duration products such as Ultrashort and Microshort strategies to lead demand as investors move modestly along the yield curve. It also noted that the Total Return Bond Fund remained its highest-gross-selling fixed-income product during Q3 despite the subsequent large redemption.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Federated Hermes Third Quarter 2026 Analyst Call and Webcast.

[Operator Instructions] And please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Ray Hanley, President, Federated Investors Management Company. Sir, the floor is yours.

Raymond Hanley

Thank you, and welcome to our call. Leading today's call will be Chris Donahue, CEO and President of Federated Hermes; and Tom Donahue, Chief Financial Officer. Joining us for the Q&A are Saker Nusseibeh, who is the CEO of Federated Hermes Limited; and Debbie Cunningham, the Chief Investment Officer for Money Markets.

During today's call, we may make forward-looking statements, and we want to note that Federated Hermes' actual results may be materially different than the results implied by such statements. Please review the risk disclosures in our SEC filings. No assurance can be given as to future results, and Federated Hermes assumes no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements.

Chris?

John Donahue

Thanks, Ray. Good morning, all. I will review Federated Hermes' business performance. Tom will comment on our financial results. We ended the third quarter with record equity assets under management of $110.5 billion, up $949 million from Q2 as positive net inflows of $1.9 billion were partially offset by lower market valuations. Equity sales results were led by MDT fundamental quant strategies. MDT equity and market-neutral strategies had a record $6 billion in gross sales and $3.2 billion in net sales in the third quarter.

Now looking at fund performance rankings at the end of Q3, 7 of 9 MDT fund strategies were in the top performance quartile of their Morningstar categories for the trailing 3 years. We had net sales in 33 equity fund and SMA strategies during Q3, including a variety of MDT offerings. Institutional separate accounts, including sub-advisory mandates, added $1.5 billion in Q3 net sales, nearly all in MDT strategies.

Now looking at our equity fund performance at the end of the third quarter and using Morningstar data once again for the trailing 3 years, 56% of our equity funds were beating peers and 33% were in the top quartile of their category. Now for the fourth quarter through October 23, combined equity funds and SMAs had net sales of $242 million.

Now turning to fixed income. Assets ended Q3 at $99 billion. Net positive sales of $700 million were offset by a decrease of $1.8 billion due to lower market values. We had 22 fixed income funds and SMAs with net sales in the third quarter, led by the Sterling Cash Plus Fund, our Ultrashort Bond Funds, Total Return Bond ETF, Conservative Microshort Fund and the C.W. Henderson Short-Term Muni SMA. Fixed income institutional separate accounts had Q3 net sales of $924 million, driven by a large public entity that has regular sizable inflows and outflows. Regarding performance at the end of the third quarter and using Morningstar data for the trailing 3 years, 49% of our fixed income funds were beating peers and 21% were in the top quartile of their category.

For Q4 through October 23, combined fixed income funds and SMAs had net redemptions of $2 billion, which includes $1.7 billion in redemptions from a client in the total return bond strategy, who went in the direction of taking additional risk for this part of their multibillion-dollar mandate. On September 30, this fund, Total Return Bond Fund, ranked in the top third of its category for the trailing 10 years, 66th percentile for 3 years, top 28% for 1 year and top 18% for the trailing 3 months.

Now in the alternative/private markets category, assets were up slightly, reaching $21.7 billion. The MDT Market Neutral Fund and ETF combined for $180 million net sales. We are in the market with the global private equity co-invest fund, the sixth vintage of our PEC series and the European Real Estate Debt Fund, a new pooled European debt fund that will invest in senior and whole loans. Across our long-term investment platform, we began the fourth quarter with about $6.5 billion in net institutional wins yet to fund into both funds and separate accounts. Equity strategies are expected to have net sales of about $7 billion in MDT additions. Approximately $1.2 billion on a net basis is expected to come into private markets, including direct lending, private equity and trade finance. Fixed income is expected to have net redemptions of about $1.7 billion, which includes the aforementioned redemption in the multi-sector field.

Moving on to money markets. Total money market assets decreased by $27 billion or 4% from the second quarter as funds decreased by $13.6 billion or 3% and separate accounts decreased by about $13.4 billion or 8%. Money market fund assets were impacted by the mid-September increase in interest rates by the Fed and by September's corporate tax payments. Money market separate account assets were impacted by the liquidity levels of large state pools that we manage and typically peak with tax collections at the end of the year through April before decreasing in Q2 and Q3. Our estimate of money market mutual fund market share, including sub-advised funds, was about 6.6% at the end of Q3, down from 6.7% at the end of Q2.

Turning to digital assets. We continue active collaboration with financial institutions and technology providers to explore digital distribution. Our focus is liquidity, where our efforts are designed to enhance flexibility and accessibility while preserving the core structure and utility of money market funds. During the third quarter, our arrangement with Prometheum Inc. was announced. We are working with Prometheum, a market infrastructure provider for crypto assets, to expand the reach of tokenized securities through their SEC-registered, FINRA-member broker-dealer market infrastructure. Prometheum will make our tokenized products available to broker-dealers and RIAs through its correspondent clearing platform.

This follows the launch of our Money Market Management Digital Treasury Fund, which is expected to support both traditional and on-chain distribution. We have also selectively engaged with regulated digital asset intermediaries, including participation in the BNY, Goldman domestic initiative involving mirrored tokenization. Also the Archax initiative to offer tokenized access to a UCITS money fund in the U.K., our arrangement with Conduit Digital Holdings to support the launch of Conduit's tokenized money market fund in the APAC region with the Conduit fund investing in one of our offshore money market funds. We are engaged in digital asset development discussions with other intermediaries as well.

Now looking at recent asset totals that was a few days ago, managed assets were approximately $890 billion, including $654 billion in money markets, $112 billion in equities, $98 billion in fixed income, $23 billion in alternative/private markets and $3 billion in multi-asset. Money market mutual fund assets were $489 billion. Money market fund assets have ranged from $485 to $493 billion during October with average asset levels of $489 billion.

Tom?

Thomas Donahue

Thanks, Chris. For Q3 compared to the prior quarter, total revenue increased $4.6 million or 1%. Equity asset growth added $8 million of revenues and an additional day added $5.3 million of revenues. These increases were partially offset by lower Q3 money market average assets resulting in $4 million of lower revenues. In addition, Q2 included a $2.9 million gain on the sale of a renewable energy property by Rivington, and the U.K. real estate business had a $2 million real estate development fee for a project that did not advance into construction.

Total Q3 carried interest and performance fees were $726,000 compared to $1.4 million in the prior quarter. Approximately $428,000 of the Q3 fees were offset by compensation expense. Q3 operating expenses decreased by $15.9 million or 4% from the prior quarter due mainly to Q2 included approximately $11.2 million in transaction costs from the FCP acquisition in certain line items, also approximately $3.3 million of lower compensation and related expense, lower advertising and promotional activity, intangible asset expense decreased $1.5 million, primarily due to most of the intangible assets from the Hermes acquisition being fully amortized.

These expense decreases were partially offset by a withholding tax-related expense of $1.9 million recorded in the other expense line item. $1.7 million expense for an adjustment to the FCP contingent payment, also recorded in the other expense line item. The Q3 effective tax rate was 27.1%. We estimate the full year tax rate to be in the 25% to 28% range for 2026. At the end of Q3, cash and investments were $580 million. Cash and investments, excluding the portion attributable to noncontrolling interest, were $483 million.

Oli, we would like to open the call up for questions now.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Patrick Davitt with Autonomous Research.

Question-and-Answer Session

Patrick Davitt

On the money fund flows, I understand that 3Q is always a seasonally weaker fund flow quarter for you, but there was a pretty big gap with many of your largest competitors like BlackRock had big inflows, JPMorgan had big inflows, Invesco had big inflows. So I'd like to get a little bit more color on what you think explains that big gap with some of those big competitors? And to what extent you're seeing more pricing competition, people trying to compete more aggressively on fees?

John Donahue

Patrick, I'll go first, and then we'll have Debbie give you the report from the field. So overall, there's nothing new about people periodically doing things either with fees or with portfolio construction that cause intermediate short-term alterations in the flows. And that's what was going on in this past quarter. And if you look at it over the 50-year period that we've been involved in this, this is like a routine deal.

Debbie will give you more details.

Deborah Cunningham

Thanks, Chris. So Patrick, as you know, we manage our money funds with a bias to daily liquidity at par. And as part of that process, on a daily basis, we identify maturity restrictions for different security types that we use as well as for each of the approved issuers from our database that we use. And these restrictions, for the most part, are based on liquidity in the marketplace for those different security types for those different issuers as they go out the curve, in addition to our own internal credit rating, which ranges from 1 to 5 for the various issuers. And this process really involves all 3 members of our team. It's our portfolio managers that are looking at the structure of the fund. It's our analysts that are reviewing the issuers, and it's the traders that are looking at the security types and the selections on a daily basis.

And what we've determined is that historically, and in this particular case, we haven't been willing to extend our maturities beyond what I would traditionally call our comfort zone just because there's maybe some inordinate value and pursue that incremental yield out the curve. While in our minds, that would mean sacrificing some of that true daily liquidity. So it's basically a performance issue based on our choice of what I'll call the most liquid and highly rated sectors in the marketplace at this time.

The other thing that I would note is that the FOMC did move rates in September, and we, as well as others, were lagging the direct market, but that's across the board.

John Donahue

And to elaborate on that, so basically, we've caught up. And if you look at the recent stats for October 28, our money market fund assets are up $3.7 billion so far. And if you look at some of those other competitors you mentioned, some of their assets have walked out the door a little bit on them. So things are coming back to normal.

Patrick Davitt

Okay. Interesting. My follow-up is on expenses. Good control again in 3Q, which is nice to see. Could you maybe expand on how sustainable that is, what you're seeing heading into 4Q? And if you have any early view on how things are tracking in '27?

Thomas Donahue

I don't have a comment on '27, except you see our margin, which we are happy to see that go over 30%, maintaining that. And we've had a long-term goal of trying to get to the industry, but that's a longer process. I expect comp here in the fourth quarter to go up as we continue to grow. Distribution will follow primarily how the money market assets go. And we're still spending some more in the systems and communications line item. And the rest of them, I don't see big changes for next quarter. Another is lots of other things that go lots of different ways, which we don't really forecast that.

Operator

Our next question, sorry, is coming from Bill Katz with TD Cowen.

Robin Holby

This is Robin Holby on for Bill Katz. Could you speak to the success you saw in the SMA side of the business during the quarter in equity and fixed income? Is there anything specific you've done in those channels that's resonating with investors, and that might have driven the acceleration there?

John Donahue

That's a case of successfully repeating the sounding joy, standard blocking and tackling, making the calls and doing it for a long time. If you look at the long-term records, especially in the MDT field, you see consistent outperformance with their methodologies. And especially in the SMAs, it takes a little longer to make the sales, and it takes a little longer for redemption as well. So there was no magic. There was no silver bullet. It is just the power of a large distribution force with good long-term records that makes that happen.

Raymond Hanley

Rob, we commented on the performance, which is obviously outstanding, especially long term for the MDT strategies. And I would just emphasize that the success we've had in the institutional accounts is diversified within several of the SMA strategies. So we've had nice wins and good pipeline composition from a variety of those strategies, all-cap core, large-cap value, small-cap growth, large-cap core, large-cap growth. And so even in a quarter where with some equity market choppiness, which reflected itself in lower mutual fund flows, we were able to have strong inflows and strong pipeline by the strength of the institutional part of the business. So I would also note that our MDT ETF and CIT products also had net inflows.

Robin Holby

Great. That's helpful. And for a follow-up, we thought the Prometheum announcement was an interesting development. Aside from your current digital products, where do you see this going? Does this accelerate the tokenization of some of your other non-tokenized funds, for example, MDT?

John Donahue

I don't think it actually accelerates anything. It is just steady as we go in exploring this new field. As I've said to this audience before, the clients aren't beating down the doors to get these products. This is really getting the infrastructure ready for tomorrow. No different than a lot of other examples of where the infrastructure has to change for the future. And so we are excited about our deal with Prometheum, with BNY, with Archax and with Conduit, all of them, but it's hard to say, "Oh, this accelerates other things." We are focused, as I said in my remarks, on the liquidity portion, and I would say the other securities are behind that from our point of view, but we'll be ready for that as well.

Operator

Next question is coming from Michael Cho with JPMorgan.

Y. Cho

I just wanted to touch on the money funds discussion that we were having before. I mean you shared the AUM data, which is very helpful. But I was actually wondering how the relative revenue capture share might compare to some of the stats you provide on the AUM share? And if there's any bifurcation between the 2 that you might envision and any implications you might be able to help us frame there? I know you gave some discussion on the yields and performance, which makes sense, but also thinking about how the revenue share might compare relative to those statistics?

John Donahue

So you're touching on something that we don't have great information on, which is market share of revenue. And this has been one of Chris' crusades for a long time that to an owner operator, that's a very important statistic. But we can't get it. So we don't know. So we only do it by inference. But it's what's behind the curtain in not doing the things that others do to periodically jump their yield, jump a bunch of assets and then get back to regular.

And I'll let Ray comment on the specifics of our revenue picture as much as we know.

Raymond Hanley

Yes. And I would just echo that, Chris. We can't really do comparable revenue. I would stress that -- we have a lot of different pricing options across our money market franchise, reflecting our reach in the different portions of the intermediary channels, but a lot of the attention, of course, are in the most institutional products, which tend to have a lower fee rate. Among the products that are more geared to retail applications, which for us is not direct retail, it's still through intermediaries, but to the end client of the intermediary, we have tended to traditionally do better if you bifurcate the asset market share in that retail channel, which would be a positive influence to the blended fee rate overall for money markets.

Y. Cho

Great. If I could just switch gears to MDT. You've had quite a bit of success there, and you continue to make progress across a number of different channels. Just broadly from an industry perspective, there's been a lot made about tax-aware long-short products, the demand and the penetration that's having in terms of those products in market. I was wondering, given the success you've had with MDT, is tax-aware long-short is something you are or you may consider in the future just given the demand appetite there in the market today?

John Donahue

Yes. We are working with various firms on those types of products that basically get added to by the adviser or put on top of the existing mandates. And I can't get into the details on any of those. But yes, we're looking at that. But as soon as you say tax-aware, I think C.W. Henderson. I know that wasn't your question, but that's on the muni side and on managing the gains and the tax situation. And that was what I mentioned in my remarks is doing quite well. Overall, the message is that tax-aware is very important. But what we tell everybody is don't let taxes drive the truck. Underneath that, you've got to have good projects that are heading in the right direction for you and not just having taxes control the outcome.

Raymond Hanley

And I would just add to that, the MDT market-neutral strategy is a long-short strategy, and we've done well with that in terms of both performance and picking up consistent net inflows.

Operator

Our next question is coming from John Dunn with Evercore ISI.

John Dunn

Maybe just a little more on the institutional pipeline. Can you talk about any client concentrations? How quickly do you think mandates will fund and maybe the impact on the firm-wide fee rate? And then on the other end, any chunky redemptions you wanted to call out that you might see on the horizon?

John Donahue

Well, I'm going to let Ray give you those details. But first of all, we're going to stop and cheer on the number of $6.5 billion, one of the highest pipelines we've had.

Ray?

Raymond Hanley

Sure. When we're talking about funding, John, the equity portion we expect to fund over the next 2 quarters. And that, as I mentioned, coming from several directions. There are some large sub-advised mandates in there as well as some more regular institutional separate accounts. As you know, the fee rates on each of those kind of applications would be less than what we would realize in regular 40 Act mutual funds. We are, nonetheless, of course, happy to add as much of this as we can even if it would have the impact of diluting the blended fee rate.

John Dunn

Got it. And then maybe just on fixed income, given where we are with rates and where they're going, could you kind of frame where you expect demand for your suite to go from here? And which products do you think are going to catch a bid?

John Donahue

It's going to be on the short end is going to drive the truck, but we're never going to really be behind on Total Return Bond Fund, which was basically our highest gross selling product during the third quarter. So -- but the answer specifically your question will be on the short side. And we have a beautiful array of products with Ultrashort, Microshort, et cetera, for people who are wanting to step out the yield curve just a little bit.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. So I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Hanley for closing remarks.

Raymond Hanley

Thank you. That concludes our call, and thank you for joining us today.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.