Cohen & Steers Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Cohen & Steers EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.75
• Consensus EPS: $0.76
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.01
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.68

Cohen & Steers Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $133.79 million
• Expected Revenue: $130.64 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$3.15 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Cohen & Steers Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 4/16/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, April 17, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Cohen & Steers (NYSE:CNS), Inc. is a publicly traded investment management firm specializing in real estate securities and alternative income strategies. Founded in 1986 by Martin Cohen and Robert Steers, the company has built a reputation for expertise in listed real estate investment trusts (REITs) and related equities. Headquartered in New York City, Cohen & Steers applies a research-driven approach to identify value and income opportunities across global property markets.

The firm offers a diverse range of investment products, including mutual funds, closed-end funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These vehicles target sectors such as residential, commercial and industrial real estate, as well as infrastructure, commodities, and inflation-protected assets. Through active portfolio management, Cohen & Steers aims to deliver income, diversification and total returns for both individual and institutional clients.

Operating across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America, Cohen & Steers maintains offices in key financial centers including London, Hong Kong and São Paulo. This global footprint enables the firm to leverage local market insights and foster close relationships with property owners, developers and industry specialists. Their client base encompasses pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds and retail investors seeking real asset exposure.

Governed by an experienced executive team and overseen by an independent board of directors, Cohen & Steers emphasizes rigorous risk management and corporate governance. The firm’s research-driven culture is supported by dedicated sector analysts and portfolio managers who continually monitor market trends, regulatory developments and individual security fundamentals to inform investment decisions.

Cohen & Steers Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Reported Q1 EPS of $0.75, down from $0.78 sequentially, and revenue decreased to $133.8 M driven by lower average AUM and day count despite a modest uptick in effective fee rate.
• Ended Q1 with AUM of $87.6 B, up from $85.8 B, fueled by net inflows in open-end funds—led by global listed infrastructure—and market appreciation.
• Delivered strong investment results with 81% of AUM outperforming benchmarks in Q1 and over 95% outperformance across 3-, 5-, and 10-year horizons; 92% of open-end fund AUM is rated four- or five-star by Morningstar.
• The April 2 tariff announcements are expected to trigger a stagflationary impact, raise U.S. recession odds, put pressure on equities, and drive investor interest toward defensive real assets.
• Launched three active ETFs in real estate, preferreds, and natural resource equities—seeded with firm capital and already attracting inflows—broadening distribution, especially among RIAs.

Presentation

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cohen & Steers first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and afterwards we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Thursday, April 17th, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Heller, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Cohen & Steers. Please go ahead.

[Brian Heller, SVP and Deputy General Counsel at Cohen & Steers]

Thank you, and welcome to the Cohen & Steers first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me are Joe Harvey, our Chief Executive Officer; Raja Dakkuri, our Chief Financial Officer; and Jon Cheigh, our President and Chief Investment Officer. I want to remind you that some of our comments and answers to your questions may include forward-looking statements.

[Brian Heller, SVP and Deputy General Counsel at Cohen & Steers]

We believe these statements are reasonable based on information currently available to us, but actual outcomes could differ materially due to a number of factors, including those described in our accompanying first quarter earnings release and presentation, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and our other SEC filings. We assume no duty to update any forward-looking statement. Further, none of our statements constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of any fund or other investment vehicle.

[Brian Heller, SVP and Deputy General Counsel at Cohen & Steers]

Our presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures referred to as as-adjusted financial measures that we believe are meaningful in evaluating our performance. These non-GAAP financial measures should be read in conjunction with our GAAP results. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures is included in the earnings release and presentation to the extent reasonably available. The earnings release and presentation, as well as links to our SEC filings, are available in the investor relations section of our website at www.cohensteers.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Raja.

[Raja Dakkuri, CFO at Cohen & Steers]

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. My remarks today will focus on our as-adjusted results. A reconciliation of GAAP as-adjusted results can be found in the earnings release and presentation. Yesterday, we reported earnings of $0.75 per share compared to $0.78 sequentially. Revenue for Q1 decreased from the prior quarter to $133.8 million. The change in revenue from the prior quarter was driven by several items.

[Raja Dakkuri, CFO at Cohen & Steers]

The primary driver was lower average AUM during the quarter. Also impacting revenue was lower day count compared to the prior quarter. As a reminder, we had also recognized performance fees in Q4 related to certain institutional accounts. These items were partially offset by improvement in our effective fee rate. Our effective fee rate was 59 basis points, which was slightly higher than the prior quarter. The primary driver of this was mix change in our average AUM.

[Raja Dakkuri, CFO at Cohen & Steers]

Our operating margin was 34.7% compared to 35.5% in the prior quarter. As noted, we experienced lower average AUM as compared to the prior quarter. However, ending AUM increased compared to Q4. AUM was $87.6 billion as of Q1 compared to $85.8 billion at prior quarter end. The change in ending AUM was driven by a number of factors. We generated overall net inflows during Q1 primarily due to open-end funds.

[Raja Dakkuri, CFO at Cohen & Steers]

These open-end fund flows were partially offset by institutional outflows that were anticipated. This is the third consecutive quarter of net inflows. In terms of our strategies, global listed infrastructure experienced strong flows during the quarter. Lastly, end-of-period AUM was positively impacted by market appreciation during the quarter. Joe Harvey will provide additional insights regarding flows and pipeline. Total expenses were lower than the prior quarter, primarily due to a decrease in compensation and benefits.

[Raja Dakkuri, CFO at Cohen & Steers]

During the quarter, the change in comp and benefits was in line with the sequential decrease in revenue. As a result, the compensation ratio for the quarter was 40.5%, consistent with our planning. To a lesser extent, expenses were also impacted by decreases in distribution and service fees, while G&A expense levels remained consistent with the prior quarter.

[Raja Dakkuri, CFO at Cohen & Steers]

Regarding taxes, our effective rate was 25.3% for the quarter. Our earnings material presents liquidity at the end of Q1 and prior quarters. Our liquidity totaled $295 million at quarter end, which represents a decrease versus the prior period. This quarterly change is in line with prior years and driven by our annual incentive compensation cycle. Let me now touch on a few items regarding rest-of-year guidance. With respect to comp and benefits, we would expect our compensation ratio to remain at 40.5% in line with Q1.

[Raja Dakkuri, CFO at Cohen & Steers]

We expect G&A to increase in the range of 6%-7% as compared to the prior year. This is driven by continued infrastructure investments, including completion of our foreign office upgrades. Also impacting G&A are expenses related to our recent ETF rollout, as well as business development activities. Lastly, regarding 2025 guidance, we expect our effective tax rate to remain at 25.3% on an as-adjusted basis. I'll now turn over to Jon Cheigh, who will discuss investment performance.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

Thanks, Raja. I'll cover three topics. First, our performance scorecard. Second, the market environment in the first quarter. And last, our investment outlook and how we see our asset classes and strategies playing a bigger role in client portfolios. Beginning with our performance scorecard, the first quarter saw 81% of our AUM outperformance benchmark. On a one-year basis, 89% of our AUM has outperformed, while our three, five, and ten-year rates are all above 95%.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

Our one, three, and five-year excess returns of 257 basis points, 189 basis points, and 254 basis points, respectively, are near or above our expectations. 92% of our open-end fund AUM is rated four or five-star by Morningstar. In short, we continue to provide meaningful long-term alpha for our investors. Turning to market conditions, in the first quarter, U.S. equities declined 4.3%, while developed market ex-U.S. equities rose 5.4% in dollar terms. U.S.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

REITs gained 2.8%, and global listed infrastructure rose 4.8%, in both cases outperforming the corresponding broad equity index. Additionally, listed real assets performed well as investors rotated into more defensive or attractively valued hard assets, ranging from utilities to gold, as anticipation of tariffs and sticky inflation raised macro concerns. This rotation, in our view, is not an anomaly. In November of last year, we published a paper called FOMO: Reversals of Fortune and the Opportunity in Real Assets.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

The punchline being that decade-long market leadership tends to mean revert. To us, this one-quarter rotation is a harbinger of what the new market leadership might look like, spearheaded by real assets and potentially non-U.S. equities. A shift built on a mix of attractive valuations and macro forces. Either way, we believe that diversification and a balanced strategic asset allocation is a requirement in a world of macro and geopolitical change.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

Of course, Q1 performance has taken a backseat to what has transpired in the first few weeks of the second quarter. What is our interpretation of what has happened, and where do we go from here? Coming into the year, we expected a slowdown due to a combination of a tiring consumer, fiscal tightening, immigration reversals, and trade impacts offset by economic benefits from deregulation.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

When combined with U.S. equities at all-time highs, tight credit spreads, and expensive price-to-earnings multiples, financial markets were vulnerable to a negative surprise. Global investors had become complacent. The April 2 tariff announcements represented just such a surprise and, in our view, will lead to a meaningful stagflationary impact on the U.S., at least in the short run.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

As we've seen over the last few weeks, it's a fluid situation, but the impact of tariffs and business uncertainty has meaningfully boosted the odds of a U.S. recession, although our base case is that we narrowly avoid a recession. We continue to expect core U.S. inflation to remain above the Fed's long-term target.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

Tariffs and potential trade wars only add to this pressure, certainly in the short and likely in the medium term. U.S. equities have recently stabilized, but were down approximately 17% on the year at one point. Despite the correction, U.S. equities still look relatively expensive and appear to have gone from trading at roughly 22 times earnings to about 20 times today, although after some expected negative earnings revision, that 20 times may still be closer to 22 times. We would expect some combination of both earnings and multiple contraction over time to drive disappointing U.S. listed equity performance.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

In contrast, we believe listed real assets combine three highly important attributes: less sensitivity to tariffs and slowing growth, attractive relative valuations, and liquidity at a time when both the explicit and opportunity cost of illiquidity are high. To the first point, listed real assets are likely to feel less of the brunt of the negative impact of tariffs. To illustrate this point, estimates of the impact of tariffs on S&P 500 earnings are around 10%. Based on our current estimates by comparison, U.S. REIT earnings are likely to be down only 0%-1%, and infrastructure down 2%-3% because of the direct impact of tariffs. Real estate and infrastructure companies largely are not importers or exporters.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

Within real assets, natural resource equities face the biggest headwinds, with direct pressure to EPS of around 10%-15%, but with wide divergences between winners and losers, though higher commodity prices could provide some offset. As it relates to slowing growth, real asset companies also tend to generate more predictable revenues due to longer-term leases or contracts or less economically sensitive demand.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

On valuation, in contrast to U.S. equities, all core real asset categories are either neutrally or attractively valued versus history. We see companies in the space as positioned for higher profitability levels, driven by factors such as commodity undersupply and a move away from globalization toward onshoring and reindustrialization. Persistent inflationary pressures, as well as geopolitical uncertainty, also support real assets.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

As the FOMO piece I referenced earlier highlights, the primary reason why decade-long mean reversion occurs is because investors get too complacent over a period of years, and valuations move too far in one direction or the other. In our conversations with our clients, we see growing evidence that investors are beginning to embrace this idea of new market leaders and a potential market rotation and fund flows towards the valuation laggards of the last 10 years, like real assets. My last comment relates to the importance of liquidity and how investors value it. First, we believe the costs of illiquidity have not been analyzed or discussed sufficiently, so we will publish our in-depth research on it in the second half of the year.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

At a high level, we believe the presence of the illiquidity return premium is taken as a given, but the data indicates it has been more inconsistent than reported across different asset classes. Specifically, the historical data indicates a negative illiquidity return premium in private real estate and a more neutral premium in infrastructure. The explicit cost of illiquidity is only one element. The opportunity cost of illiquidity happens in three ways.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

First, investors not being able to rebalance when their illiquid assets do not provide realizations as planned. Second, needing to sell their illiquid assets when needed in a major market downturn as opposed to when optimal. Last, the frictional costs of the J-curve that occurs in most private closed-end funds. Only recently do we see university endowments having to contend with questions about significant uncertainty around both the revenue side and potential endowment taxation.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

In a regime of high uncertainty, the opportunity cost of liquidity is high. To summarize, as always, economic uncertainty and financial market dislocations create opportunities to identify winners and losers. Across all of our markets, we believe active management can capitalize on these divergences and is important to boost returns. Combined with a more favorable backdrop for asset allocation, we remain positive about the environment for real assets. With that, let me turn the call over to Joe.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Thank you, Jon, and good morning. I will start by addressing the current state of our business, then review our key business trends in the quarter, and close with a discussion of our strategic priorities. Four weeks ago, we published our 2024 annual report to shareholders entitled "Positioned for Growth." On April 2nd, so-called Liberation Day, the administration announced a tariff policy that was more severe than expected and turned the global economic and geopolitical regimes on their heads, with the financial markets following suit with powerful volatility.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Everyone quickly recognized that business decision-making would slow or cease entirely, raising the specter of recession. As a firm, we're still positioned for growth, notwithstanding the post-quarter setbacks in markets and asset levels. Our relative investment performance, as Jon reviewed, is still strong and is the leading edge of our optimism.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

As I will discuss further, our institutional advisory unfunded pipeline declined in the quarter, but our business activity remains healthy. Our wealth channel has led the way to firm-wide net inflows for the past three quarters. In addition, the case for real assets is gaining momentum as the reality of a nagging inflation backdrop gains wider acceptance. Meantime, portfolio liquidity has become a priority for clients as the cost of illiquidity in private allocations has become increasingly evident.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Depending on how long the tariff roulette wheel spins and considering its knock-on effects, our eyes are on potential for recession. While this could slow the ramp-up of some of our recent vehicle launches, we are committed to these initiatives, which we view as must-dos to enhance our market position. As our habit, we would expect to further innovate to capitalize on any dislocations and opportunities that emerge.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Behind this executive summary is a well-organized and highly motivated leadership team that is backed by a very strong balance sheet. Looking at key fundamentals, in the first quarter, we had a third consecutive quarter of net inflows firm-wide at $222 million, which followed $860 million in the preceding quarter and $1.3 billion in the third quarter of last year when the Federal Reserve commenced its rate-cutting cycle.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Leading flows in the quarter were open-end funds with $585 million of net inflows, offset by outflows in both advisory at $108 million and all sub-advisory at $258 million. Our inflows stand out, considering that most of our strategy categories have been in outflows, according to Morningstar open-end fund data. Our positive differential, to me, comes down to a combination of our outstanding investment performance, brand recognition, and strong client relationships.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Accordingly, our market share of active open-end fund AUM continued to increase in U.S. real estate, global real estate, preferreds, and global listed infrastructure. Leading flows in the quarter was global listed infrastructure, which had $586 million of net inflows, offset by net outflows in U.S. real estate of $217 million, global real estate at $166 million, and preferreds at $76 million.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Highlights for open-end funds include the breadth and flows across most key segments, such as wirehouses, RIAs, independent and regional broker-dealers, bank trusts, and defined contribution. Our gross sales for open-end funds annualized at $12.8 billion, in line with our average over the past several years. SMAs and models had outflows of $44 million, and offshore SICAVs had inflows of $71 million. We had modest inflows into our newly launched active ETFs, which I will discuss in a moment.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Institutional advisory's net outflows of $108 million were comprised of five new mandates totaling $347 million, offset by two account terminations totaling $231 million, and negative rebalancings of $223 million by existing clients. The weak spot in the quarter is our one unfunded pipeline, which ended the quarter at $61 million compared with $531 million last quarter.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Obviously, that is a low number for us and reflects a lot of completed fundings and the timing of a number of finals competitions we are anticipating, plus some customized mandates we continue to work on. While it is tempting to attribute the low pipeline to the market environment, the regime change in interest rates has already occurred, and thus we need to translate the solid level of activity in institutional advisory to wins. Last quarter, we indicated that we had approximately $800 million in pending redemptions.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

The majority of those have occurred, and the known redemptions now stand at $290 million after the addition of one pending rebalancing outflow of $64 million. Turning to strategic initiatives, in February, we launched our first three active ETFs in real estate, preferreds, and natural resource equities. The strategies are compelling, differentiated, and by design, not thematic, but core strategies for asset allocators.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

They were seeded with firm capital, and we have begun to see inflows. We're pleased with the pace of flows, particularly through the natural resource equities ETF. We believe these vehicles will open access to investors who use them exclusively and thus expand our addressable market considerably, given that AUM in active ETFs has surpassed $1 trillion industry-wide. At the same time, there are advisors who are converting their business away from open-end funds to ETFs.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

These vehicles will help us retain those assets, particularly with RIAs who have growing asset bases. Our long-term strategy includes the development of ETFs for all of our core strategies, and we're working on round two, understanding that implementation from here could vary based on how the market adopts different structures, such as ETFs as a share class of open-end funds.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

One small but percolating market for us is the offshore wealth market. We now have six SICAV vehicles with $1.2 billion in AUM and which have had inflows in 19 of the past 21 quarters. We launched our sixth SICAV sub-fund in the quarter, a short-duration preferred stock strategy. This strategy's investment universe has attractive attributes with $1.3 trillion in size and yields of 7.7%, duration less than three years, and an average credit rating of triple B.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

We've had a lot of positive feedback in pre-marketing and look forward to being in the market. We are making good progress on our private real estate initiative. Cohen & Steers Income Opportunities REIT, or CNS REIT, is the top-performing non-traded REIT for the 12 months ended February. CNS REIT returned 13.4% compared with 4.4% for the average non-traded REIT over that period.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Among private wealth alternative choices, private credit has been the most popular, certainly compared with real estate recently, but we're seeing early signs of caution in credit and emerging interest in the bottoming of the commercial real estate cycle. We continue to work on additional anchor investors while ramping up our engagement with RIAs. We are live on the Schwab, Pershing, and Fidelity platforms, which provide access to the majority of RIAs.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

CNS REIT's portfolio now comprises five shopping centers with a mix of power centers and grocery-anchored centers. Shopping centers should be better equipped to defend against a more challenging economy, and we still believe they are mispriced considering their fundamentals. In the category of expanding our real estate franchise, we expect to launch late in the second quarter a strategy to provide a better way for institutions to invest in core real estate using both listed and core private real estate.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

We expect to announce a partnership with a sub-advisor to collaborate on a vehicle designed for institutional real estate allocations, which tend to be a larger share of the real estate portfolio. Our aim is to provide better risk-adjusted returns than core private real estate, along with better liquidity and broader property sector allocations.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Jon and I have been highlighting global listed infrastructure as a strategy that is generating a lot of interest, and that began to show in our flows this quarter. We see more behind it with demand from new allocations and takeaways from underperforming managers. Private infrastructure still dominates the allocation landscape, but we believe, just as in real estate, that listed infrastructure complements private allocations, resulting in better portfolio construction and performance.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Fundamentally, secular trends, including digitalization of the world's economies, rebuilding core infrastructure, higher power demand, decarbonization, and deglobalization, combined are accelerating infrastructure spending. An estimated $94 trillion of infrastructure investment is needed globally by 2040. With more angst about the stickiness of inflation and now tariffs, we're seeing more interest in real assets from the retirement segments, model builders, and target date managers.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

This is welcome and overdue, in my opinion, considering the preponderance of financial assets in 401(k) plans. Notably, the private equity firms are pushing for private allocations in these plans. Aside from the plumbing in these plans, which cannot even accommodate ETFs at this point, our view is that private allocations are difficult in 401(k)s, and listed real assets are a smart solution.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

With our multi-strategy real assets portfolio, for example, 401(k)s can have a single line item, turnkey allocation to real assets, and have efficient pricing and daily liquidity. The only potential negative is the perceived volatility compared with private, but given the long-term investment horizon for most retirement savers, volatility should not be a major concern.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

I will close with a reminder that this year and next, we are focusing on investment in our distribution capabilities, with the wealth channel being a high priority and more resources planned for the RIA and multifamily office segments specifically. Our new vehicles and strategies have been designed for these advisors and allocators, which represent the leading investment models in the wealth channel and where AUM is growing the fastest. We look forward to reporting our second quarter results in July. Meantime, please call us with any questions. I will now turn the call back to Abby to facilitate Q&A.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one a second time. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Your first question comes from the line of John Dunn with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

[John Dunn, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Hi, guys. Wanted to get maybe a little more color on the wealth management channel and kind of like the temperature there so far in April and maybe what areas or your areas maybe are seeing a flow bid or maybe not. And where do you think the redemption trends could go if the status quo sticks around for a while?

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Obviously, as John and we all know, post-quarter end, the markets have been very volatile, and that creates uncertainty and starts to stem decision-making. It has not been a robust flow environment. What we have been seeing more broadly is interest in U.S. REITs in particular because, as we have been talking about the past several quarters, investors have been anticipating the bottoming of the commercial real estate cycle, which is happening.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

At the same time, continued easing by the Federal Reserve, and those historically have been positive conditions for real estate securities performance. We have seen some of that play out, but we would expect investors to continue to be most focused on that. Secondly, we have been talking about, and as I mentioned, more interest in listed infrastructure. For the wealth channel, listed is a way to invest in it.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

There are some private solutions too, but that's not been as developed as some of the choices in real estate or in private credit. The other attraction of infrastructure is that the portfolios tend to be less economically sensitive than other things. We've seen some of that dynamic in the institutional market, and it could also flow through to the wealth channel. What we have not been seeing are strong flows into our preferred stock strategies.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

That's been a little bit of a surprise. We've actually had some outflows in the preferred stock vehicles. There's been a resurgence in fixed income allocations in investor portfolios, but I think there's still a little bit of a hangover with the many regional banking crises a couple of years ago and how that affected some preferred securities.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

There are just more choices in fixed income as well. Our preferred portfolios have performed very well for the past year and a half on an absolute basis and on a relative basis. If there is one of our strategies that is not so affected by tariffs, it is certainly the preferred market, which is mostly issued by banks, which are in terrific capital positions, and insurance companies. Those are some of my thoughts. I do not know if anybody else in the room can add to it.

[John Dunn, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Okay, great. You guys took us through the impacts of tariffs on your different strategy areas. That listed real infrastructure, most of it does not have much direct tariff exposure. I wonder if you could talk about kind of the second-order impacts from tariffs that you might see coming down the pike.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

From an investment standpoint, as you say, it's much more second-order effects or indirect effects. That'll be economic growth, interest rates, and inflation. Generally speaking, we think economic growth was already going to be a little bit slow, and now it'll be slower, and inflation will be a bit higher. Infrastructure really stands out, frankly, as being the stagflationary strategy, if you will.

[Jon Cheigh, President and CIO at Cohen & Steers]

That's why, despite everything that's going on so far this year, infrastructure as a category is still positive on the year. It's up roughly 5% on the year. Yeah, we think the economy is going to slow. That'll have a negative impact most on natural resource equities being relatively more cyclical. Second, most insulated would be on real estate. Then areas like preferreds and, sorry, infrastructure, as Joe talked about, we don't really see any kind of major impact. It is all very indirect impacts as opposed to direct impacts.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

If your question was getting at what are we doing as a firm, the first order of business is always to interact with our clients to help share our best thinking on what's going on with them. We are not going to make any rash short-term changes in how we are operating. As I said in my comments, we clearly have our eye on the potential for recession.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

One of the reactions to that would be to raise the bar on hiring until we see how all of this plays out. We are not stopping on the strategic hires that we need to make. If we have things that are more nice-to-haves or investments for a couple of years down the road, we will put the brakes on that. As you know, our balance sheet is extremely strong. We are prepared for whatever comes down the pike.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

We will continue to focus on portfolios and really bear down on the new launches that we have because those are, it's a critical time. We will see what happens. I do not know for the ETF launch, for example. Our head of wealth has seen in other examples how volatility can create some activity for ETFs because investors are more apt to switch if they can take a tax loss or move in a down market to a better vehicle. Those are some of the things that we are thinking about.

[John Dunn, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Right. Yeah, maybe on active ETFs. Is there a difference in selling those products versus the open-end funds? You mentioned some of it is about keeping assets in-house. Are there also new people coming into that kind of vehicle? Maybe it's early days, but do you have any idea of what kind of steady-state level of flows you'd like to get to?

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

In terms of "selling," I mean, it starts with a process of helping our advisors make allocations to the things that we do. So it's education about our asset classes, how they fit into a portfolio, how they enhance the return and risk profile of a portfolio. What is different is that the initial investors will come from the RIA market.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

They won't come from the wirehouses, which have criteria to gain size and scale in the vehicles and, in some cases, go through a research process. Although for all the strategies we have, we've pretty much got that box checked with the wirehouses. What is different is the initial investors in the ETFs are RIAs that we maybe don't have relationships with. So it's building relationships with model builders and RIA allocator specialists to active ETFs.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

In terms of the so-called sales process, it's no different than what we do everywhere in wealth. As I said in my comments, our strategy revolves around not thematic approaches to strategies in ETFs, which some firms do. It's rather core allocations that we're known for that could be a substitute for one of our open-end mutual funds.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

As it relates to kind of some of the initial activity, it's still early days. I wouldn't say we have a statistically significant sample set yet to really bear down on. We've seen situations where there are RIA allocators who only use ETFs. That is money that we would never have ever seen before. It's a great validation of our launch and gives us confidence because we're kind of seeing this type of thing more and more in the industry.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

There will be examples where we have existing open-end fund investors who have been converting their business to using only ETFs. We have seen an example or two where they are swapping out of our open-end funds into ETFs because that is what they have chosen for their business models. In that case, we say, "Okay, great." We have retained assets.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

More importantly, these advisors are growing. Had we not provided these vehicles, we would have ultimately lost a client and lost another growth engine. In our underwriting, we have factored in some swapping of open-end fund assets for ETFs. It is too early to try to quantify all of that. As it relates to what pace we would like, I would like it to be a lot. The market is going to tell us what the right pace is. We have been pleasantly surprised with the activity we have seen so far in some volatile conditions.

[John Dunn, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Gotcha. In your prepared remarks, you talked about looking to further innovate to take advantage of dislocation. Was that a reference to working on round two of active ETFs, or were there other things you kind of had in mind?

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

It could be round two of ETFs. It could be potentially inorganic growth. We've been going through a process to identify strategies for what's next several years down the road. One of the things that's happening in the industry with the interest in the wealth channel is that there are more small asset managers who want to get access to wealth.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

They're realizing, in light of the competition and race to gain share from the private equity funds, that that's going to be increasingly difficult. We have a strong market position in wealth, and that's pretty well known in the industry. There might be a firm with a strategy that would meet our criteria. We would be open to looking at some acquisitions. That could come by way of dislocations with the market environment right now.

[John Dunn, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Gotcha. Maybe one on the pipeline. Do you think we'll look back and look at this quarter as kind of an anomaly? Could we hang out at a low level versus because for quite a while, you've been kind of leveled up to the more than a billion level. You think it's just the timing or held in this period for a little bit?

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

As I've been talking about on these calls, we have good levels of activity, but we need to translate those into real one mandates. When you look at the history, it shows consistency and strength in the pipeline. I'm not looking over this data point, and we're going to dig in and do everything that we can to drive it.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

One of the things that I talked about a little bit is that in the institutional market, there's been more stresses on portfolios with the high levels of private allocations. Of course, the regime change in interest rate, which caused plans to up their fixed income allocations, and that had to come from somewhere. That's been a thing out in the market. I feel like we're getting through that phase, the interest rate regime change and the restoration of fixed income allocations.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

As Jon laid out, we believe that the future looks better for allocations to real assets. We need to go make that happen. Our activity is solid, and it has nice dimensions to it, as I said, which means to me there are new allocations. There are new allocations not just in the U.S., but also outside of the U.S. There are underperforming managers, but also there are investors who want to work with us to collaborate, to do something differentiated.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

I mentioned the real estate strategy that we have been working on to combine listed and private core real estate. We will be launching that and announcing it before the middle of the year. We look forward to talking more about that because it is pretty exciting. That can be another way we can get in front of more institutions and do something that's different with them.

[John Dunn, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Gotcha. Maybe just one more on the I think it's smart to see if you can take advantage of dislocation by maybe getting a better price on a deal. You haven't done a deal in a long time. It is a bit of a change. Maybe talk through whole deals versus team lift-outs versus maybe some of the areas you might be interested in. Just any more color there would be great.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

It could be a spectrum of things, including working on a partnership with another firm where we would sponsor a vehicle. In the case of this real estate vehicle, combined listed and private. It has been a vision of ours. We are pleased to see some of our peers announce some of these types of arrangements.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

That would be one of the easier short-term, easier, maybe longer-term, harder ways to bring on new capabilities. In terms of you're right, we have not been an acquisitive firm historically. There have been many reasons for that, including the fact that we have had a great opportunity to build out our capabilities in a broader real assets investing. Also looking backward, it has been an environment where firms were not so interested in selling majority interest.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

There were a lot of players who would buy a minority interest and let them do their thing on their own. The dynamics that I talked about in the wealth channel and firms wanting to get access to the wealth channel are changing the equation a bit. We will see. We are thinking about the things that we would be interested in. We are, as you know, very conservative and disciplined and have a very strict set of criteria. We are spending some time on it.

[John Dunn, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

That concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back to Mr. Joe Harvey for closing remarks.

[Joe Harvey, CEO at Cohen & Steers]

Thank you, everyone, for listening. Look forward to touching base with you in July. And Abby, thank you for the call today.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Jon Cheigh, President and CIO
• Raja Dakkuri, CFO
• Brian Heller, SVP and Deputy General Counsel
• Joe Harvey, CEO

Analysts

• John Dunn, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Evercore ISI