Federated Hermes Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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July 31, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Assets under management reached a record $912 billion in Q2, driven by market gains and growth in equity and private-market assets. Equity AUM rose 9% sequentially to a record $110 billion, while private-market AUM reached $21.6 billion after the FCP acquisition.
  • Positive Sentiment: Federated reported strong momentum in MDT equity strategies, which generated a record $6 billion in gross sales and more than $3.5 billion in net sales during the quarter. The company also began Q3 with approximately $3.4 billion of institutional wins yet to fund, including expected inflows into equity, private markets and fixed income.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Money-market fund assets declined modestly to $500 billion at quarter-end, although they remained up nearly 7% year over year and were approximately $490 billion in July. Management expects cash products to remain attractive if short-term rates stay relatively high and is developing tokenized and on-chain share classes for institutional and stablecoin-related distribution.
  • Negative Sentiment: Q2 operating expenses increased 5%, primarily because of FCP acquisition costs, ongoing compensation, professional fees and higher advertising spending. Management expects some acquisition-related costs to decline next quarter, but FCP-related amortization and certain ongoing expenses will continue.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Federated Hermes Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Federated Hermes Q2 analyst call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ray Hanley, President of Federated Investors Management Company. You may begin.

Ray Hanley
President at Federated Investors Management Company

Hello. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Leading our call today will be Chris Donahue, CEO and President of Federated Hermes, Tom Donahue, Chief Financial Officer. Joining us for the Q&A are Saker Nusseibeh, the CEO of Federated Hermes Limited, and Debbie Cunningham, our Chief Investment Officer for Money Markets. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements and want to note that our 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?

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

Thank you, Ray. Good morning, all. I will review Federated Hermes' business performance. Tom will comment on financial results. We ended the second quarter with record assets under management of $912 billion, led by growth in equity and private market assets. Equity assets closed the second quarter at a record high of $110 billion. During the second quarter, equity assets increased by $8.8 billion or 9% from the first quarter, reflecting solid market value gains. Gross equity sales were $9.1 billion in the second quarter, just about even with the first quarter's record level. Equity net redemptions in the second quarter were $1.1 billion, which included the expected global equity sub-advisory redemption of $3 billion that we discussed last quarter. Equity sales results were again led by our MDT fundamental quant strategies.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

MDT equity and market neutral strategies had a record $6 billion of gross sales and over $3.5 billion in net sales in the second quarter. Looking at fund performance rankings at the end of the second quarter, six of nine MDT fund strategies were in the top performance quartile of their Morningstar categories for the trailing three years. We had net sales in 35 equity fund and SMA strategies during the second quarter, including a variety of MDT offerings, which contributed $2.7 billion, not including market neutral, which we'll discuss later, and Strategic Value, which had $470 million. Looking at our equity fund performance at the end of the second quarter and using Morningstar data for trailing three years, 54% of our equity funds were beating peers and 30% were in the top quartile of their category.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

For Q3, through July 24th, combined equity funds and SMAs had net sales of $61 million. Turning to fixed income. Assets ended Q2 at just over $100 billion, up $689 million. Market appreciation added $1 billion and was partially offset by net redemptions and exchanges. We had 26 fixed income funds and SMAs with net sales in Q2, led by Core Plus and Core Agg SMA, which combined for $190 million, with three Ultrashort Bond Funds that were up a combined $134 million, and the conservative Muni Micro Short Fund was up almost $100 million. Regarding performance at the end of Q2, and using Morningstar data for the trailing three years, 39% of our fixed income funds were beating peers and 19% were in the top quartile of their category. For Q3, through July 24th, combined fixed income and SMAs had net sales of $362 million.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

In the alternative private markets category, assets increased $2.6 billion in Q2 to reach $21.6 billion. The completion of the acquisition of an 80% interest in FCP Fund Manager, L.P. in early April added $3.2 billion of U.S. multifamily real estate managed assets. The MDT market neutral fund and its ETF combined for $150 million in net sales. We're in the market with our global private equity co-invest fund, which is of course the sixth vintage of the PEC, the PEC series. To date, we've closed on $300 million. PEC 1 to 4 raised $400 million-$600 million in each fund, and PEC 5 raised $500 million. We're also in the market with the European Real Estate Debt Fund, which is a new pooled European debt offering.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

Across our long-term investment platform, we began Q3 with about $3.4 billion in net institutional wins yet to fund into both funds and separate accounts. Equity strategies are expected to have net sales of about $1.7 billion, with MDT additions of $1.6 billion and global equity additions of about $150 million. Approximately $1.3 billion on a net basis is expected to come into private market strategies, including direct lending of about $700 million, private equity of $538 million, and trade finance of $100 million. Fixed income is expected to have net sales of about $300 million, including total return bond, low duration, and high yield. Moving on to money markets. Total money market assets decreased by $7.9 billion or about 1%. Money market funds decreased by $2.9 billion or 1% from Q1, yet were up almost $32 billion or 7% year-over-year.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

After ending 2025 at a record high of $508 billion, money market fund assets have decreased slightly over the first half of the year to $500 billion at the end of Q2. Money market separate accounts decreased by about $5 billion or 3%, similar to last year's Q2 decrease of $5.8 billion. Still, these assets were up about $10 billion or 6.4% year-over-year at the end of Q2. Money market separate account assets are impacted by the liquidity levels of the large state pools that we manage and typically peak with tax collections at year-end through mid-April before decreasing in Q2 and Q3. Our estimate of money market mutual fund market share, including sub-advised funds, was about 6.7% at the end of Q2, down from 6.9% at the end of Q1.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

Now looking back at the last seven and a half years or so of quarterly money market fund market share changes, we gained share in 14 quarters. We lost share in 14 quarters, with two quarters of no change. The average share gain was 0.20. The average share loss was about 0.23. Our money market fund managed assets more than doubled from $208 billion-$500 billion over that period. This is certainly entrepreneurial delight from an owner/operator. Of course, it's important to note that we remain in the top 10 in every category of money market fund managed asset levels in the top five in prime and tax-free. Now let's talk about digital. Our digital initiatives include the recent launch of Money Market Management Digital Treasury Fund, which is expected to support both traditional and on-chain distribution.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

The initial reserve shares class provides a non-tokenized GENIUS compliance structure geared to institutional investors and stablecoin issuers seeking investments aligned with stablecoin reserve requirements. We are also developing an on-chain share class intended to place official books and records of that share class on blockchain infrastructure as we implement a digital transfer agency model. This dual track approach offers flexibility between traditional and on-chain record-keeping models. We have selectively engaged with regulated digital asset intermediaries focusing on tokenized funds as regulated financial instruments. We've previously discussed our participation in the BNY Goldman domestic initiative involving mirrored tokenization and the Archax initiative to offer tokenized assets to a UCITS money market fund in the U.K. We are engaged in the digital asset development discussion with several other intermediaries. These are early-stage efforts. Our clients are currently looking more for digital asset information than transaction ability.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

We expect our engagements with intermediaries to grow as regulations clarify and as our digital assets platform and product development progress. Now let's look at the recent asset totals as of a few days ago. Managed assets were approximately $899 billion. We should have picked the day before, including $665 billion in money markets, $109 billion in equities, $100 billion in fixed income, $23 billion in alternative private markets, and $3 billion in multi-asset. Money market mutual fund assets were $490 billion. Money market fund assets have ranged from $490 billion-$501 billion during July with average asset levels of $496 billion. Tom.

Tom Donahue
Tom Donahue
CFO at Federated Hermes

Th anks, Chris. For Q2 compared to the prior quarter, total revenues increased $23.8 million or 5%. The FCP acquisition added about $14 million, $9 million of it in the IAF category and $5 million in the other service fees. Equity asset growth added $7.6 million. An additional day added $5.1 million. In private markets, Rivington had a $2.9 million gain on sale of a renewable energy property recorded in other service fees. The U.K. real estate business had a $2 million real estate development fee for a project that did not advance into construction, also recorded in other service fees. These increases were partially offset by lower Q2 money market average assets, resulting in $8.4 million in lower revenues. Total carried interest and performance fees were $1.4 million, compared to $388,000 in the prior quarter. Approximately $682,000 of the Q2 fees were offset by compensation expense.

Tom Donahue
Tom Donahue
CFO at Federated Hermes

Q2 operating expenses increased by $17.3 million or 5% from the prior quarter, due mainly to an increase of approximately $9.7 million in transaction costs from the FCP acquisition, including $6.5 million of non-recurring acquisition-related compensation and $3.2 million of higher professional service fees, including FCP lender consent fees, and other professional service fees. Compensation and related expense, in addition, increased $6.9 million due to FCP's quarterly compensation expense, FHI's normal merit increases, and other factors. This was offset by seasonally lower stock-based compensation expense of $6 million. Higher advertising and promotional activities added $3.2 million as we had our spring advertising campaign. Intangible asset amortization increased $3 million, primarily from the FCP acquisition. These expense increases were partially offset by lower distribution expense, which decreased $4 million, due mainly to lower money market fund average assets.

Tom Donahue
Tom Donahue
CFO at Federated Hermes

In the other expense line item, the Q2 increase was due mainly to FCP property management expense of $2.8 million. The combined Q2 impact of the revenue from the Rivington gain on property sale, the U.K. real estate development revenue fee, the FCP acquisition-related comp expense, and professional service fees was about $4.7 million of lower net income, or about $0.06 per share. The Q2 effective tax rate was 25.8%. We estimate the tax rate to be in the 25%-28% range for 2026. At the end of Q2, cash investments were $481 million. Cash investments excluding the portion attributable to non-controlling interests were $416 million. Holly, we would like to open the call up for questions now.

Operator

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is from Bill Katz with TD Cowen.

Robin Holby
Robin Holby
Analyst at TD Cowen

Good morning. This is Robin Holby for Bill Katz, and thank you for taking the question. We wanted to ask on fixed income, gross sales were up nicely quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year, while net flows seem to have somewhat stabilized. Has investor interest changed at all with the prospects of higher rates, and do you think the strategy can get back to positive net flows in the foreseeable future?

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

Well, the reason we mentioned about the flows right now is that they have gotten exactly there. If you talk about the attitude of our intermediary client base, one of the things I'd mention is that the end clients have become kind of numb to all the negative geopolitical news and issues. With interest rates under the worst regime staying the same, what we're seeing is a little more interest in things like, as I mentioned, the conservative micro short and, of course, the ultrashort funds. That bumps a little bit into the money market fund thing as well. There are no definitive answers. There is no macro answer to that is going to take us through the next quarter.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

We think our products, including our PAYR ETF, which gives a little higher yield, and the FAs and the clients like that, has had good response as well. We think the variety of products out the yield curve, the strength of the team and the investment management, will entitle us to positive flows here in the foreseeable future in fixed income.

Robin Holby
Robin Holby
Analyst at TD Cowen

Thank you. That's helpful. Wanted to follow up on Strategic Value. You mentioned it in the prepared remarks. The fund has solid year-to-date performance. Just maybe how are your conversations with investors tracking there?

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

The investors like the performance, we don't like being in the category because we're either in the top of it or the bottom of it. This always attracts the attention of the portfolio manager who just likes doing what he's doing, which is increasing the dividend, growth of dividend, and the dividend. On the other hand, when you look at the ETF also doing well, these are people who come in who haven't had the experience of the fund, who understand exactly what the fund is doing. This is a very, very positive thing on both sides. I would say that the biggest challenge we have is that when those prices of those securities go up, the portfolio managers have to make some maneuvers, change them in order to keep the dividends going. That is a good problem.

Robin Holby
Robin Holby
Analyst at TD Cowen

Thank you very much.

Operator

Your next question is from Kenneth Lee with RBC Capital Markets.

Kenneth Lee
Kenneth Lee
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just one on the money market fund assets there. Just given the rate outlook and the environment there, any updated outlook in terms of potential asset growth for this year? Thanks.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

Well, let me comment first. Then I know Debbie's chomping at the bit to get at this one. In terms of the money market fund overall, we've been at this for 50 years, there's all sorts of things that come together, like our rivers in a big confluence, month to month. That's why I went through all those percentages of changes in market share. Because of the seasonality, I think that says for itself that we do expect that seasonality to come back just like it has. All these years we've had these pools. Some other interesting things have happened in the marketplace. One of the big firms offered a sort of a bonus yield program that moved some assets. We had some big clients move. That always happens.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

As I mentioned in the previous question, we had some ultrashort and people moving out the curve a little bit. With the Fed situation, if it is really higher for longer, i.e., they don't do anything, that's fine with us. Remember, a 3.5% or so yield on a money fund is a great thing. Debbie?

Debbie Cunningham
Debbie Cunningham
CIO for Money Markets at Federated Hermes

Thanks, Chris. Yes, I agree. A lot of volatility in the first half of the year. There were some very large market deals that occurred from an IPO standpoint and a long-term debt standpoint, Amazon, Alphabet, Anthropic, SpaceX. They issued large amounts in the marketplace, which subsequently, for a period of time, came into the money market universe, and has subsequently gone out. Still, some of it's left in there. A lot of volatility and noise around the first half of the year. Ultimately, what Chris mentioned with regard to a Warsh-led Fed, that at this point is showing no signs of being in the mode of lowering rates. Keeping rates higher for longer where they are now. The market is actually predicting that the rate environment is increased at the September meeting, which I don't particularly think will be the likely scenario.

Debbie Cunningham
Debbie Cunningham
CIO for Money Markets at Federated Hermes

Nonetheless, with rates on the short end, somewhere between 3.5% and 4.5% on a yield curve basis over the first half of the year, money market funds look very attractive. Most of the industry, including ourselves, has lowered their weighted average maturities to have some fuel available to light the fire even further. As rates and the yield curve steepen to some degree, floaters are a really good use of investments in these funds during a rising rate environment, and those have been plentiful in the marketplace. Sometimes we like the spread in the floater, sometimes we don't.

Debbie Cunningham
Debbie Cunningham
CIO for Money Markets at Federated Hermes

All of this really leads us to a conclusion that with rates where they are marginally higher from a steeper yield curve standpoint, the attractiveness of cash and the attractiveness of money market funds, as well as the separate accounts and the pools that we manage, will continue to gather assets as does the industry.

Kenneth Lee
Kenneth Lee
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Great. Very helpful color there. Just one follow-up, if I may, just on the expense side there. Realizing there was some noise in the quarter in 2Q due to the acquisition there, just go forward, any updated outlook in terms of expenses? Thanks.

Tom Donahue
Tom Donahue
CFO at Federated Hermes

Sure, Ken. They're going to be FCP comments. On the comp-related line, expect in the next quarter we won't have the one-time comp expense from them. We will have their ongoing, so that number could be down around $5 million. Of course, I don't know what's going to happen to our bonus accrual as things come out. The distribution line, that's going to relate to the money market assets primarily. Which way those go, that line will go. Systems and communications, we'd expect that to go up a couple million for the next quarter. The professional service fees, FCP comment, would expect that one to go down by about $6 million. Of course, we might have some other additions, smaller, come through there. No comments on the intangible will continue with FCP. In other, there's some FCP line expense I pointed out in there.

Tom Donahue
Tom Donahue
CFO at Federated Hermes

That will continue. What happens with FX always makes that line move around.

Kenneth Lee
Kenneth Lee
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Great. Very helpful there. Thanks again.

Operator

Your next question is from Michael Cho with JPMorgan.

Michael Cho
Michael Cho
Analyst at JPMorgan

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to peel in just a little bit on the money market share discussion you had in your prepared comments and just now as well. I appreciate all the color on the history of the share shifts over the last seven years. Just wondering, as you looked at that and you analyze that, are there any particular reasons of why these share shifts occur from time to time? Is it really just firms running promotion programs or anything that you're seeing from a key takeaway perspective as these share shifts occur from time to time? Thanks.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

Michael, that's why I tried to list a whole bunch of confluence of factors that all jump around every single quarter. Debbie talked about all these big IPOs that came out, where the cash came in, then that goes out. Who has more of it than the other guy, then that changes the market share. The movement of some of the clients, the Ultrashort and Conservative Microshort, that does it. You already commented on the one, there's some big retail programs. Then there's just the ebb and flow of cash, and it is volatile. There's nothing that you can do about it. We look for the seasonality, the steady eddy of the program. As I tried to hint in my remarks, we would trade every time to go from $200 billion-$500 billion and have the market share.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

If it goes down a little bit, it doesn't matter. Owner-operators love revenues. If you really want to know about it, I think if we could calculate it and calculate the market share on revenues, we'd have a better stat than on the assets.

Michael Cho
Michael Cho
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thanks. Appreciate that color. If I can just switch gears to active ETFs, a key priority here for you as well. I think you launched a couple more during the quarter. If you can update us on the pace of launch from here, maybe over the next 12 months-18 months, priorities in terms of products, and maybe any opportunities that you might see through maybe deeper distribution partnerships to maybe step up scale in that business. I know you also had mentioned non-U.S. in the past as well. Just kind of curious update there. Thanks.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

We like putting out a couple or so ETFs every year in order to get the marketplace focus on it, to enable the basket helpers to have their mind right on the whole thing. That's about where we are. There are some special deals with some of our distribution firms where, I'm not going to tell you the name of the firm or the nature of the deal. Where if you play ball with them, your ETF does a lot better, or your family of ETFs. We're doing some of that. Basically, it's a long-term growth strategy. I think Ray has some other comments on as far as we can go on the specifics. We can't tell you the names. They call that gun jumping.

Ray Hanley
President at Federated Investors Management Company

Correct. If you look at what we've done, we've launched in the areas where we've had the most success in our traditional mutual funds. That provides a bit of a roadmap to how we're thinking about the next wave. You mentioned offshore. We've had a lot of success porting the MDT strategy over there in a UCITS form. We're very much looking at active ETFs outside of the U.S. as well. The focus initially has been domestic. That's certainly something that we're looking at.

Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
President and CEO at Federated Hermes

I'd make one other comment on the product development side of it. Ray mentioned we're able to do a good job when we have an existing product and it's doing well, and then you come up with an ETF that's similar or whatever, then that can do well. If the product development people would look at it and say, "Where are the most sales occurring in the industry?" That's another way, a pointer finger as to where we would go, which is sort of how PAYR got burped out onto the field.

Michael Cho
Michael Cho
Analyst at JPMorgan

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

We've reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Ray Hanley for closing remarks.

Ray Hanley
President at Federated Investors Management Company

Thank you, Holly. That concludes our call. We appreciate you joining us today.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Executives
    • Chris Donahue
      Chris Donahue
      President and CEO
    • Tom Donahue
      Tom Donahue
      CFO
    • Debbie Cunningham
      Debbie Cunningham
      CIO for Money Markets
Analysts
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