Janus Henderson inflows! INFLOWS!!!

Everyone in asset management loves to talk about the need for consolidation. You need scale! You need cross-asset capabilities! You need global distribution!

But then you have stinky combinations like the Janus Capital/Henderson Global Investors merger, which reek so bad that they make the entire industry think twice about doing deals (and then a few more times after that again).

Janus Henderson has suffered outflows in every single quarter since the deal was completed in 2017, a miserable stretch that has sent the combined group’s share price down by almost 16 per cent since then, despite the bull market.

These travails have had a chilling effect across the industry. FTAV has lost count of the number of asset management CEOs that have privately held up the combination (and Staberdeen’s) as an example of why “consolidation is no silver bullet” etc etc.

But someone at Janus Henderson has clearly made some kind of human sacrifice, because . . . 

Thanks to several “wins from sophisticated institutional clients” in equities and fixed income, Janus Henderson eked out $5.5bn of net inflows in the first three months of 2023, helping lift its asset under management back above the $300bn mark. Full result presentation here.

That’s quite the welcome win for new JHG CEO Ali Dibadj, who was parachuted in by Nelson Peltz (the asset manager’s biggest shareholder) last year. And to be fair, its shares have done a lot better (or rather, a lot less shitly) than fellow consolidators Invesco and vowel-intolerant Abrdn since 2017.

The question, of course, is whether this is just a lone quarter flattered by rising markets and a couple of one-off big but low-fee institutional mandate wins.

Janus Henderson’s earnings per share beat estimates, but revenues missed and costs rose more than expected, Jefferies analysts note. And assets remain below the $320bn it managed at the time of the merger, which, given what markets have done since 2017, is perversely impressive.

It’s just hard to see how Janus Henderson is going to be able to maintain any positive momentum given *gestures helplessly at every single asset management trend*.