Federated Hermes, Inc. (NYSE:FHI) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call October 27, 2023 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Ray Hanley - President, Federated Investors Management Company

Chris Donahue - President and Chief Executive Officer

Tom Donahue - Chief Financial Officer

Debbie Cunningham - Chief Investment Officer, Money Markets

Saker Nusseibeh - Chief Executive Officer, Federated Hermes Limited, International Operation

Conference Call Participants

Dan Fannon - Jefferies

Patrick Davitt - Autonomous Research

Ken Worthington - JPMorgan

Brian Bedell - Deutsche Bank Securities

John Dunn - Evercore ISI

Michael Brown - KBW

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Federated Hermes, Inc. Q3 2023 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. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to your host, Ray Hanley, President of Federated Investors Management Company. You may begin.

Ray Hanley

Good morning, and welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Leading today's call will be Chris Donahue, Federated Hermes President and CEO; and Tom Donahue, Chief Financial Officer. And joining us for the Q&A are Saker Nusseibeh, who is the CEO of Federated Hermes Limited, our international operation; and Debbie Cunningham, the Chief Investment Officer for the money markets.

During the 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?

Chris Donahue

Thank you, Ray, and good morning all. I will review Federated Hermes business performance, Tom will comment on the financial results. We had solid asset growth in Q3, ending with record assets under management of $715 billion, driven by record money market assets of $525 billion. Fixed income produced solid growth as well.

Looking first at equities. Assets were down $5.7 billion to $77.3 billion, due to combined market losses and FX impact totaling $3.3 billion and net redemptions of $2.4 billion. We did see Q3 positive net sales in 14 equity strategies, including MDP large cap growth, international leaders and U.S. SMID equity. The strategic dividend domestic strategy had Q3 net redemptions of $1.5 billion.

This strategy is outcome-driven and is benchmark agnostic as we have said each quarter. It seeks a high and rising stream of dividend income from high-quality companies. As of 9/30, the fund had a weighted average dividend yield of 5.1%, compared to a 1.6% yield in the S&P and the fund has seen 39 dividend increases and zero cuts in the trailing 12-months.