"An Asian client" withdrew $52 billion in the second quarter! BlackRock's stock price plummeted

Affected by the redemption of $52 billion from a major Asian client, BlackRock's performance in the second quarter was poor, with its stock price plummeting by 6%. On Tuesday, due to performance falling short of expectations, the world's largest asset management company BlackRock's stock price dropped 5.9% from the previous day's historical high, hitting a two-week low during intraday trading. The latest financial data shows that BlackRock's revenue in the second quarter was $5.42 billion, below the average analyst expectation of $5.45 billion. This performance gap was mainly caused by a decrease in net inflows. According to reports, in the second quarter, an Asian institutional client "partially redeemed" $52 billion from BlackRock's index funds, dragging down the company's net inflow performance. Edward Jones analyst Kyle Sanders stated that the market is concerned that this Asian client may continue to withdraw funds, and this uncertainty has pressured the stock price performance. Steady Growth in Net Profit, Aggressively Expanding Private Equity Business Despite the impact of large client withdrawals, BlackRock still achieved $68 billion in net client inflows in the second quarter, driving total assets under management to grow by 18% year-on-year to a record $12.53 trillion. Benefiting from this, along with the support of U.S. stocks hitting new highs, BlackRock's net profit in the second quarter increased from $1.5 billion in the same period last year to $1.59 billion, a growth of 6.5%; earnings per share, excluding one-time expenses, reached $12.05, exceeding market expectations of $10.78. BlackRock is aggressively entering the private equity market to drive fee growth. The company expects to complete its acquisition of private credit firm HPS Investment Partners on July 1, a deal that was just completed at the end of the second quarter. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stated: “The recent acquisition of HPS will help us build deeper relationships with clients as we enter the traditionally strongest second half of the year. This is just the beginning of our next phase of stronger growth.”