Polar flows hold up amidst heavy sector outflows
AUM hit by market falls, but Polar's net flows look strong in what is looking like an awful quarter for active asset managers
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AUM fell by £2.4bn (10%) in Polar Capital’s Q4 of FY25 (to 31 Mar 25) to £21.4bn. Market movements, investment performance and currency fluctuations accounted for nearly all of the decline (£2.3bn).
This was unsurprising considering Polar’s large exposure to the technology sector, the heavy falls in technology sector stocks (Dow Jones Global Technology Index: -11%), and Polar’s reporting currency, GBP, strengthening 3% over the US$, depressing the £-value of US$-denominated assets.
Pleasingly though, net flows were only marginally negative (-£89m), an improvement over Q3 (-£260m). This is impressive given the decline in markets and investor sentiment, particularly in the technology space.
My Equity Development research note covers the AUM update in more detail with the full research note available here.
Here’s a chart from the note (updated with latest available data) showing how solid those net flows are relative to other active managers.
Polar will be publishing its full FY25 results on 30 June 2025, and I’ll be covering those in some detail.
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Disclosure: At the time of writing, Paul Bryant was a shareholder of Polar Capital and covered Polar Capital as an analyst on behalf of Equity Development Limited. Read Equity Development’s research on Polar here. And please read this link for the terms and conditions of reading Equity Development’s research.