Higher dividend makes up for slow profit growth at Henderson
INVESTMENT manager Henderson increased its dividend to shareholders for the first half, with a new policy to pay out more of its profits.
The group paid out 2.60p per share, up from 2.15p a year ago.
Underlying profits edged up two per cent to £90.7m for the first half of the year, from £88.5m a year ago.
Assets under management increased 10 per cent to £74.7bn, and net inflows hit £5bn – compared with a net outflow of £1.4bn for the same period a year ago.
The vast majority – £4.7bn – of those inflows came from retail investors.
Fee income jumped 10 per cent to £254.7m, but operating expenses also increased 16 per cent to £165.6m.
Staff pay and benefits increased by 14 per cent to £116m.
Investors were disappointed with the results – Henderson’s shares dived 5.6 per cent on the results.
“We regard Henderson as an asset manager with a lower-than-average quality of income [around a third of profits from performance and transactional fees] that is implicitly targeting around 10 per cent per annum profits growth over the next few years,” said analyst David McCann from Numis. “Underlying profit at £97m was eight per cent light of our £106m estimate, due primarily to lower management fees.”