Underlying pre-tax profits at the Scottish money manager remained largely flat over the year at £491.6m, while net revenue rose 5pc to £1.17bn, the company said.
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While the firm was at pains to highlight the steps taken to diversify its business away from Asian and emerging markets, it reported larger-than-expected net outflows of £33.9bn ($51bn, €48.3bn) over the year, largely on the back of weak sentiment toward these regions and expected outflows from closed life books managed for insurers. The firm has also been impacted by withdrawals by sovereign wealth funds.
Net revenue rose 5 percent to 1.169 billion pounds from last year’s 1.118 billion pounds.
The equities arm saw net outflows of £16.4bn, up from £13bn in 2014.
“Once fully integrated, they will create a global alternatives platform with assets under management of over £20 billion from which we will seek to build organically”.
Investors have also pulled money out of emerging markets in expectation of rising U.S. interest rates, causing the final quarter of Aberdeen’s year to be the worst for outflows from these markets since the financial crisis.
Graham Spooner, investment research analyst at The Share Centre, says Aberdeen’s stock may appeal to contrarian investors due to the long-term growth prospects in emerging markets.
We intend to continue with this strategy alongside ensuring we continue to deliver long term value for our clients and shareholders.
Martin Gilbert, chief executive of Aberdeen, says: “We continue to rebalance and diversify the business, to focus on managing our costs and to generate cash and this has helped to mitigate the impact of the outflows we’ve seen”.
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Shares of Aberdeen, down by a third since April, fell 4% on Monday morning to 321.5p. Two have it Strong Buy, one at Buy, 10 at Hold, and five at Sell, according to data from Thomson Reuters.
