Baltimore, April 30, 2026, 06:03 EDT
- First-quarter earnings from T. Rowe Price will hit before the bell, but attention has already zeroed in on the $13.7 billion net outflow booked for the quarter.
- March assets under management dropped to $1.71 trillion, down from $1.80 trillion in February, putting more strain on the asset manager’s fee revenue.
- BlackRock, Invesco, and Franklin Templeton have all posted inflows, adding pressure on T. Rowe to stem its own client withdrawals.
T. Rowe Price Group will post first-quarter results Thursday before the U.S. bell, with $13.7 billion in net outflows for the period already out in the open and investors focused on whether the Baltimore asset manager is managing to stem the tide. Numbers hit at 7:00 a.m. ET; CEO Rob Sharps and CFO Jen Dardis take analyst questions an hour later on the earnings call.
This is crucial at the moment, since T. Rowe still leans hard on assets under management—AUM—the pile of client funds that feeds its fee revenue. At the end of March, the company reported AUM at $1.71 trillion, down from $1.80 trillion just a month earlier. March saw net outflows hit $3.2 billion, and for the first quarter, outflows totaled $0.9 billion from manager-driven distributions.
The report drops at a time when active managers are under pressure to keep their grip on traditional stock and bond mandates. Clients keep shifting cash into exchange-traded funds, cheaper index vehicles, and private-market plays. Analysts looking at T. Rowe are calling for first-quarter EPS to come in around $2.36 with revenue at $1.87 billion, consensus numbers from Investing.com show. MarketBeat puts consensus EPS a notch higher at $2.44, and revenue at $1.88 billion.
The stock finished Wednesday at $100.47, slipping 0.30%. By 5:39 a.m. Eastern, premarket trading had it down further at $98.72, MarketBeat data showed. That puts the shares in a tight spot ahead of earnings—investors won’t be patient if management’s comments on flows, expenses, or fee pressure lack clarity.
Analysts are dialing back expectations ahead of the release. According to Insider Monkey, JPMorgan’s Kenneth Worthington trimmed his T. Rowe target to $103 from $106 but kept the Underweight call. Barclays also dropped its price target, now $87 from $94, sticking with Underweight after revising asset-manager models to reflect updated quarterly flows and AUM.
Morgan Stanley’s Michael Cyprys flagged a 3.1% annualized organic decay rate in T. Rowe’s latest net flows, according to Investing.com. The analyst took the firm’s price target down to $105 from $107, stuck with an Equalweight rating, and shaved the 2026 EPS forecast to $9.67 from $10.02. Still, he bumped up the first-quarter projection to $2.52.
Flows have lagged, especially when stacked up against competitors. BlackRock, for example, pulled in $130 billion in net new money during the first quarter—driven by iShares ETFs, its active lineup, and private market products. Invesco logged $21.8 billion in net long-term inflows, ending the quarter with $2.2 trillion in assets under management.
Franklin Resources, the parent of Franklin Templeton, posted $16.9 billion in long-term net inflows for the quarter ended March 31. “Franklin Templeton delivered another strong quarter, with $17 billion in long-term net inflows across public and private markets,” CEO Jenny Johnson said in the company’s release. Franklin Resources
Capital return stands out for T. Rowe. In February, the company bumped up its quarterly dividend to $1.30 a share from $1.27—a 2.36% lift. That puts T. Rowe on course for a 40-year streak of annual dividend hikes since going public, according to the company.
Dividend appeal might not carry the day by itself. Should management indicate equity-strategy outflows, tighter fees, or unexpected spending spikes in growth segments, investors may start doubting whether earnings can actually support both the dividend and the move toward alternatives.
T. Rowe has been pushing to expand its lineup of higher-fee private-market and alternative offerings—Oak Hill Advisors is a key piece of that move—as traditional active equity funds feel the squeeze. Glenn August, OHA’s founder and CEO, is set to appear on Thursday’s earnings call, giving investors a window into the alternatives unit. The choice to put August on the line signals the firm understands exactly what’s on investors’ minds.
