Exane BNP downgrades Henderson Group

All the asset managers were facing a difficult second quarter, but a combination of several smaller factors unique to Henderson Group led broker Exane BNP Paribas to downgrade its recommendation on the shares.

Furthermore, its recent stellar fund performance had come off a bit and the manager had a higher exposure to US investors, where the pensions system is mature and penetration of passives/ETF is higher, analysts Arnaud Giblat and Gregory Simpson said in a research note sent to clients

Using its proprietary bottom-up fund flow analysis, Exane said Henderson was seeing outflows in Global, European and US equities, alongside some deterioration in fund performance.

We continue to see upside risk to the company’s target of achieving an operating margin in excess of 40%, Arnaud Giblat and Gregory Simpson said in a research note sent to clients, adding that “upside risks should remain years out”.

Giblat and Simpson downgraded their recommendation on the shares from ‘outperform’ to ‘neutral’ and took their target price from 270p to 240p.