Waddell & Reed Financial sees declines in quarterly profit and revenue

Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. on Tuesday reported lower profit and revenue for the first quarter as assets under management declined 6 percent from a year earlier.

The Overland Park-based mutual fund company said it earned $67.1 million during the three months that ended March 31. That compared with a profit of $74.9 million in the first quarter of 2014.

Operating revenue of $385 million in the first quarter was down from $390.4 million in the same quarter last year.

Waddell & Reed said assets under management ended the quarter at $123 billion. However, compared to the fourth quarter last year, assets under management fell less than 1 percent.

“Our first-quarter results reflect sequential improvements in our business,” Hank Herrmann, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We still have some ground to cover before we recapture the momentum we had prior to 2014.”

Herrmann also said the performance of the company’s Asset Strategy fund, which is among its largest, has “meaningfully improved” over the past year, while efforts to “highlight a broad span of products continue to gain traction.”

This story was originally published April 28, 2015 at 10:03 AM with the headline "Waddell & Reed Financial sees declines in quarterly profit and revenue."