Acadian Asset Management Inc. (AAMI): what the price assumes

Generated: 2026-07-29 · Exported: 2026-08-01 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/AAMI

Headline

Field	Value
Ticker	AAMI
Company	Acadian Asset Management Inc.
Sector / Industry	Financial Services
Current price	$80.04/sh
Composition	Management fees 92% / Performance fees 6% / Consolidated Funds' revenue 3%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

Field	Value
Inversion basis	fee-financial
Top-of-range earnings growth must hold for	5.8y
Price-to-earnings	33.5x
Earnings yield	3.0%

Solve inputs: computed at a 10.5% cost of equity; growth searched up to the 20% fee-earnings ceiling; each 1pp moves the implied horizon ~1.5 years.

Reconcile: at the x-ray's 9.3% required return this reads ~16.6%/yr; the models below use their own rates.

How unusual the bet is: high

Reference	Value
vs own history	-0.40σ
cohort percentile (of 51 peers)	86
sustained it ~5.8 years at this level	24%
implied end-window share	0%

Valuation X-Ray

Asset, earnings-power and peer-multiple models all land far below the price; ONLY the growth-DCF reaches it. The bet is durable compounding the static frames structurally cannot price (a moat/durability premium).

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

Family	Median price/FV	Models	Reads
Asset	—	0	—
Earnings	3.95x	3	expensive
Relative	2.20x	4	expensive
Growth	0.93x	2	justifies

Families that justify the price: Growth Families that call it expensive: Earnings, Relative

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 8.3%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=9)

Model	Family	FV	Price/FV	Applicable	Methodology
DCF Perpetual Growth	Growth	$0.00	—	no	FCF base $0.0B, growth 19% (input: historical growth), terminal g 4.0%, WACC 8.3%, 6yr projection
DCF Exit Multiple	Growth	$83.71	0.96x	yes	Exit EV/EBITDA: 20.7x / 22.7x / 24.7x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 6yr
Relative Valuation	Relative	$52.08	1.54x	yes	P/E 18.6x (blended: static sector reference 12x + trailing (TTM) 34x), scenarios: 15.1x / 18.6x / 22.1x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA N/Ax
Simple DDM	Growth	—	—	no	—
Two-Stage DDM	Growth	—	—	no	—
Simple Excess Return	Asset	—	—	no	—
Two-Stage Excess Return	Asset	—	—	no	—
Discounted Future Market Cap	Growth	$87.67	0.91x	yes	Rev $0.6B, growth 19% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 3.8x / 4.7x / 5.6x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 12x)
Peter Lynch Fair Value	Relative	$28.20	2.84x	yes	EPS $2.35, growth 1% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=42.51 (Overvalued)
Margin Trajectory	Growth	—	—	no	—
Earnings Power Value	Earnings	$20.28	3.95x	yes	Normalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $0.14B × (1−35%) / WACC 8.3% → EPV (no growth)
Residual Income	Asset	—	—	no	—
Graham Number	Asset	—	—	no	—
EV/EBITDA Relative	Relative	—	—	no	—
FCF Yield	Earnings	$0.01	8003.50x	yes	FCF $1.5M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity (excluded from median)
SBC-Adj FCF Yield	Earnings	—	—	no	—
Ben Graham Formula	Earnings	$19.89	4.02x	yes	EPS $2.35 × (8.5 + 2×0.8%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/B	Asset	—	—	no	—
P/Sales Sector	Relative	$51.25	1.56x	yes	Revenue $0.61B × sector P/S 3.0x
PEG Fair Value	Relative	$11.75	6.81x	yes	EPS $2.35 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 0.8% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 1.2x
Earnings Yield	Earnings	$25.41	3.15x	yes	EPS $2.35 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations Multiple	Relative	—	—	no	—
Clinical Phase NPV	Growth	—	—	no	—
Merton	Asset	—	—	no	—
V5 Mechanical	—	—	—	no	—

Solvency

Field	Value
Net debt	$200.0m
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)	2.17x
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)	1.41x
Interest coverage	7.0x
Share count CAGR (buyback)	-5.8%
Burning cash	no

Bullet Takeaways

• Revenue is a percentage of a number Acadian does not set: the 10-K works out that a 10% move in equity markets against "our approximately $177 billion of long-only equity assets under management" shifts annualized management fee revenue by roughly $60 million, against trailing operating profit of $116.6 million.
• The buyback is unusually aggressive for a firm this size, with the 10-K stating that "For the period January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2025, we repurchased approximately 58% of our shares."
• Second-quarter results land July 30, 2026, and the line that matters is net client flows rather than fees, because nine consecutive positive quarters is the record the current quote is extrapolating.

Bull Case

One disclosure in the 10-K explains most of this company. Acadian works out that a 10% move in equity markets against "our approximately $177 billion of long-only equity assets under management" changes those assets by about $18 billion and annualized management fee revenue by roughly $60 million. Set that beside trailing operating profit of $116.6 million and the machine is visible: a ten percent year in world equities is worth about half the firm's operating profit, in either direction, before anyone picks up the phone. That is the number the verdict turns on. Acadian does not control it. What it does control is how many dollars sit in the pool, and that has been moving one way.

The asset base has roughly doubled in three years. Assets under management stood at $195.7 billion on March 31, 2026, up 61% from a year earlier, on record quarterly net inflows of $21.4 billion, about 12% of the opening balance. By April 30 the preliminary figure was approximately $219 billion. Nine consecutive quarters of positive net client flows have now added roughly $50 billion. Flows are the one asset-management metric a rising market cannot manufacture on management's behalf.

Fees follow the assets, at a rate set by mix. The 10-K puts the average fee rate at 37.9 basis points for 2023 and is explicit about what moves it: "The greatest driver of increases or decreases in the average fee rate are changes in the mix of our assets under management caused by net inflows or outflows in certain asset classes". Quarterly management fees reached $159.3 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 41% year over year.

Meanwhile the share count is going the other way, hard. It is down about 5.8% a year over the four years to March 2026, and the 10-K states the longer record without decoration: "For the period January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2025, we repurchased approximately 58% of our shares." Retiring more than half the company across six years while the asset base doubles is a particular kind of capital allocation. It is also why per-share figures here move considerably faster than the underlying business does.

Structurally, Acadian is one systematic investment platform rather than a federation of boutiques. Management fees are 92% of revenue, performance fees 6%, and consolidated fund revenue the small remainder. There is one research process to fund and one set of models to supervise, so incremental assets arrive with very little incremental cost attached: the same models that run roughly $219 billion today ran about $104 billion in 2023.

The bull case is not that this is cheap. It is that the flow engine is running, the fee base compounds behind it, and the share count is retreating fast enough to do half the work.

Bear Case

What the quote requires is unusually specific: fee earnings compounding near the top of the range this industry produces, held there for about six years. Not one strong year. Six of them. Of fee managers that have grown earnings at that pace, only about 24% kept it up that long, and the earnings multiple paying for it already sits at the very top of the fee-management group. There is no re-rating left in the tank, only delivery.

The fragile piece is not the fee rate and it is not the cost base. It is whether the pool holds its value at all. Acadian's revenue is a percentage of a number marked to world equity markets every day, and the filing says so without qualification: "Any reduction in the value of our assets under management would result in a reduction in our revenues." The company's own sensitivity work puts a 10% market decline at roughly $60 million of annualized management fee revenue. Trailing operating profit is $116.6 million. A single bad year in equities takes out about half of it before one client has decided anything.

Then there is the revenue line that behaves least like revenue. Performance fees are 6% of the total, and they are contingent by construction: the relevant products "earn these fees upon exceeding high-water mark performance thresholds or outperforming a hurdle rate", with approximately $23 billion of assets sitting in that category. A high-water mark is a ratchet pointed at the manager. A bad year does not merely cancel that year's performance fee, it cancels the next one too, until the shortfall has been earned back. Six years of near-ceiling earnings growth has to be delivered through a fee structure engineered to pay nothing after a drawdown.

Reported profitability does not obviously argue for a top-of-group multiple either. Acadian converts about 19% of revenue into operating profit. Compared with the same measure at its cohort, Victory Capital runs 36.9%, WisdomTree 36.6%, Artisan Partners 33.3%, Janus Henderson 29.6%, SEI 27.9% and Federated Hermes 27.4%. Part of that gap is presentational, since consolidated fund revenue swells Acadian's denominator without bringing matching profit. Part of it is not. Ownership is concentrated on top of that: as of December 31, 2025 "Paulson & Co. Inc. (\"Paulson\") and related parties thereof held approximately 21.8 % of the common stock of the Company." A holder that size effectively sets the terms of any future supply of stock.

Concede that the flows are genuine; nine straight quarters is not luck, and it is the strongest fact in the file. The argument is about what has been paid for it. Only the forward-growth methods reach today's quote, at about 0.93 times. The earnings-power methods put it at 3.99 times what they can carry and the peer multiple methods at 2.22 times. When the static lenses trail that far behind, the whole quote rests on duration, and duration is the one exposure a systematic equity manager cannot hedge.

Valuation

A capital-light fee business is worth the fee earnings it throws off rather than the book value it carries, so the reading starts from the earnings multiple. At about 34 times earnings, a 3% earnings yield, the quote is paying for fee earnings to grow near the top of the achievable range for roughly six years. That comes out of one calculation at a 10.55% cost of equity and belongs firmly in the "approximately" category. The sensitivity is the useful part: each percentage point of growth is worth around 1.5 years of the required runway, so a slower path does not reduce the bet, it stretches it.

The methods split hard here, and the split is the information. Only the forward-growth methods reach today's quote, landing at about 0.93 times it. Everything static falls well short: the earnings-power methods sit at 3.99 times, and the peer multiple methods at 2.22 times what they can support. A gap of roughly four to one between the quote and a no-growth valuation of current earnings is not a modest premium for quality. It is a bet on duration wearing a quality label.

In business terms the requirement is a run rate. Acadian earned $2.35 a share over the trailing year on roughly $610 million of revenue and $116.6 million of operating profit. To justify the quote, fee earnings have to compound near the top of what this industry produces, in each of about six consecutive years, off a base whose value is remarked to world equity markets every session.

Cohort position puts the multiple at the top of the group and the reported profitability well down it. Acadian converts about 19% of revenue into operating profit; compared with peers, Victory Capital runs 36.9%, Artisan Partners 33.3% and Federated Hermes 27.4%. Those figures are not strictly like for like, because consolidated fund revenue enters Acadian's denominator without matching profit behind it. The fee rate is where the cleaner comparison lives, and the 10-K reports an average rate of 37.9 basis points for 2023 driven by "changes in the mix of our assets under management caused by net inflows or outflows in certain asset classes, and disproportionate market movements". Growth arriving in lower-fee mandates lifts assets faster than it lifts revenue, which is the quiet way a doubling asset base produces less than a doubling of fees.

The balance sheet is small, simple, and not the constraint. Borrowing runs through a facility the 10-K describes as "a delayed draw term loan facility in an aggregate principal amount, as of the Closing Date, of up to $200 million", and interest expense was "$21.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2025", which a year of operating income covers about 6.4 times. The share count is the line that carries more weight: down about 5.8% a year over the four years to March 2026. A shrinking denominator makes per-share growth look faster than business growth, and at 34 times earnings, a fair amount of that effect is already inside the number.

Catalysts

The next event is days away. Acadian reports second-quarter results on July 30, 2026, and the comparison it is reporting against is a demanding one. First-quarter assets under management were $195.7 billion at March 31, 2026, up 61% from a year earlier, on record quarterly net inflows of $21.4 billion, roughly 12% of the opening balance, with quarterly management fees of $159.3 million and GAAP earnings of $0.68 a share.

Between the two prints the company held its first Investor Forum, on May 19, 2026, and used it to disclose preliminary assets under management of approximately $219 billion as of April 30, 2026. The same presentation laid out the trajectory, from about $104 billion in 2023 to $196 billion by the first quarter of 2026, with nine consecutive quarters of positive net client flows totalling roughly $50 billion, and named two expansion priorities: systematic credit and the global wealth channel. Both push the same investment process into markets where Acadian holds little of its current asset base, which is the cheapest growth an asset manager can pursue and the hardest to schedule.

What to watch in the July print is not the fee line, which follows assets almost mechanically, but the flow line and the mix behind it. Nine quarters of inflows is the streak the current valuation is extending; one negative quarter is the event that ends the extrapolation. Mix matters separately, because the average fee rate moves with where the money lands, and assets gathered through the wealth channel or in credit will not necessarily arrive at the rate the existing equity book earns.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Quant & Solutions (Acadian LLC) (reported)

• JHG (JANUS HENDERSON GROUP PLC)
• FY2025 10-K: Managed CDOs, Private Equity funds and custom non-discretionary accounts with no corresponding composite are excluded from the analysis. Excluded assets represent 14% of AUM for the period ended December 31, 2025. Assets Under Management Our AUM as of December 31, 2025, was $493.2 billion, an increase of $114.5…
• FY2025 10-K: …Inc.; DigitalBridge Group, Inc.; Federated Hermes, Inc.; Franklin Resources, Inc.; Galaxy Digital Inc.; GCM Grosvenor Inc.; GQG Partners Inc.; Hamilton Lane Incorporated; Innventure, Inc.; Invesco Ltd.; Janus Henderson Group plc; KKR & Co. Inc.; Northern Trust Corporation; P10, Inc.; SEI Investments Company;…
• VCTR (Victory Capital Holdings, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …the fact that substantially all the investments of a fund may not have readily available market information and therefore the fair value for these assets is typically determined using unobservable inputs and models that may include subjective assumptions. AUM reported by the Company for alternative investment…
• FY2025 10-K: 0001570827 us-gaap:PreferredStockMember vctr:AmundiUsMember 2025-08-01 0001570827 vctr:SwapTerminationAgreementMember 2023-12-31 0001570827 vctr:InvestmentManagementFeesMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001570827 us-gaap:AccumulatedTranslationAdjustmentMember 2022-12-31 0001570827 us-gaap:RestrictedStockMember…
• APAM (Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …us-gaap:VariableInterestEntityPrimaryBeneficiaryMember us-gaap:FairValueInputsLevel2Member 2025-12-31 0001517302 us-gaap:EquitySecuritiesMember us-gaap:FairValueMeasurementsRecurringMember us-gaap:VariableInterestEntityPrimaryBeneficiaryMember us-gaap:FairValueInputsLevel3Member 2025-12-31 0001517302…
• FY2025 10-K: Investment Team (1) Year Ended Growth Global Equity U.S. Value Int'l Value Group Global Value SEM Credit Developing World Antero Peak Group Int'l Small-Mid EMsights Capital Group Total December 31, 2025 (unaudited; in millions) Beginning assets under management $ 38,445 $ 12,934 $ 7,597 $ 44,295 $ 28,679 $ 1,552 $…
• AMG (AFFILIATED MANAGERS GROUP, INC.)
• FY2025 10-K: …0001004434 false 2025 FY P10D http://www.amg.com/20251231#AmortizationAndImpairmentsOfIntangibleAssets http://www.amg.com/20251231#AmortizationAndImpairmentsOfIntangibleAssets iso4217:USD xbrli:shares iso4217:USD xbrli:shares xbrli:pure amg:affiliate utr:Y amg:segment 0001004434 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001004434…
• FY2025 10-K: …$105.4 billion or 15% driven by a combination of investment performance generated across our Affiliates, net client cash inflows, and the addition of assets associated with new partnerships with Affiliates operating in growing areas within alternative strategies. C lient demand for alternative strategies continued in…
• FHI (Federated Hermes, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …dated as of July 30, 2021, by and among Federated Hermes, Inc. certain subsidiaries as guarantors party thereto, the banks as lenders party thereto, and PNC Bank, National Association, PNC Capital Markets LLC, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., Citibank, N.A. and Toronto-Dominion Bank, New York Branch (incorporated by…
• FY2025 10-K: …periods. The update is effective for Federated Hermes for the December 31, 2027 Form 10-K, with early adoption permitted, and allows for either the prospective or retrospective adoption method. Management is currently evaluating this ASU to determine its impact on Federated Hermes' disclosures. In September 2025, the…
• WT (WisdomTree, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …at some of the leading wealth management firms in the U.S. Through our Portfolio Solutions program, we are pursuing registered investment advisors and independent broker-dealers offering customization services with the goal of managing a majority of each firm's assets. We aim to increase the number of advisors…
• FY2025 10-K: …passu basis with the common stock, only payable if and when declared by the board of directors of Quorus, and a 1.0 x non-participating liquidation preference that is senior to all other holders of capital stock of Quorus. This investment is accounted for under the measurement alternative prescribed in ASC 321, as it…
• SEIC (SEI INVESTMENTS COMPANY)
• FY2025 10-K: …and investment management platforms to banks and trust institutions, independent wealth advisers, and financial advisors worldwide; Investment Advisors - Provides investment management and investment processing platforms to affluent investors through a network of independent registered investment advisors, financial…
• FY2025 10-K: …0000350894 2025 FY FALSE http://fasb.org/us-gaap/2025#OccupancyNet http://fasb.org/us-gaap/2025#ProfessionalFees iso4217:USD xbrli:shares iso4217:USD xbrli:shares xbrli:pure seic:fiscal_quarter seic:plaintiff seic:advisor seic:option seic:paymentInstallment 0000350894 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0000350894 2025-06-30…

Methodology Note

• Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
• Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
• Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
• Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

Acadian Investor Forum, May 19, 2026 · Acadian Q1 2026 results · Acadian 8-K, May 2026 · Acadian earnings calendar, 2026 · Acadian Investor Forum presentation, May 19, 2026