BLK BlackRock Inc

By Austen Hufford 

Assets at BlackRock Inc., the world's largest money manager, continued to grow in its fourth quarter as investors diverted money into lower-cost index-tracking funds and withdrew from actively-traded ones.

BlackRock said Friday that assets under management rose 11% to $5.15 trillion from a year ago.

Revenue for the New York-based company rose, but profit fell as the company posted a smaller net gain from investments in the quarter compared with the same one last year.

BlackRock's flows during the quarter highlight the ongoing shift in investor taste for lower-cost passive funds that track the performance of indexes.

Investors pulled $546 million from BlackRock's active strategies while investing $88.31 billion into its iShares and indexed funds.

BlackRock increased its quarterly dividend to $2.50 from $2.29 previously and added 6 million shares to its buyback program. The company can now buy back up to 9 million shares.

In all, BlackRock reported a profit of $851 million in the fourth quarter, down from $861 million a year prior. Per-share earnings grew to $5.13 from $5.11, as the number of shares outstanding fell 1.6%. Excluding certain items, BlackRock earned $5.14 a share, up from $4.75 a year prior.

Revenue increased 0.9% to $2.89 billion.

Analysts had projected $5.02 a share in adjusted earnings on $2.93 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters.

BlackRock shares, up 8.3% over the past three months, were inactive in premarket trading.

Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 13, 2017 07:18 ET (12:18 GMT)

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