Premier Miton: Sinking European fund drags down asset manager
Premier Miton’s assets dropped sharply over the last quarter as its investors fled from one of its underperforming European equity funds.
Assets under management at the fund house fell by £500m over the last three months, reaching just £10.2bn, it revealed in a trading update today.
Investors pulled £221m from Premier Miton over the quarter, though £175m of the withdrawals came solely from its European Opportunities fund, which has struggled with poor performance.
The £925m fund has grown just 1.3 per cent in the last three years, compared to a sector average of 21.4 per cent.
It is down nine per cent in the last six months, while the rest of the sector is flat, according to data from FE fundinfo.
“We maintain our belief in this fund’s long-term focus on growth orientated European companies in sectors such as technology and healthcare which have high returns on capital, and which can compound for positive investment returns,” said Premier Miton CEO Mike O’Shea.
Investors withdrew money from every arm of the firm except its Absolute Return strategies, which received £166m in new cash over the quarter.
While Premier Miton’s trading update ran only to the end of March, it said that assets had declined further to £10bn in the first 10 days of April.
Investec analysts noted that this would mean an outperformance from the firm considering the sharp drop in markets this month, and described the slightly positive net inflows into the firm during the time as “encouraging”.
“Although net outflows were larger than we forecast, in the context of the challenging market conditions we believe this performance is credible, especially when compared to its peers,” said Investec analysts Rahim Karim and Jens Ehrenberg.
“Whilst near-term challenges remain, our view is that the quality of the platform, combined with the delivery of sustained investment outperformance, should position it as a relative winner when flows and sentiment recover.”
The firm also said today that the operating infrastructure review as part of its cost-cutting programme that it began in December had now completed, and was set to save £3m annually, compared to one-off costs of £1m.
“Implementing these efficiencies and cost reductions is expected to be completed by the end of September 2025,” added O’Shea.