Eaton Vance's CEO Discusses F2Q 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Gross sales and other inflows in the quarter were $13.2 billion, up 15% from the first quarter. The increase was driven largely by 26% higher income product sales and strong flows into Parametric’s emerging market and index tracking strategies. Redemption and other outflows of $12.7 billion were flat versus the first quarter. The $567 million of net inflows for the second quarter translates into organic growth of just over 1%, not where we want it to be, but a decided improvement after two quarters of negative flows.

We have seen an improving investment performance trend for our strategies in a number of asset classes. We now have 31 funds with at least one share class with an overall Morningstar rating of 4 or 5 stars, up from 25 such funds a year ago. The improving performance of our family of municipal bond fund is coming at an opportune time as the prospect of higher federal income taxes in 2013 moves ever closer.

Floating rate bank loans continued to be a top performing and top selling franchise for us with significant growth potential. The combination of attractive current yields, solid underlying credit fundamentals, and a little to no exposure to potential loss of principal value due to rising interest rates creates a compelling investment opportunity. Industry – industry flow data provided by the Investment Company Institute continues to show a general reluctant among U.S. retail investors to invest in domestic equities instead of favoring international equities, taxable income, and tax free income.

We have competitive products in each of these categories as shown on the slide listing our four and five star ranked funds. Funds managed by our Atlanta Capital and Parametric affiliates remain an important part of our performance story. Within U.S. equities, large cap value strategy appears to be turning the corner in terms of its relative performance.

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