Share count
36Mpeak FY2017
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AAMI, Acadian Asset Management Inc.
Capital Markets & Asset Management financial
Acadian LLC offers institutional investors across the globe access to a diversified array of systematic investment strategies designed to meet a range of risk and return objectives.
We are a holding company that operates a systematic investment management business through our majority owned subsidiary, Acadian Asset Management LLC ("Acadian LLC").
Acadian LLC pursues a fundamentally grounded, data-rich, and highly structured approach to investing that seeks to identify and exploit systematic and structural inefficiencies in the markets.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$564M
+11.5% YoY · −4% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $611M 5-yr avg $487M
Net margin 13.8% 5-yr avg 45.7%
Revenue $167M +39.3% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 25.1% yr-ago 26.6%
Net income $24M yr-ago $24M
Net margin 14.6% yr-ago 19.8%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Assets under management and the fee rate on them. What decides it: net flows in or out, the market's move on the assets already there (the firm rises and falls with the indices it invests in), the drift toward cheaper passive products, and the operating leverage on a largely fixed cost base. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Operating margin has held high for a asset manager (median 25% across the record). It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 102%, the leverage of a model that needs almost no plant to grow. A high return that does not fade can mark a moat, but whether the assets stay (net flows, not last year's market) is what the flow disclosures and the 10-K settle, not the multiple.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2017–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | ||||||||||
| $858M | $905M | $807M | $698M | $524M | $417M | $427M | $506M | $564M | $611M | RevenueRevenue |
| 8.3% | 9.3% | 27.5% | 18.9% | 27.8% | 40.2% | 24.8% | 26.8% | 23.4% | 23.3% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| 0.5% | 15.1% | 27.7% | 41.1% | 158.2% | 24.1% | 15.4% | 16.8% | 14.2% | 13.8% | Net marginNet mgn |
| $4M | $136M | $224M | $287M | $828M | $101M | $66M | $85M | $80M | $84M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| — | 4% | 4% | 25% | 6% | 31% | 31% | 31% | 31% | 33% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | ||||||||||
| 3% | 102% | 196% | 75% | — | — | 164% | — | — | 209% | Return on equityROE |
| 3% | 102% | 196% | 75% | — | — | 164% | — | — | 209% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | ||||||||||
| — | $1.6B | $1.4B | $1.4B | $715M | $519M | $611M | $703M | $677M | $715M | Total assetsAssets |
| $200M | $283M | $82M | $373M | $252M | $121M | $148M | $99M | $124M | $150M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $127M | $134M | $115M | $384M | ($18M) | ($22M) | $40M | — | — | $40M | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | ||||||||||
| 111M | 108M | 91.3M | 82.0M | 80.5M | 43.2M | 42.5M | 38.3M | 36.2M | 35.8M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $7.70 | $8.41 | $8.84 | $8.51 | $6.51 | $9.67 | $10.03 | $13.19 | $15.56 | $17.08 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $0.04 | $1.27 | $2.45 | $3.49 | $10.29 | $2.33 | $1.55 | $2.22 | $2.21 | $2.35 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $1.14 | $1.25 | $1.25 | $4.69 | $-0.22 | $-0.50 | $0.95 | — | — | $1.12 | Book value / shareBVPS |
The diluted share count moved ×1/1.86 into 2022 — shares retired, not a split the totals corroborate — and the per-share figures carry the counts as filed.
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 8-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +9.2%/yr | +12.8%/yr |
| EPS | +66.3%/yr | −8.8%/yr |
| Book value / share | −3.1%/yr (6-yr) | −5.4%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2017–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$564Mlow FY2022
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Operating margin 23.4%Solid fee marginOperating income $132M ÷ revenue $564MIndustry peers: median 22%
What this means
The heart of a asset manager: how much of each fee dollar survives the cost of running the business. Fees ride on assets under management, so the swing factors are net flows in or out and the market's move on the assets already there; the cost base is largely fixed, which lifts margins in a bull market and squeezes them in a bear one. A high margin held for years, through a market it does not control, is the operational mark of a real franchise.
- Net margin 14.2%SolidNet income $80M ÷ revenue $564M
What this means
What reaches the owner after tax and interest. For a capital-light fee business this should be a wide share of revenue; when it is thin despite a high operating margin, debt taken on for acquisitions is usually the reason, so read it next to the balance sheet.
- Return on equity 199%Very high (≥25%)Net income $80M ÷ equity $40MIndustry peers: median 29%
What this means
Because the business ties up little capital, a healthy fee stream throws off a high return on the equity behind it. Read it with the buyback record: returning capital lifts this ratio honestly, but heavy debt taken to do so can flatter it.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Moderate contestabilityAI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.
In its own filing A competitive risk, new this year
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.
“Our failure to effectively manage the development and use of AI, our competitors' development or use of AI, and an evolving AI regulatory environment could have an adverse effect on our growth prospects, reputation, or business and results of operations.”
The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Debt maturity
the debt note, SEC EDGAR →Not how much it owes, but when it falls due, and against what. The ladder the company files, beside cash on hand and a year's owner earnings.
Bars scaled to the largest single year.
Due in the next 12 months$0the first rung: what must be repaid or rolled over within the year
Within two years$0the near wall, the part most exposed to today’s credit conditions
Biggest single year$200Min 2028the lumpiest maturity, where a refinancing, if needed, is largest
Due over the next five years$200Mthe near slice; the balance sheet carries $200M of debt in all
Maturity schedule extracted from the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled to the balance-sheet debt.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 9-year cash-flow recordGoodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.
Goodwill & intangibles$78M11% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equity50%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital
Cash spent acquiring$0over 9 years buying other businesses
$16M written down across 1 year (2020): goodwill the company has already conceded it overpaid for, charged against earnings. A write-down costs no cash (the cash went out when the deal was signed), but it is management marking its own past judgment to market.
Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 9-year record, from the company's own filings.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Kelly Young | $12.7M | $24.3M | $828M |
| 2022 | Kelly Young | $700k | −$7.0M | $101M |
| 2023 | Kelly Young | $700k | $810k | $66M |
| 2024 | Kelly Young | $793k | $793k | $85M |
| 2025 | Kelly Young | $10.5M | $10.5M | $80M |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Income taxes, Stock compensation as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Capital Markets & Asset Management
The same industry, side by side on fee margins. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Op. margin | Net margin | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| APAMArtisan Partners | $1.2B | 35.1% | 21.8% | 74% |
| VRTSVirtus Investment Partners Inc. | $853M | 20.3% | 14.4% | 14% |
| RILYBRC Group Holdings Inc. | $789M | 10.7% | 7.8% | 10% |
| HLNEHamilton Lane | $759M | 33.2% | 23.8% | 29% |
| AAMIAcadian Asset Management Inc. | $564M | 24.8% | 16.8% | 102% |
| GCMGGCM Grosvenor Inc. | $558M | 18.9% | 3.3% | 168% |
| CNSCohen & Steers | $556M | 38.3% | 28.4% | 39% |
| RPCRidgepost Capital Inc. | $297M | 21.9% | 6.6% | 5% |
| Group median | — | 23.4% | 15.6% | 34% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFAcadian Asset Management Inc. is profitable, but its owner-earnings base could not be formed from this filing’s tagged data (operating cash flow or capital spending is missing), so the owner-earnings reverse-DCF has no base to grow. We read the price from both ends instead: type a price to see the profitability it demands, then set the mature margin you would believe and weigh the two against each other. Nothing leaves your browser unless you enter it in your notebook.
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The assumptions
Revenue, delivered−3%/yr’20→’25
Enter a price to run it.
Owner earnings it must reach—
Margin the price demands—
Owner-earnings margin today—
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Two reads of one future. From your price: the owner earnings the company must reach, valued at a mature multiple and discounted back at your rate, expressed as the margin it implies on revenue grown at your rate. From your belief: the mature margin you would credit, set on the dial above. When the margin the price demands runs above the one you would believe, you are paying for a future taken on faith. For a deep cyclical at a trough, normalized through-cycle earnings are the better lens; this mode is for the genuinely unprofitable, and for the profitable business whose capital spending currently outruns its cash.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Acadian Asset Management Inc. (AAMI), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/AAMI, data as of 2026-07-09.
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