Share count
52Mpeak FY2025
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CNS, Cohen & Steers
Capital Markets & Asset Management financial
Our continued emphasis on prudent cost control and operational efficiency has positioned us to navigate this complex environment and adapt to evolving market conditions. 21 Investment Performance as of December 31, 2025 _________________________ Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$556M
+7.5% YoY · 5% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $567M 5-yr avg $543M
Net margin 27.5% 5-yr avg 29.9%
Revenue $146M +8.3% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 34.4% yr-ago 33.6%
Net income $41M yr-ago $43M
Net margin 28.3% yr-ago 32.2%
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 run at the high end of fee-business margins across the record (median 38%, above 25% in 9 of 10 years), the economics of a business that takes a cut without carrying the risk. It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 39%, 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, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $350M | $379M | $381M | $411M | $428M | $584M | $567M | $490M | $517M | $556M | $567M | RevenueRevenue |
| 38.7% | 40.9% | 38.6% | 39.0% | 22.2% | 44.6% | 38.1% | 33.6% | 33.4% | 32.0% | 32.2% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| 26.6% | 24.3% | 29.9% | 32.8% | 17.9% | 36.2% | 30.2% | 26.4% | 29.2% | 27.6% | 27.5% | Net marginNet mgn |
| $93M | $92M | $114M | $135M | $77M | $211M | $171M | $129M | $151M | $153M | $156M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 35% | 42% | 23% | 23% | 19% | 21% | 22% | 25% | 24% | — | 23% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $111M | $61M | $69M | $139M | $87M | $240M | $57M | $168M | $87M | ($126M) | ($69M) | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 35% | 33% | 51% | 63% | 44% | 83% | 51% | 34% | 30% | 27% | 28% | Return on equityROE |
| 8% | −2% | −29% | −13% | −26% | 25% | 19% | 4% | 6% | 5% | 5% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $334M | $410M | $481M | $402M | $348M | $493M | $673M | $737M | $812M | $877M | $855M | Total assetsAssets |
| $183M | $193M | $93M | $101M | $41M | $184M | $247M | $187M | $183M | $145M | $53M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $266M | $276M | $223M | $214M | $174M | $255M | $338M | $381M | $512M | $562M | $563M | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 46.4M | 47.0M | 47.4M | 48.3M | 48.7M | 49.1M | 49.3M | 49.6M | 50.9M | 51.5M | 51.6M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $7.54 | $8.06 | $8.04 | $8.51 | $8.78 | $11.89 | $11.50 | $9.88 | $10.16 | $10.79 | $11.00 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $2.00 | $1.96 | $2.40 | $2.79 | $1.57 | $4.31 | $3.47 | $2.60 | $2.97 | $2.97 | $3.02 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $2.38 | $1.30 | $1.46 | $2.87 | $1.78 | $4.89 | $1.17 | $3.39 | $1.72 | $-2.45 | $-1.33 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| $1.53 | $2.09 | $3.78 | $3.37 | $2.52 | $3.01 | $2.18 | $2.27 | $2.34 | $2.46 | $2.51 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $5.72 | $5.87 | $4.70 | $4.42 | $3.58 | $5.20 | $6.85 | $7.69 | $10.05 | $10.91 | $10.92 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +4.1%/yr | +4.2%/yr |
| EPS | +4.5%/yr | +13.6%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +5.5%/yr | −0.4%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | −6.8%/yr | +17.7%/yr |
| Book value / share | +7.4%/yr | +25.0%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$556Mlow FY2016
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 32.0%Wide fee margin (≥30%)Operating income $178M ÷ revenue $556MIndustry 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 27.6%WideNet income $153M ÷ revenue $556M
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 27%Very high (≥25%)Net income $153M ÷ equity $562MIndustry 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.
“Changes related to the development, adoption or implementation of AI technologies may be difficult to anticipate, may occur rapidly and may materially alter competitive dynamics, operating models and cost structures, which may materially reduce market share and levels of demand for products, services or offerings for c…”
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.
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” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Harvey | $5.3M | $7.9M | $240M |
| 2021 | Steers | $12.4M | $8.0M | $240M |
| 2022 | Harvey | $6.8M | $2.8M | $57M |
| 2022 | Steers | $6.1M | $2.0M | $57M |
| 2023 | Harvey | $6.5M | $8.2M | $168M |
| 2024 | Harvey | $5.6M | $8.2M | $87M |
| 2025 | Harvey | $7.0M | $2.6M | ($126M) |
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. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership45.4%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$46M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 8% of revenue, equal to 26% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Income taxes 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-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Cohen & Steers has delivered.
Cohen & Steers’s latest year shows negative owner earnings, below the record’s own through-cycle owner earnings. So the tool opens on the through-cycle base, the cash it would earn at rest; clear the toggle below to read the latest year exactly as reported.
$
Through the cycle, Cohen & Steers earns about $107M on its 19.2% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s −22.7% margin runs below that; the reported figure may understate a lean year. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
Base
—
The assumptions
9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
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.
Implied by the price—
Owner-earnings growth, delivered—
Owner-earnings growth, delivered—
Owner-earnings yield—
What a growth belief costs, in multiples
The growth each return requires, at your price
P/E (3-yr earnings ’23–’25)—
P/B—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.
Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Owner-earnings yield—
High-grade bond yield—
Margin over the bond—
Owner earnings ($69M) on 51M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-23; net cash $53M. The base opens on the through-cycle figure (the latest year sits off the record’s own median, and Graham’s averaging cuts both ways); clear Normalize to use the year as filed. Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Cohen & Steers (CNS), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/CNS, data as of 2026-07-09.
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