On Friday, Cohen & Steers (NYSE:CNS) discussed second-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.

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Summary

Cohen & Steers reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.85, up from $0.79 in the previous quarter, with net income rising 8% to $44 million.

Assets under management increased by 8% to over $100 billion, driven by $1.3 billion in net inflows, primarily from open-end funds.

The company continues to focus on strategic growth initiatives, including the expansion of their ETF lineup and international distribution, with a strong pipeline of unfunded mandates.

Real estate and infrastructure strategies are seeing strong demand, with U.S. real estate leading net inflows and global listed infrastructure experiencing robust capital investment cycles.

Management highlighted the company's strong liquidity position and operational efficiency, with a focus on maintaining stable fee rates and growing distribution channels.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cohen & Steers second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press STAR followed by one on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Friday, July 17, 2026.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Heller, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Cohen & Steers. Please go ahead.

Brian Heller, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel

Thank you and welcome to the Cohen & Steers second quarter 2026 earnings webcast and conference call. Joining me are Joe Harvey, our Chief Executive Officer, Amit Muni, our Chief Financial Officer, and Jon Cheigh, our President and Chief Investment Officer. I want to remind you that some of our comments and answers to your questions may include forward-looking statements. We believe these statements are reasonable based on information currently available to us, but actual outcomes could differ materially due to a number of factors, including those described in our accompanying second quarter earnings release and presentation, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and our other SEC filings. We assume no duty to update any forward-looking statement. Further, none of our statements constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of any fund or other investment vehicle. The presentation that will accompany today's webcast also contains non-GAAP financial measures referred to as adjusted financial measures that we believe are meaningful in evaluating our performance.

These non-GAAP financial measures should be read in conjunction with our GAAP results. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures is included in the earnings release and presentation to the extent reasonably available. The earnings release and the accompanying presentation, as well as links to our SEC filings, are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.cohenandsteers.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Amit.

Amit Muni, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, I'll begin with a review of our operating and financial results for the quarter. Jon Cheigh will then discuss investment performance and the market environment, followed by Joe Harvey, who will highlight the growth momentum we are seeing across the business. We will then open the call for your questions. Turning to our summary highlights, I'll focus my remarks on our adjusted results.

We reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.85 for the quarter, up from $0.79 in the first quarter. In the second quarter of last year, assets under management increased approximately 8% to over $100 billion, reflecting both positive market performance and strong net inflows. We generated $1.3 billion of net inflows, one of the strongest flow quarters in our recent history, while our institutional pipeline remained robust at $1.6 billion. We also continue to make meaningful progress on our strategic growth initiatives, which Joe will discuss shortly, while maintaining strong long-term investment performance.

Turning to the next slide, this slide highlights our AUM inflows by investment vehicle as reflected on the chart on the bottom. Our net inflows were primarily driven by our open-end funds, which include mutual funds, ETFs, and CCABs. In our advisory business, we experienced modest outflows related primarily to institutional client rebalancing activity, and our sub-advisory business generated slight net inflows as over $500 million of new mandates were partly offset by redemptions.

The next slide reflects our AUM inflows by strategy. Looking at the chart on the bottom, U.S. Real Estate was the largest contributor, complemented by strong demand for our preferred securities and global listed infrastructure strategies. Turning to the next slide, I'll review our financial performance. Net income was $44 million for the quarter, an increase of 8% from the first quarter and 18% from the second quarter of last year. Our operating margin improved to 36.3%, reflecting the benefit of higher revenues as we scale the business.

Turning to the next slide, I'll review the quarter-over-quarter changes in revenues and expenses. Revenue increased 5% to $152 million, driven by higher average AUM resulting from positive market appreciation and net inflows. Total operating expenses increased 3% to $97 million, primarily due to higher incentive compensation accruals associated with increased revenues. Importantly, expense growth remained below revenue growth, contributing to margin expansion.

Looking ahead, we are maintaining our expense guidance. We continue to expect compensation and benefits expenses of approximately 40% of revenues, mid-single-digit growth in G&A expenses relative to 2025, and a pro forma effective tax rate of between 25% to 26%. Turning to the next slide on liquidity, we ended the quarter with $219 million of cash in U.S. Treasuries on our balance sheet, providing substantial financial flexibility. In addition, we held approximately $136 million of liquid seed investments across our funds.

Our strong liquidity position continues to support our capital management priorities and strategic growth initiatives. Thank you, and I'll turn the call over to John.

John Cheigh, President and Chief Investment Officer

Thank you, Amit, and good morning. Today I'd like to cover three areas: our performance scorecard, the investment environment for the quarter, and the accelerating real estate and real asset recovery. Beginning with our performance scorecard over the last one, three, and five years, 41%, 91%, and 97% of our AUM respectively has outperformed. Given that our performance metrics are normally nearly 100%, I did want to address the one-year outlier. The one-year result is solely coming from our US REIT relative performance as our other strategies, including international real estate, continue to outperform.

Within US REITs, the vast majority of the short-term underperformance has been driven by our positioning within cell tower REITs, which have been impacted by a slowdown in carrier spending after an initial 5G build-out and, in our view, overblown fears that satellite will meaningfully displace towers. As we've demonstrated over 40 years, our US REIT team is deep, and our investment process is resilient, and we would expect a reversion to the historical norm of 200 basis points of alpha going forward.

Notably, our global listed infrastructure team has outperformed by 370 basis points over the last year. Infrastructure has been, and we believe will continue to be, a significantly growing area of investor interest. Turning to the market, last quarter I stated that we expected a war-driven three to six-month stagflationary pause but that markets would look through that. Consistent with that view, the second quarter witnessed a resilient global economy, continued momentum in stocks and risk assets, and year to date a significant market rotation, notably away from the Mag 7.

We still believe that the spike in inflation has yet to fully work its way through the system and that long-term interest rates will generally remain steady. Despite this, the economy and markets are benefiting from a significant investment cycle, productivity growth, and generally low levels of debt. US listed real estate returned 10.7% during the quarter and is now up 14.9% for the year, while global real estate is up 9.6% for the year. Infrastructure generated returns of 2.3% during the quarter, restrained somewhat by energy-sensitive sectors giving back some of their Q1 performance, and have had a solid overall 10.7% year to date.

Diversified real assets, despite a softer second quarter driven by declines in energy prices and precious metals, remained up 9.9% through the first half of the year, soundly beating a 60/40 portfolio's roughly 6% return. Real assets, in our view, continue to do their job of improving risk-adjusted returns in periods of elevated or rising inflation. Looking at fixed income, performance was broadly positive as economic growth and corporate fundamentals remained strong enough to offset rate uncertainty.

Preferred securities outperformed Treasuries, corporate bonds, and leveraged loans. Real assets have outperformed the S&P 500 and a 60/40 this year. We continue to believe that some of the most compelling opportunities are within real assets, where improving fundamentals and still reasonable valuations are creating a particularly attractive backdrop. Now, at the start of the year, I stated that, quote, 'In our experience, discounted valuations with accelerating growth drives multiple expansion, performance drives flows to the asset class, and often we see the rotation from laggard to leader and investors' fear of missing out take hold, and historically the recovery in share prices is a sharp rather than measured move,' end quote. We believe that's precisely what has happened with REITs so far this year. For several years, investors viewed real estate incorrectly as just an interest rate-sensitive sector. As rates moved sharply higher beginning in 2022, valuations adjusted lower and sentiment deteriorated. The real estate earnings recovery remains underappreciated. Real estate is a long-cycle business; over and under supply conditions rebalance over years, not quarters. Not every property type is at the same phase of recovery, but finally all sectors are recovering, and in certain areas such as senior housing and data centers, they are booming. Real estate has benefited as there has been a return to office in key metros like New York and San Francisco, strong performance of retail where there has been little supply added for 10 years, a recovery of industrial demand as PMIs are above 50, and excess residential supply has been absorbed and job growth has improved versus 2025.

The REIT recovery is now three years in the making, with US and global REITs delivering 10.1% and 10.7% annualized over that time period. Finally, investors are taking note that real estate valuations and fundamentals look attractive, particularly in a world where equity valuations are expensive, credit spreads are tight, private equity hasn't delivered realizations or adequately addressed LP liquidity needs, and private credit has become crowded with concerns over lowering credit standards.

The rally in REITs year to date only confirms our 3 to 5-year outlook, with dividend yields in the 3 to 4% range and earning growth above the historical norm of 6% and accelerating. We believe that the double-digit returns the last three years is a sustainable forward outlook for our listed real estate strategies even at the current or modestly higher interest rate level. At the same time, private real estate values have stabilized following a prolonged correction, and transaction activity continues to recover.

Private real estate, as measured by the NFI Odyssey index, has delivered seven consecutive quarters of positive total returns through the first quarter of this year and appears on track for an eighth consecutive quarter of positive returns. Consistent with that recovery, but also bolstered by our investment focus on open-air shopping centers, our non-traded REIT, the Cohen & Steers Income Opportunities REIT or CNS REIT, continues to deliver industry-leading performance, generating a 12.3% annualized total return as of this May since its 2024 inception.

We continue to believe that some older non-traded REITs are still contending with legacy assets, legacy valuations, constraints because of redemptions, and an overall inability to pivot to the best opportunities of this new cycle, and that our performance advantage is sustainable. While the recovery in real estate provides a powerful example of the opportunities we see today, the investment case extends well beyond REITs and speaks to a broader structural theme unfolding across real assets.

For much of the prior decade, investors operated in a world of quantitative easing, lower inflation, and geopolitical calm. Today, the investment landscape is different. We are in a hardware, not software, world. The physical constraints are the bottlenecks and thus the source of pricing power. Demand for essential hard assets is rising. A renewed flare-up in the Middle East underscores this reality. Amid renewed tensions and a spike in energy prices after weeks of calm, we don't anticipate conditions to deteriorate to the peak level of conflict seen earlier this year.

Even so, the fair value of oil prices and commodity prices more generally appears higher than where we began the year. The start-and-stop nature of the Iran conflict is just a reminder that investors need to be diversified for a wide variety of economic outcomes and stress tests and thus need true diversifiers. Real assets are once again demonstrating that they play a critical role in portfolios, providing diversification, liquidity, attractive total returns, and inflation resilience.

With that, let me turn the call over to Joe.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, John, and good morning. Today I will review key business trends in the second quarter, provide an update on our growth initiatives, and comment on an industry topic that touches our business. To get right to the point, the broad positive business momentum that we have experienced in recent quarters continued to gain steam. During the second quarter, we had net inflows of 1.3 billion, the highest level in four and a half years and the seventh quarter of inflows in the past eight quarters.

Our three and five-year investment performance is strong. The macro has become more favorable for our strategies, we're seeing greater breadth of allocation activity across our strategies and client segments. Our unfunded pipeline continues to refill at a healthy clip, our fee rates are stable and top quartile, and our growth initiatives continue to progress. Highlights for the quarter include, with the sole exception of Global Real Estate, we had net inflows into every strategy.

Our largest strategy, US real estate, led with 833 million in net inflows. Our multi-strategy real assets portfolio had 380 million in net inflows, bringing strategy-wide AUM to 3 billion, a compound annual growth rate of 29% since 2021. Our global listed infrastructure strategy had its sixth straight quarter of inflows and is very active in the institutional channel with both new allocations and takeaways. Interpreting these highlights, the macro is aligning better with our strategies.

Real Estate has begun a new return cycle. Global Listed Infrastructure is in the middle of a powerful capital investment cycle in AI and power and is near the top of allocator to-do lists, and Multi-Strategy Real Assets is benefiting from persistent inflation. Preferreds, our second-largest strategy by AUM, continued to improve with a second consecutive quarter of inflows. Our preferred AUM is 18 billion compared with 27 billion at its peak. While two quarters do not define a long-term trend, there are several fundamental drivers of these inflows, including continued search for yield and replacement of cash positions, rotation from private credit, dissatisfaction with municipal bond performance, attractive yield spreads versus corporate investment-grade credit, and attractiveness of short-duration preferreds. Our low-duration Preferred strategy had its sixth straight quarter of inflows and led our preferred flows. In addition to US Open End Fund, we have ETF, CCAV, and closed-end vehicles for that strategy. Our unfunded pipeline was 1.6 billion compared with 1.7 billion the prior quarter, and importantly, the velocity of fundings and wins has been good.

We had 804 million in fundings in the quarter and 1 billion in awarded mandates in the quarter. This pipeline is also the broadest by strategy in history, with 27% in global listed infrastructure, 23% in our listed private real estate LP vehicle called Tref, 17% in US real estate, 17% in global real estate, 11% in our multi-strategy real asset portfolio, and 4% in private real estate. The domiciles of the pipeline reflect a global reach and include 11 countries.

Turning to our growth initiatives, all of them enjoyed organic growth in the quarter. Active ETFs passed the $1 billion AUM mark. Our largest ETF is our Real Estate strategy at 450 million in AUM. To help frame the scope of our opportunity, the Active category in Total Real Estate ETFs, by example, has approximately 3 billion in AUM industry-wide. However, the passive category has 100 billion in AUM. As our active strategies consistently outperform passive, we are optimistic about our ability to take share from these passive vehicles.

The most recent addition to our ETF lineup is our Future of Energy Strategy, which was converted from an open-end fund during the quarter. CSEN, its symbol, invests in both conventional and renewable energy. Its return over the past year was 43%, and its three and five-year returns were 21% and 18% respectively. By the fall, we expect to launch our seventh ETF, a version of our multi-strategy Real Assets portfolio, which has begun to see broader flows globally due to its inflation-sensitive return profile.

Overseas, our CCAB Fund Growth initiative has advanced, and we have reached 2 billion in AUM. We had record net inflows of 326 million in the quarter, led by our Real Assets Multi-Strategy and our Global Listed Infrastructure strategies. Our distribution team is doing a great job building a presence in more international markets, including the rapidly growing Southeast Asia wealth market. Our non-traded REIT continues to gain momentum, outperforming its peer average by 760 basis points since inception.

We look forward to our three-year anniversary coming this January, an important milestone for distributor platforming. We have a broadening group of independent and enterprise RIA firms that have begun allocations to this vehicle. Last month, we saw our highest level of non-seed subscriptions yet. While private real estate fundraising and wealth is still challenging, it's down about 5% annualized this year. We believe the headwinds in private credit are providing an opening, with flows down 35% this year, and together with the bottoming in the real estate cycle, suggests to us that advisors should begin pivoting to real estate that is being telegraphed by the listed market with REIT's strong performance. As John has articulated, our tactical Real Estate LP fund Tref, which was launched last July, holds the number two spot by strategy in our pipeline. As a reminder, TREF combines listed and private real estate using our active REIT strategy and our partner IDRs indexed approach to core private real estate funds. Continuing with our real estate business, we have been in the market with a rights offering managed by UBS for our closed-end fund Cohen & Steers Quality Income Fund, symbol RQI.

Notwithstanding the past month's volatility, we are pleased to have raised 154 million, including associated leverage. This should increase our AUM by $220 million. This is the second rights offering we executed for our closed-end funds over the past year. As you know, growing our distribution platform has been a key priority. We recently created a new Chief Operating Officer role led by Amanda Icus to help run distribution operations under Dan Noonan.

This role will improve our operational efficiency and allow our sales leaders to focus on what they do best, specifically strategy, talent management, and working with clients. In addition, we have asked our long-term relationship head, Matt Pace, to lead a growth initiative in our global sub-advisory business. We believe there is untapped potential for new allocations and takeaways in sub-advisory. We are seeing opportunities in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and we see potential in new markets such as Korea.

By contrast, the Japan market has been a challenge lately. We believe this is due to the macro in Japan, with bond yields up relatively meaningfully and with strong appetite for equities both Japanese and global. Our new CEO in Japan joined us in January, and we are confident that he will lead us to inflows as his business plan takes hold. Finally, looking at the market landscape, it has been refreshing to see increased IPO activity in the US, which is broad-based and not just SpaceX.

With stock valuations either at all-time highs or close to them, it is not surprising to see the public markets functioning well and driving capital formation for the next-gen economy. Considering the capital investment needed in AI power, infrastructure, and related businesses, both private equity and the listed market will be needed to finance global growth. Of the top 10 IPOs this year, four are squarely in our global infrastructure and resource equities universes, while one of them, a data center REIT, is a staple of both our REIT and infrastructure strategies.

It's good to see our investment universes grow, providing more alpha opportunities. We look forward to seeing more real estate IPOs, particularly in the data center and healthcare sectors, as well as some internationally. Key factors that will influence whether more real estate will go public include LP needs for liquidity as well as issuer needs for capital to refinance low-cost debt and drive growth. While listed real estate allocation or valuations, which are not as attractive compared with marks in the private market, have been an impediment, that may be changing, enabling more REITs of cost of capital to help recapitalize the private market.

How these factors play out remains to be seen, but the increased IPO activity broadly should help grease the skids for real estate IPOs. I will close by welcoming Amit Muni to the firm as CFO. Many of you have met Amit during his tenure as CFO at WisdomTree and CI Financial. It has been great to see the relationships that he has, and I will offer thanks to Mike Donahue, who stepped up as interim CFO during this transition. Abby, could you please open the lines for Q and A?

OPERATOR

Yes. Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you've dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press Star one again. If you're called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question.

Again, it is Star one to ask a question. And our first question comes from the line of John Dunn with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

John Dunn, Analyst at Evercore ISI

Hi, I wanted to ask, on real estate, you know, with real estate performing better but rates expected to go higher, maybe could you just, like, more closely frame the demand for wealth management and institutional channels over the next, you know, 12 to 24 months? And also maybe a comment on expected demand for global real estate.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Sure. John, good morning. Well, you know, US Real estate is our largest strategy, and, you know, by definition, it tends to be a largest driver of our inflows in the wealth channel. US Real estate has been a leader of those flows so far this year, and I would say the same for the institutional market and beyond the pipeline that I described. And, you know, we've got a nice backlog of potential, you know, clients and allocators that we're working with.

And, you know, some of them, I think, have shorter timeframes, some of them have longer timeframes. But clearly, the recent performance of REITs is signaling a rotation in the markets as well as a recognition of the fundamental picture that John has laid out. So as things go, performance tends to attract capital, and so we would expect, frankly, an improving demand profile for U.S. REIT strategies.

John Dunn, Analyst at Evercore ISI

Got it. And then on the pipeline, maybe you could just give some color on the sustainability of it, and then maybe some of the more nitty gritty metrics like RFP activity and kind of win percentage and composition, both by strategy and geography.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So for those of you who have been following us, our one unfunded pipeline has been at the $1.7 billion level, plus or minus, for the past four quarters. And that was a dramatic increase from a lower level that we experienced coming out of the regime change in interest rates. It's hard to forecast what that pipeline will look at, but, you know, based on the macro backdrop that John's described that I've talked about, we think that there's increasing interest in our strategy.

So that combined with our shadow pipeline if you call it gives us confidence that that pipeline is going to be sustained. Importantly, you know, one of the things I talk about is the velocity of what happens in our pipeline. That is the fundings that happen in a quarter and the replacements that happen in a quarter. And we've been seeing good velocity, you know, for the past two or three quarters. So that's encouraging. As I, as I talked about in my points, you know the, the breadth of the pipeline is as great as it's ever been and that speaks to the broader interest in real assets.

And we are seeing more breadth in the domiciles of the asset owners in our pipeline and that's important to us. It's been an initiative and frankly in the past six months we've seen the first allocations in places like that we've ever had in places like Hong Kong, Korea, Philippines. And so we still have more work to do and building out our international distribution. We see opportunity there and we continue to invest but we're encouraged by some of those know first time wins in some of those countries.

OPERATOR

Thanks very much. And our next question comes from the line of Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Ivory, Analyst at Bank of America

Good morning, this is Ivory on for Craig on the call. So you highlighted that European listed fund platform has surpassed at 2 billion in AUM and then also noted the positive flows into CCAV vehicles during the quarter. So where are you seeing the most traction internationally? I know you've mentioned opportunities in Korea, New Zealand to name a few. And then what needs to happen for non US distribution to become a more material contributor to organic growth.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So there's really three elements I'd say to our international distribution plan. The one is in the wealth channel which I think is the statistic that you were referencing. The two billion dollar and two billion dollars in our offshore open end funds. Our CCAVs, they're, they're domiciled in Luxembourg but they have a broad international reach including in, in, in Asia. So in those vehicles this year we've seen the greatest flows in our multi-strategy real assets portfolio which reflects the interest in inflation sensitive strategies.

The second would be in global listed infrastructure and the third would be global real estate. And as per my comments, infrastructure being a very popular strategy for a lot of obvious reasons, not just AI, but also the huge capital investment needs that we have in infrastructure around the world. The greatest flows that we've seen in that wealth channel so far this year have been in the UK, Japan and in South Africa, which is an interesting one in that there's, there's, there's a desire to move more money offshore, offshore of South Africa.

And they have great interest in resource equities and other real assets by way of example. So that's the first international distribution area. The second is our core institutional business. And when you look at our pipeline right now, we've got mandates in New Zealand, Canada, Philippines, Singapore, Germany, Saudi Arabia. And per my breakdown of that pipeline, it's pretty broad based in terms of our real asset lineup. The third initiative I would point to is the global sub advisory business, where frankly, we think that there's opportunities that we haven't been as dialed in on and it's working with financial intermediaries and a lot of those places. And in some cases it's new allocations to what we do and in other cases it's takeaway business from our peers who have not performed up to the expectations of the client. So as it relates to the international distribution area, as I said, we're seeing more success. Some of that's environmentally driven by the macro for our asset classes, but it's also the investments that we've been banking and we still have more to do. So we'll talk more about that in future quarters.

Ivory, Analyst at Bank of America

Thank you. And just as a follow up, your active ETF platform has also now surpassed 1 billion and you've continued to expand the lineup. Can you just discuss where you are in terms of model adoption or broker dealer platform placement and advisor usage? And then as ETFs become a larger part of the business, how should we think about the impact on fee rates and margins?

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Great questions. We're really pleased with our ETF launch. As I said, we've passed the $1 billion market. The, the distribution progression for the ETFs is first that we seed them. Second, we work with RIAs who are the biggest adopters so far of active ETFs. And because of our relationships in the RIA channel, we've been able to get some of them to scale pretty quickly. But order of business is number one, deliver performance. We have. They're performing very well.

Second is to get to critical mass so that we can get the ETS onboarded at the wirehouses. That has started with several of our funds, namely the US Real Estate Fund and the Preferred Stock Fund. And as we continue to get bigger and gain scale, then that will make those vehicles appealing enough from a size perspective to attract model allocators and institutions who will use ETFs in certain circumstances. We like our progress as it relates to the fees.

You know, we're pricing them at a slight discount to our lowest cost open end share classes on a, on a net basis versus our overall fee rates which are in the 58, 59 context. They are comparable if not better than our overall fee rates. So then just to close on the topic, our goal is to have all of our core strategies in the ETF vehicle. And so what that leaves us is with, at least for right now, is our multi strategy real assets portfolio that will happen if everything goes according to plan by the end of summer.

We also need to address our global real estate strategy. And right now we're just digesting all the seven launches, focused on getting them to critical mass and then also seeing how things play out in the industry as it relates to things like ETFs as a share class, which requires development in terms of the technology of the pipes and plumbing, but also distributor attitudes around having ETF vehicles alongside open end funds that may have different price points.

So we've got very good momentum with the ETFs and just thankful that we have the resources to launch them as rapidly as we have.

OPERATOR

Great, thank you. And our next question comes from the line of John Dunn with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

John Dunn, Analyst at Evercore ISI

Hi. Yeah, maybe just a quick one on sub advisory with, you know, the small but recent wins in Canada. Has anything changed in that channel and maybe your outlook for demand there?

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Well, in Canada I'd say there's a couple things. One is that they are fans of real assets strategies, so that's been a positive factor. But in addition, there have been takeaway opportunities from our peers that have underperformed. So the two things combined is really attractive and we've, we've had nice growth in our Canadian asset base recently.

OPERATOR

Thank you. And as a reminder to Star one if you would like to ask a question. And our next question comes from the line of Max Sykes with Gabelli Funds. Your line is open.

Max Sykes, Analyst at Gabelli Funds

Oh, good morning everyone and congrats, Amit. It's a great fit and certainly glad to have you back in New York City. I was wondering if you could just provide a little more color around the mutual fund conversion. What were some of the considerations ahead of the conversion or some of the reactions from shareholders? And you know, is this something, is this a process you're going to consider in the future with some of the other funds?

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Well, we had a, our Future of Energy Open End Mutual fund, which was roughly 170 million in assets. And it just wasn't seeing take up in the distribution area. Probably for several reasons. One is, you know, its size. The second is just for smaller open end mutual funds. You know, they're not getting the attention and wirehouses and other distribution channels. So frankly, it was a vehicle that we thought was at risk of being taken off of some of the platforms.

So we thought it was a very good candidate for conversion because of our belief in the strategy and the fact that it didn't have a lot of 401k or retirement assets in it, which is a consideration. When you convert an open end fund to an ETF, you have the risk of losing, not the risk you will lose those 401k allocations. So we thought it was an ideal conversion and we converted it. And the market reception has been very good. A major wirehouse, frankly, which was getting ready to take it off their platform, doubled down on it and increased their recommendation on the vehicle based on our conviction in converting it to an ETF, which showed our conviction in the strategy and providing new technology, if you will, on how to deliver that strategy.

Max Sykes, Analyst at Gabelli Funds

Great, thank you. Terrific progress this year.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Mac.

OPERATOR

And that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Jill Harvey for closing remarks.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Okay, well, thank you for joining us. Have a great summer everyone. See you in October.

Abby, Moderator

And Abby, thank you for moderating.

OPERATOR

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.