Cohen & Steers Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Cohen & Steers (NYSE:CNS) reported third-quarter financial results on Friday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Cohen & Steers reported strong third-quarter performance with 74% of AUM outperforming, a significant improvement from the previous quarter.

Despite pressure from rising interest rates, the company maintains confidence in the attractiveness of its asset classes, citing improving fundamentals in listed real estate and significant secular investment needs in real assets.

The company achieved $1.6 billion in net inflows, marking its strongest net flow quarter since 2021, and reported a robust institutional pipeline of $1.9 billion.

Cohen & Steers launched a new active ETF, the Cohen & Steers Real Assets Active ETF (CSRA), indicating continued growth and interest in their ETF strategies.

Management highlighted the strategic importance of real assets, infrastructure, and natural resource equities as diversification tools against inflation risk and market concentration.

Full Transcript

Jon Cheigh, President and Chief Investment Officer

And good morning. Today I’d like to cover three: our performance scorecard and the improving trend, the impact of higher interest rates, and the positioning of our asset classes in the current environment. Beginning with our performance scorecard, 74% of our AUM outperformed in the third quarter, up from 40% in the second quarter. Over the last one, three and five years, 57%, 97% and 98% of our AUM respectively has outperformed. Last quarter, I addressed our one-year result as an outlier driven by U.S. REITs and noted that we expected a reversion to our historical norm of 200 basis points of alpha. While one quarter doesn’t make a trend, we are encouraged by the early evidence. Eighty-six percent of our U.S. real estate AUM outperformed this quarter, up from 15% last quarter. Global real estate saw a similar turnaround from 2% outperforming to 67%. And while it’s early, fourth quarter momentum is encouraging and we believe our REIT performance is back on trend.

Notably, our infrastructure and preferred securities teams continue to deliver, with 100% and 97% of AUM respectively outperforming over the last year. Turning to the market, higher interest rates have weighed on our asset classes. REITs, listed infrastructure and preferred securities have declined from their summer highs. The primary driver has been the sharp rise in long-term Treasury yields, now above 5%. Despite all the attention being given to oil, this has not been an inflation story, it’s been a real yield story.

Nearly all of the roughly 100 basis point rise in the 10-year this year has come from real yields. While inflation expectations have changed very marginally, in our view roughly half of the most recent move in yields reflects resilient economic growth and the other half reflects higher term premium associated with fiscal issues, debt supply and global factors. That distinction matters. Stronger growth supports the higher earnings of the companies we invest in, while higher term premium affects the valuation of essentially all asset classes, not just ours.

So while higher rates have created near-term pressure, we don’t believe they have changed the relative attractiveness of our asset classes. It’s also important to put the current rate environment in historical perspective. Higher rates do not mean poor returns for real assets. For example, REITs have generated positive returns in four of the last five Fed hiking cycles. The 2022–23 hiking cycle was clearly different, with REITs returning negative 11% annualized.

But in the 2004 and 2016 hiking cycles, annualized returns were a positive 24% and 8% respectively. The lesson is that the level of interest rates alone does not determine returns. What matters is the pace of change relative to market expectations, along with the underlying fundamental trajectory and valuations. And that leads to what I think is the most important point about today’s environment. Unlike 2022–23, we are entering this period with improving fundamentals in listed real estate.

We see an early- to mid-cycle recovery. Reduced new supply and growing demand should support growth above historical norms. And this isn’t just a real estate story. Real assets broadly are benefiting from significant secular investment needs which are driving earnings growth. We expect 9% EBITDA growth for global listed infrastructure versus a historical average of 6% to 7%, and 20% earnings growth for natural resource equities versus a historical average of 6% to 8%.

Rates matter, but valuations and fundamentals matter more. And today we believe both are increasingly supportive of our asset classes. So how should investors think about this environment and positioning their portfolios? We believe the investment regime has changed from the one that prevailed for much of the past 15 years. Investors we speak with are increasingly seeking diversifiers. Investors now have attractive opportunities in fixed income, but they also face greater inflation risk, greater equity market concentration and an acute need for diversification.

That in turn makes the case for a barbelled approach. On the one side, preferred securities can provide attractive income and real returns. On the other side, real estate, infrastructure and natural resource equities can provide growth, diversification and inflation protection. So we see distinct opportunities across our strategies: for investors seeking income, preferred securities; for investors looking to participate in the real estate recovery, our REIT strategies offer accelerating fundamentals; for investors seeking secular growth and diversification, listed infrastructure and natural resource companies are benefiting from powerful global tailwinds such as commodity undersupply, reindustrialization and AI infrastructure. For investors seeking a broad real asset solution, our multi-strategy real assets portfolio brings these exposures together in a diversified allocation. We believe our asset classes offer compelling solutions for delivering income, inflation protection, diversification and liquidity, all while allowing investors to reduce exposure to the more concentrated and more expensively valued segments of the market.

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

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, John, and good morning. Today I’ll review key business trends, report on our growth initiatives and discuss broadening interest in our listed infrastructure and multi-strategy real assets strategies. Our third quarter results provide further evidence that our growth strategy continues to gain traction. Key indicators include strong three- and five-year investment performance, robust net inflows and a sizable won-and-unfunded pipeline. We generated $1.6 billion of net inflows, marking our fifth consecutive positive quarter and our strongest net flow quarter since the fourth quarter of 2021.

Growth was broad based across strategies, vehicles and distribution channels, and our institutional pipeline strengthened to $1.9 billion as it continued to replenish. We experienced modest quarterly asset depreciation driven primarily by market-wide reaction to rising bond yields. Overall, our results demonstrate the strength and diversity of our business. Our wealth channel continues to drive organic growth with $1.3 billion of net inflows this quarter.

Growth was balanced across mutual funds, active ETFs and ICAVs, demonstrating alignment between our vehicle lineups and client investment models. Along those lines, we launched our seventh active ETF in August, the Cohen & Steers Real Assets Active ETF, symbol CSRA. This ETF is an actively managed, multi-strategy real assets portfolio which we believe offers inflation sensitivity, long-term total returns, and diversification across real asset sectors within a single allocation. We believe this is an attractive strategy for investors who want a turnkey allocation to real assets. In addition, we see compelling use cases in both the retirement and health care markets.

Adoption of our active ETFs is accelerating, with growth of 22% during the quarter to 1.3 billion. Industry-wide, U.S. ETFs, both active and passive, have taken in a record 1.5 trillion so far this year, which beats the full-year record set in 2025. ETFs are becoming the preferred vehicle for advisors and individuals, and we believe our active ETF strategies offer compelling solutions with tax efficiency, attractive expense ratios, intraday trading and transparency, and a track record of alpha generation that passive cannot offer.

We continue to review options for the next phase of our ETF strategy, which may include more core strategy launches, ETFs as a share class for existing funds, and potential international vehicles. Preferred securities are an example of strategy diversification compared with real assets in our business. This strategy had its third consecutive quarter of net inflows, with low-duration preferreds being the standout. This is a compelling environment for this strategy as advisors look for income without taking on meaningful rate risk and with yields near 6%.

We believe it’s one of the best risk-adjusted income opportunities in fixed income today, especially as advisors are looking for alternatives to fixed income that has underperformed, such as municipal bonds. Institutional flows were modestly positive with 49 million in the quarter. This includes strong net inflows from new advisory and sub-advisory mandates, which more than offset a one-time portfolio reallocation by a Japanese sub-advisory client.

In real estate, we are seeing continued progress with our Institutional Tactical Real Estate LP fund as it continues to contribute to our won and unfunded pipeline. We are also seeing success in our sub-advisory ex-Japan business, with the funding of several new mandates driven primarily by takeaways from peers in global sub-advisory. We intend to build on our recent momentum in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. We’re focusing as well on opportunities in other countries and look forward to reporting on those initiatives in the future.

Looking ahead, we have been notified of approximately 400 million in partial account rebalancing outflows from two institutional clients, which are not related to investment performance. One client is eliminating an asset class and the other is being acquired and changing portfolio strategy for a portion of its accounts. While institutional flows can be uneven from quarter to quarter, the sustaining replenishment of our pipeline gives us confidence in the direction of the business.

Our won and unfunded pipeline grew to 1.9 billion in the third quarter, the second largest ever. The velocity of the pipeline continues, with 700 million of fundings reloaded with over 1.1 billion of new mandates awarded within the quarter. Similar to our flows, we continue to see diversification in our pipeline, with 20% in each of real estate, listed infrastructure, multi-strategy real assets, as well as diversification by region, with 56% in North America, 22% in EMEA, and 16% in APAC.

We continue to invest in distribution. One example is our CCAP business, where we are seeing strong results and want to invest more as wealth markets develop in countries such as South Africa and regions like Asia. We are pleased to welcome Eric Schneeberger to Cohen & Steers as our new Chief Marketing Officer. Eric has many years of experience leading and building award-winning marketing teams. We look forward to Eric elevating our global marketing efforts and expanding our brand and media strategies, digital innovation, and client engagement.

Finally, I want to shine a spotlight on two strategies where allocator demand is broadening. Listed infrastructure is increasingly becoming recognized as a dedicated strategic allocation in portfolios. While early allocators favored private infrastructure, they are realizing the benefits of allocating to both listed and private together, especially as liquidity has become a growing need in institutional portfolios. While replacing and expanding aging infrastructure has been an investment theme for some time, capital investment has reemerged at the forefront with the growth of AI, reindustrialization, and supply chain trends, giving the asset class renewed and widespread appeal. These trends have contributed to our seventh straight quarter of net inflows in the strategy. As allocators look at their real assets allocations holistically, infrastructure has been gaining portfolio share. We have been a direct beneficiary and, right now, picking any time period—1, 3, 5, 10 years, and since inception going back to 2004—our performance has never looked better. We are seeing interest in newer markets such as Europe and South Africa, with growing interest in Asia including South Korea.

We believe our 22 years of consistently generating alpha with our team of dedicated specialists makes us a natural partner. Investors are likewise turning to our multi-strategy real asset solutions. With almost 900 million of year-to-date inflows, our multi-strategy portfolios are a compelling solution to diversification, offering equity-like return potential with less of the volatility of any single asset class, plus meaningful inflation protection, and the sustained inflationary environment is motivating investors to make this allocation more strategic.

Furthermore, we believe we have moved into an era of scarcity and that we’re still early in the large build-out of supply chains and physical assets. To illustrate the characteristics of the real asset blend, an index would have delivered annualized returns of 11% during periods of inflation since 1998, compared with 3.1% for global equities and 2.7% for TIPS. With the S&P more concentrated—at 40% in its top 10 stocks—than at any other point in modern history, investors are seeking solutions that have a low correlation to global equities.

This is why I believe that all 401(k) plans should have a multi-strategy real assets fund for participants. Our open-end mutual fund has reached 2.1 billion in AUM, up from 150 million in 2020. Taken together, these trends support our view that real assets are becoming core allocations in portfolios, and we are well positioned to capture that demand. To summarize, we believe our third quarter results demonstrate that our business strategy is working.

Organic growth in our strategies has returned, our investment teams are strong, our range of vehicles is opening new avenues for growth, and our investments in distribution are extending our reach with clients around the world. We believe Cohen & Steers is well positioned to build on this momentum and deliver sustainable, long-term growth. Thank you, and we will now take your questions. Julianne, can you please open up the lines for questions?

OPERATOR

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one. To raise your hand to withdraw your question, press star one. Again, we ask that you please pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimal sound quality. If you’re muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.

And our first question comes from John Dunn from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

John Dunn, Analyst at Evercore ISI

Thanks. You know, you framed the broader picture in the prepared remarks. Maybe to drill down a little more, you know, rates likely moving higher. What gives you confidence demand for real estate can sustain, and maybe give a flavor of the conversations you’re having with FAs in the wealth channel and with institutional investors and consultants. Any differences between the two sides?

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

I’ll ask Jon Cheigh to take the question on real estate, and I’ll respond to the question on wealth versus institutional markets.

Jon Cheigh, President and Chief Investment Officer

Hey John, thanks. Thanks for your question. You know, I would say that we haven’t really seen any kind of notable change in tone in how the investors we’re talking to are looking at the real estate opportunity. I think for most investors, real estate’s been in the so-called doghouse, if you will, over the course of ’22, ’23, ’24. So the idea that there’s very good value here is very appreciated. The question has just been about the timing of the recovery and what that recovery looks like.

And as I said, we are seeing improving rental growth, and so that improvement in fundamentals is giving more investors greater confidence. So that’s why we’re seeing the pipeline continuing to grow. That being said, the winners and losers within real estate—and by that I mean the kinds of sectors that have been winners or losers—they’re going to be different. And so it’s not just about the beta or exposure to real estate. We’ve talked for the last couple calls about how strong, for example, our non-traded REIT performance has been since inception and since this year.

And that’s because it’s positioned very differently, frankly, than its peers that have been out in the market. And so again, we think that’s going to create an opportunity that as investor interest in real estate continues to grow, there will also be a greater realization that it’s not just getting the beta; it’s about picking the new winners for this new cycle.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Then, John, just to talk a little bit about institutional and wealth. On the institutional side, the process is one where allocations are deliberated over and made over, say, a nine-month time period. So you can’t really look at the on-the-run data points to really see what that market is doing. But as we’ve been talking about in these calls, our won and unfunded pipeline has now been very strong for about five quarters. And as I mentioned, we hit a second-best all-time number this quarter.

Importantly, it’s broader than it has been historically across our investment strategies. And in terms of the pace of prospect and client activity that we’re conducting, nothing has really changed as it relates to the changes in the macro over the past couple of months. And so when we look at the searches that we’re in and the so-called backlog pipeline, we feel good about the increased interest in our strategies. As it relates to the wealth channel, of course with our vehicles, our open-end daily vehicles, we can get more real-time views on investor sentiment.

And I think that the historical view of retail is very coincident with the market. But we’re increasingly spending our time with advisors who are more sophisticated allocators. They follow more like an endowment model. So I would expect to see less of the coincident-type flow activity and get a real good read on how investors are thinking. If you look at our average daily flows over the period for this quarter—July, August, September—our average daily flows increased in each of those months.

So, as far as we can see today, no real impact on flow activity from the changes in the macro environment recently. Well, you know, our offshore mutual funds, the SICAVs, you know, we’ve had a really strong quarter inflows. It was our second-best quarter and that followed our best quarter in the second quarter. So I’m very excited about this business. We’re at about 2.1 billion in overall AUM, so it’s not huge, but I think it has very strong potential. And we’re seeing good activity in the UK as I’ve mentioned a couple times, we’re seeing good activity in South Africa and we’re seeing increasing activity in Asia.

So one of the things that we’re seeing in a couple of these markets is the development of the wealth business, the advisory business, and South Africa is a good example of that. So as we interact with these advisors, you can just kind of tell that their businesses are developing and they’re being educated on more asset classes globally. So it’s a great opportunity for us to educate on real assets. And in a country like South Africa, they have appreciation for things like natural resources, so we’re having some success there.

Asia is the most rapidly growing wealth market in the world. It’s much bigger and a little more complicated, but we’re seeing some similar activity as it relates to the early development of the wealth market. So taking a step back, based on this success, we’re going to invest more in this area by virtue of our sales professionals and data to know where to go. And so it’s a very exciting part of our business.

OPERATOR

Our next question comes from Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Ivory Gowen, Analyst at Bank of America

Morning. This is Ivory Gowen for Craig. On infrastructure, it had another quarter of strong inflows and you stated that listed infra is becoming a dedicated strategic allocation. Are you seeing allocators move from private infra to listed because of liquidity or slow distributions? And are you considering a semi-liquid infra product for the wealth channel as you kind of did with CNS REIT?

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

So, you know, I would say that the growing interest in listed infrastructure is not coming at the expense of private infrastructure. Private infrastructure has been one of the largest growth areas in the institutional allocation. So it doesn’t look like the allocations to private infrastructure, the rates of acceleration, are leveling off. But I think it’s just a natural evolution, just as we’ve seen in real estate, where investors recognize that you put the two together—listed and private—and you can end up with better results.

And that comes from many dimensions, whether it’s the sectors you can get allocated to, the management teams that you can get in each sector, and the fact that the return cycles are out of phase so that allocators who have the capability to move between the listed and private markets can generate alpha from those things. I think that infrastructure is still in a bull market and it’s going to continue to be based on the things that John and I talked about with respect to the capital investment cycle pertaining to AI and power and such.

As it relates to the wealth market, it’s been a bull market in the vehicles for private infrastructure. We have something that’s in the lab, but we’re not ready to talk about it. But as it relates to private strategies in the wealth channel, we’re very focused on our non-traded REIT, CNS REIT.

Ivory Gowen, Analyst at Bank of America

Got it, thank you. And just as a follow-up, you said data centers are one of the booming parts of real estate and your deck now puts listed infra at the forefront of AI growth. How much of the recent performance and pipeline in your REIT and infra strategies depends specifically on the AI and data center demand? And if AI CapEx were to slow, how exposed would the flows be across the two?

Jon Cheigh, President and Chief Investment Officer

Sure, I’ll take that. So within our U.S. real estate strategy, just roughly speaking, data centers are about 10% of our portfolio. They’ve been beneficiaries of, obviously, the significant demand for data centers, but most of that has come from existing assets as opposed to new development. So is there some exposure? I would say yes—certainly at the margin there’s some exposure—but this roughly 10% of the portfolio is not very frontier or development oriented.

You know, on the infrastructure side there’s less direct exposure, but there is indirect exposure in the sense that, let’s just say roughly a third of our infrastructure business is in the utility space where, you know, historically, earnings for utilities have been, call it, 4% or so, and there’s been a step up in that growth rate—more in the 7% to 8% range. A part of that is because the need for investment for power generation, of which, of course, AI and data centers are a big, but definitely not the only, part of that.

So look, there’s some exposure there, but it’s not direct. And as we look out over the next three, four, five years or so, in both cases we’d say data centers and power generators—this is a so-called infrastructure layer, if you will. We don’t believe there’s excess capacity of compute. And so to the extent certain stocks sell off because of a concern about the future trajectory of growth slowing, I mean, that’s not really going to have an impact on this infrastructure layer.

It might change the long-term growth, but it’s certainly not having any kind of short-term direct impact. So, if anything, we think real estate and infrastructure are a really good risk-reward way to play AI and the need for compute. Obviously, there’s other ways to invest in those themes that can be much higher reward but, as we’ve seen over the last few days, also much higher risk because of the operating leverage or financial leverage embedded in some of those other non-infrastructure, non-real-estate business models.

Ivory Gowen, Analyst at Bank of America

Thank you.

OPERATOR

For any additional questions, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from John Dunn from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

John Dunn, Analyst at Evercore ISI

Private real estate. You know, it seems to be gaining some traction lately. You know, when do you think we could see an acceleration in organic growth there? And then is it seen that, you know, there are advantages to being a newer platform, and does that resonate with investors, like when you’re competing against the legacy brands in that space?

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

John, I missed the very beginning of your question, but I think I know what it is. So let me start and then you can follow up. As it relates to CNS REIT, our non-traded real estate vehicle, we continue to have among the best performance in the peer group since our inception. It’s the number one performing non-traded REIT, and that’s based on our investment team nailing it as it relates to an investment thesis around open-air shopping centers—both grocery-anchored shopping centers and power centers.

And so we’ve continued to work toward getting critical mass. Our portfolio is about 900 million in total assets with equity value of about 400 million. So we’re getting to the point size-wise and track-record-wise—that is, we’re going to hit our three-year track record in January—where it’s now more viable to get platformed at larger distributors. We’ve been very focused on working with endowment-type RIA firms, and that’s where the majority of our capital has been raised.

In terms of the onboarding process at the wirehouses, real estate is still a less favored strategy compared with infrastructure and private credit. So we’re going to have to, you know, get further into the cycle to see a broader take-up from the largest distributors. That said, in the RIA channel, these allocators get the investment thesis. They’ve enjoyed the returns that we have delivered. And as our team starts to think about, you know, what is next on the investing front, we think we’re going to be able to sustain the type of relative performance that we have delivered in Cohen & Steers Income Opportunities REIT.

So we’re very excited about the whole initiative. The investment landscape is going to get even better for us, and we’ve been talking about these calls in other places. I think about your second question, which is a lot of capital has gone into certain segments of the real estate industry, namely apartments and industrial. And, you know, the current rate environment is going to pressure the return cycle of those strategies. So we aren’t affected by that because we haven’t been allocating to them.

However, in two years’ time it may present a great investment opportunity for our private team. So we’re excited about where we’re at in the real estate cycle and what the rate environment is doing to private markets that maybe got a little excessive and are going through their down cycle. But that’s the Cohen & Steers brand. We’re about innovating and innovating around performance. So we’re ready.

John Dunn, Analyst at Evercore ISI

Got it. And then if I could sneak one on that pipeline—you know, you talked about nine months to kind of win the mandate. What about the timing of converting the pipeline? And you mentioned it’s broadening; maybe just a flavor of the composition of what’s in it.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Well, the life cycle in terms of getting from the pipeline to funded is roughly about four months. In terms of getting to the one point, that can be very short or it can be very long in terms of years. So the composition of it, just like last quarter, you know, is very diverse. And so that’s very exciting. It’s across real estate, both U.S. real estate and global real estate, and that is something that’s changed a little bit. There was a period of time amidst peak U.S. exceptionalism where global allocations weren’t very prevalent. We’ve seen more global allocations in real estate. So it’s real estate, it’s infrastructure, it’s multi-strategy real assets. And I’d say that has gone up in the pipeline and flows. And again, if three years ago people were saying, yeah, I see inflation’s ticked up, but I think that’s transitory, it’s going to come back down, and they didn’t think about real assets as a strategic allocation—I think by now inflation is so embedded in our economy and the psyche.

So inflation-sensitive allocations have to become strategic in investor portfolios. And then, of course, other real estate strategies—that are institutional listed private vehicle that I referenced, the Tactical Real Estate Fund—is a part of the pipeline. We’re seeing a lot of interest in that strategy from institutions who own the core property funds, the so-called ODCE funds. And the Tactical Real Estate Fund is a solution for them to get a better allocation in terms of having a better core real estate allocation by virtue of returns and diversity and liquidity.

So the composition of the pipeline looks very good.

John Dunn, Analyst at Evercore ISI

Thank you.

OPERATOR

We have no further questions. I’d like to turn the call back to Joe Harvey for closing remarks.

Joseph Harvey, Chief Executive Officer

Well, thank you, Julianne. As I said, it was a good quarter, and we’ll look forward to reporting to you on the fourth quarter and at the beginning of the new year. So thank you.

OPERATOR

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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