Raymond James Recruiting Climbs as Assets Hit Record
Raymond James reported trailing 12-month production of $538 million for recruited advisors coming into its domestic independent contractor and employee channels during the fiscal year, up from $407 million from the prior year. Those advisors represented more than $82 billion in client assets, said CEO Paul Shoukry, on the firm’s fiscal fourth quarter earnings call.
Shoukry said the firm’s recruiting success is spread across all its affiliation channels, including its RIA custody channel. The independent contractor channel is seeing the most interest in terms of dollar volume.
“But the RIA custody division on a smaller base is growing at a high percentage rate as well,” he said. “We have the largest total addressable market based on having all of the affiliation options at scale, and when advisors are thinking about making a move, they don’t have to select. They don’t have to think about whether or not Raymond James offers a channel, they know that we offer it, they can really just understand whether or not we’re a good fit for them culturally in terms of the capabilities that we offer.”
Raymond James no longer reports advisor headcount, but it had about 8,900 advisors the last time headcount was officially broken out.
Overall, the firm reported record quarter-end client assets under administration of $1.87 trillion, up 1% sequentially and 12% year-over-year.
The Private Client Group had record quarterly net revenue of $3.06 billion, up 15% year-over-year and pre-tax income of $458 million, up 10% year-over-year.
Domestic PCG net new assets rose 88% for the fiscal year to a record of more than $98 billion. Net new assets for the quarter were nearly $23 billion, with annualized growth from the beginning of the quarter of 5.3%.
The firm reported non-GAAP earnings per share of $3.59, beating analysts’ expectations by $0.32, according to Seeking Alpha, on revenue of $4.74 billion, up 13% year-over-year.
When asked about M&A, Shoukry said the firm does look for acquisitions in the wealth management business in particular, but it would have to be a good cultural and strategic fit.
“We don’t do acquisitions to slash costs,” he said. “We do acquisitions to grow revenues and to be better firms together over time. And then of course, financially, it has to make sense for Raymond James and the sellers and everyone involved.”
The firm’s stock price was up 1.41% in trading on Thursday, as of 2 p.m. Eastern time.
