WisdomTree Announces Fourth Quarter and Year End 2014 Results

$0.07 Diluted Net Income EPS for the Quarter and $0.44 for the Year

$4.5 Billion Fourth Quarter Inflows and $5.1 Billion for the Year

Declares $0.08 quarterly dividend

NEW YORK, Feb. 6, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WisdomTree Investments, Inc. (Nasdaq:WETF), an exchange-traded fund ("ETF") and exchange-traded product ("ETP") sponsor and asset manager today reported net income of $9.6 million or $0.07 per diluted EPS in the fourth quarter. Pre-tax income was $16.7 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 1.2% from the fourth quarter of 2013 and down 17.7% from the third quarter of 2014. Included in the quarter was a loss of $1.9 million, or $0.01 per diluted EPS, associated with the Company's European listed ETP business, which was acquired in April 2014. Pre-tax income is comparable to previous periods since the Company did not record income tax expense prior to 2014.

For the year, net income was $61.1 million or $0.44 per diluted EPS. Pre-tax income was $73.5 million, an increase of 42.7% from the prior year. Excluding the results of our European listed ETP business, pre-tax income increased 52.6% from the prior year.

WisdomTree CEO and President Jonathan Steinberg said,

"Before discussing our strong fourth quarter and year of accomplishments, I'd first like to comment on WisdomTree's larger opportunity. The success of the $2 trillion ETF market is undeniable. Through greater investor education and awareness we are confident its growth will continue. Don't be distracted by old debates like passive versus active, or new terminology like smart beta and liquid alts. The simple truth is that the ETF structure is just that, a structure by which you can access numerous asset classes and strategies. But it is a structure with the characteristics central to a positive investing experience: transparency, liquidity and tax efficiency. It is a matter of fact, not opinion, that ETFs are more competitive than traditional investment products in these crucial respects. The industry's record $239 billion in 2014 annual inflows proves these truths are becoming more widely recognized every day."

"WisdomTree's $4.5 billion of net inflows in the fourth quarter, followed by another $4.6 billion year-to-date, demonstrate our momentum. WisdomTree's accomplishments throughout 2014 – including the seamless back-office transition to State Street, the efficient acquisition and rollout of local products in Europe, additions to our U.S. product set and staff, and the implementation of a dividend and stock buyback to our capital management program – demonstrate our execution and growing resources."

"In the fourth quarter we reported record revenues of $49.6 million and a strong balance sheet with cash and investments of $179 million. Our growing scale, cash flow and overall resources will allow us to exploit the tremendous opportunities we see ahead."

Recent Business Developments

• On November 25, 2014, the WisdomTree Equity Income Fund (DHS) Surpassed $1 billion in assets
• On December 10, 2014, the Company launched the Emerging Markets ex-State-Owned-Enterprises Fund (XSOE)
• On December 18, 2014, the WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund (HEDJ) Surpassed $5 billion in assets
• On January 22, 2015, WisdomTree cross-listed 4 additional ETFs on the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores
• On January 26, 2015, WisdomTree added four additional ETFs to Schwab ETF  OneSource™: WisdomTree Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Zero Duration Fund (AGZD), WisdomTree BofA Merrill Lynch High Yield Bond Zero Duration Fund (HYZD), WisdomTree Bloomberg U.S. Dollar Bullish Fund (USDU), WisdomTree Global ex-U.S. Dividend Growth Fund (DNL)
• WisdomTree Europe:
  • Launched two WisdomTree UCITS ETFs on the London Stock Exchange on November 19, 2014; and launched six WisdomTree UCITS ETFs on the Borsa Italiana on January 19, 2015
  • Launched 12 Boost ETPs on Deutche Boerse's Xetra on November 17, 2014; launched one fixed income ETP on the London Stock Exchange on November 26, 2014; and launched seven ETPs on the Borsa Italiana between December 10, 2014 and January 8, 2015

Assets Under Management and Net Inflows

US listed ETF assets under management ("AUM") were $39.3 billion at December 31, 2014, up 12.6% from December 31, 2013 primarily due to inflow levels. US listed AUM was up 9.7% from September 30, 2014 primarily due to $4.5 billion of net inflows. 

European listed AUM was $181.2 million, up 47.1% from $123.2 million at September 30, 2014 primarily due to $98.2 million of net inflows partly offset by $40.2 million of negative market movement.

Performance

In evaluating the performance of our US listed equity, fixed income and alternative ETFs against actively managed and index based mutual funds and ETFs, 87% of the $38.5 billion invested in our ETFs and 64% (33 of 52) of our ETFs outperformed their comparable Morningstar average since inception as of December 31, 2014.

For more information about WisdomTree ETFs including standardized performance, please click here or visit www.wisdomtree.com.

Fourth Quarter Financial Discussion

Revenues

Total revenues increased 14.9% from the fourth quarter of 2013 and 5.3% compared to the third quarter of 2014 to $49.6 million primarily due to higher average AUM from strong inflows. Revenues from our European listed ETPs, which were acquired in April 2014, increased to $0.4 million from $0.2 million in the third quarter of 2014 primarily due to higher inflows for the Boost branded ETPs and the launch of WisdomTree branded ETFs in the quarter. Our average advisory fee for our US listed ETFs increased to 0.52% as compared to 0.51% for the fourth quarter of 2013 due to change in the mix of our AUM and remained the same at 0.52% as compared to the third quarter of 2014.

Margins

Gross margin for our US listed ETFs, which is our total revenues less fund management and administration expenses and third party sharing arrangements, was 82.5% in the fourth quarter of 2014 as compared to 78.2% in the fourth quarter of 2013 and 82.2% in the third quarter of 2014. The increase was primarily due to beneficial pricing changes for our fund accounting, administration and custody services, which took effect in April 2014.

Pre-tax margin was 33.6% in the fourth quarter of 2014 as compared to 38.2% in the fourth quarter of 2013 and 43.0% in the third quarter of 2014. Pre-tax margin for our US listed ETFs was 37.8% in the quarter.

Expenses

Total expenses increased 23.3% from the fourth quarter of 2013 and 22.6% compared to the third quarter of 2014 to $32.9 million. Included in the quarter was $2.3 million of expenses associated with our European listed ETPs. 

• Compensation and benefits expense increased 46.4% from the fourth quarter of 2013 to $14.1 million due to higher accrued incentive compensation due to our inflow levels in the fourth quarter as well as higher headcount related expenses to support our growth. Included in the quarter was $1.0 million in compensation costs for employees associated with our European listed ETPs. Our headcount was 101 in the US and 124 globally at the end of 2014. 
• Fund management and administration expense in the fourth quarter was relatively unchanged with the fourth quarter of 2013 at $8.9 million as costs associated with higher average AUM were offset by lower fees as a result of changing our fund accounting, administration and custody service provider. This expense increased 5.5% compared to the third quarter of 2014 due to US regulatory expenses associated with higher inflow levels and additional costs for the WisdomTree branded ETFs which were launched in Europe in the fourth quarter. We had 70 US listed ETFs and 56 European listed ETPs at the end of 2014. 
• Marketing and advertising expense increased 33.8% from the fourth quarter of 2013 to $2.9 million primarily due to higher levels of advertising related activities to support our growth. This expense decreased 14.1% from the third quarter of 2014 due to lower levels of advertising related activities.
• Sales and business development expense increased 3.6% from the fourth quarter of 2013 and 49.6% from the third quarter of 2014 to $1.9 million primarily due to higher spending for sales and product development related initiatives.
• Professional and consulting fees increased to $2.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2014, an increase of $1.6 million from the fourth quarter of 2013 and $1.2 million from the third quarter of 2014 primarily due to strategic consulting services.
• Occupancy, communication and equipment expense decreased 13.7% from the fourth quarter of 2013 to $0.9 million. At the end of the third quarter of 2013, we began to pay for additional office space which began to occupy in January 2014. This expense was relatively unchanged compared to the third quarter of 2014.  
• Depreciation and amortization expense was relatively unchanged at $0.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2014 and 2013 as well as the third quarter of 2014.
• Third-party sharing arrangements expense decreased 38.0% to $0.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2014 as compared to the fourth quarter of 2013 primarily due to lower fees to our third party marketing agent in Latin America. This expense increased 50.8% compared to the third quarter of 2014 due to fees for listing our ETFs on a third party platform.
• Other expenses decreased 23.4% compared to the fourth quarter of 2013 and 2.0% compared to the third quarter of 2014 due to lower general and administrative expenses.
• Income tax expense was $7.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2014. The effective tax rate on our US listed ETF business was 38.3% and our overall effective tax rate was 42.3% due to the non-deductibility of losses in our European ETP business. These losses may be recognized in the future after the European business is profitable. We did not record income tax expense in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Balance Sheet

As of December 31, 2014, the Company had total assets of $220.8 million which consisted primarily of cash and cash equivalents of $165.3 million and investments of $14.0 million. There were approximately 133.4 million shares of common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2014. Fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding were 138.8 million for the fourth quarter.

Quarterly Dividend

The Company's Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.08 per share of the Company's common stock. The dividend will be paid on March 4, 2015 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on February 18, 2015. 

Conference Call 

WisdomTree will discuss its results and operational highlights during a conference call on Friday, February 6, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. ET. The call-in number will be (877) 303-7209. Anyone outside the U.S. or Canada should call (970) 315-0420. The slides used during the presentation will be available at http://ir.wisdomtree.com. For those unable to join the conference call at the scheduled time, an audio replay will be available on http://ir.wisdomtree.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are based on our management's beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, these statements relate to future events or our future financial performance, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "intends," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," "continue" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements because they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which are, in some cases, beyond our control and which could materially affect results. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, the risks described below.  If one or more of these or other risks or uncertainties occur, or if our underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual events or results may vary significantly from those implied or projected by the forward-looking statements. No forward-looking statement is a guarantee of future performance. You should read this press release completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.

In particular, forward-looking statements in this press release may include statements about:

• anticipated trends, conditions and investor sentiment in the global markets and ETPs;
• anticipated levels of inflows into and outflows out of our ETPs;
• our ability to deliver favorable rates of return to investors;
• our ability to develop new products and services;
• our ability to maintain current vendors or find new vendors to provide services to us at favorable costs;
• our ability to successfully expand our business into non-U.S. markets;
• timing of payment of our cash income taxes;
• competition in our business; and
• the effect of laws and regulations that apply to our business.

Our business is subject to many risks and uncertainties, including without limitation:

• We have only a limited operating history and, as a result, recent historical growth may not provide an accurate representation of the growth we may experience in the future, which may make it difficult to evaluate our future prospects.
• Challenging market conditions associated with declining prices of securities can adversely affect our business by reducing the market value of the assets we manage or causing customers to sell their fund shares and trigger redemptions.
• Fluctuations in the amount and mix of our AUM may negatively impact revenue and operating margin.
• Most of our assets under management are held in our U.S. listed ETFs that invest in foreign securities and we therefore have substantial exposure to foreign market conditions and are subject to currency exchange rate risks.
• We derive a substantial portion of our revenue from products invested in emerging markets and are exposed to the market-specific political and economic risks as well as general investor sentiment regarding future growth of those markets.
• We derive a substantial amount of our revenue from products invested in securities of Japanese companies and are exposed to the market-specific political and economic risks as well as general investor sentiment regarding future growth of those markets and currency fluctuations between the Japanese Yen and the U.S. Dollar.
• We derive a majority of our revenue from a limited number of products – in particular one fund, WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund, that accounted for approximately 30% of our ETF AUM – and, as a result, our operating results are particularly exposed to the performance of those funds, investor sentiment toward the strategies pursued by those funds and our ability to maintain the assets under management of those funds.
• Our ETPs and ETFs have a limited track record, and poor investment performance could cause our revenue to decline.
• We depend on other third parties to provide many critical services to operate our business and our ETPs and ETFs. The failure of key vendors to adequately provide such services could materially affect our operating business and harm our customers.

Other factors, such as general economic conditions, including currency exchange rate fluctuations, also may have an effect on the results of our operations. For a more complete description of the risks noted above and other risks that could cause our actual results to differ from our current expectations, please see the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2013.

The forward-looking statements in this press release represent our views as of the date of this press release. We anticipate that subsequent events and developments may cause our views to change. However, while we may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we have no current intention of doing so except to the extent required by applicable law. Therefore, these forward-looking statements do not represent our views as of any date other than the date of this press release. 

About WisdomTree

WisdomTree Investments, Inc., through its subsidiaries in the U.S. and Europe (collectively, "WisdomTree"), is an exchange-traded fund ("ETF") and exchange-traded product ("ETP") sponsor and asset manager headquartered in New York.  WisdomTree offers products covering equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities and alternative strategies. WisdomTree currently has approximately $44.6 billion in assets under management globally. 

WisdomTree® is the marketing name for WisdomTree Investments, Inc. and its subsidiaries worldwide.

Non-GAAP Financial Measurements

In an effort to provide additional information regarding our results as determined by GAAP, we also disclose certain non-GAAP information which we believe provides useful and meaningful information.  The non-GAAP financial measurements included in this release include gross margin, gross margin percentage and our operating results for our US and European listed ETF businesses. Our management reviews these non-GAAP financial measurements when evaluating our financial performance and results of operations; therefore, we believe it is useful to provide information with respect to these non-GAAP measurements so as to share this perspective of management.  Non-GAAP measurements do not have any standardized meaning, do not replace nor are superior to GAAP financial measurements and are unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. These non-GAAP financial measurements should be considered in the context with our GAAP results. We disclose gross margin as a non-GAAP financial measurement to allow investors to analyze our revenues less the direct costs paid to third parties attributable to those revenues.  We disclose the results of our US listed ETF business to allow investors to better compare our results to the prior year as in April 2014, we acquired Boost ETP, a UK based ETP sponsor.