Platinum Increasingly Shiny As Cyclical Stocks Outperform, but Shares Overheated

Narrow-moat Platinum Asset Management demonstrated a strong start for the first half of fiscal 2021, with NPAT improving by 14% to AUD 90.4 million, relative to the prior corresponding period, or pcp. Most of the asset manager’s strategies outperformed over the year to January 2021, supported by the recent stock price appreciation of cyclical and deep value stocks following promising vaccination news. Growth in the value of its seed investments, an AUD 3.7 million performance fee and a decrease in costs helped offset the 12% decline in management fees over the half, from lower average FUM.