BlackRock’s iShares maintains a dominant position in the exchange traded fund space, but the firm is losing ground to its low-cost competitors, namely Vanguard, but the giant won’t implement an aggressive price-cutting plan, ETF researchers say.
Bernstein Research analyst Luke Montgomery believes that BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) will most likely focus on targeted price cuts in response to Vanguard’s gain in market share, Reuters reports.
“An across the board price cut would seem unjustified, as it could fail to generate market share gains and would simply damage the firm’s earning power,” according to a Bernstein Research report.
In the report, Montgomery calculates that the potential price cuts could diminish BlackRock’s earnings per share by 3% to 7%, but it would also attract more investors and increase assets under management by up to 1% per year.