← All companies ← BELFB Manual BERY → ← BAM Capital Markets & Asset Management BGC →
BEN, Franklin Resources Inc.
Franklin Resources Inc. is a holding company with subsidiaries operating under our Franklin Templeton and/or subsidiary brand names.
Through our specialist investment managers, we offer specialization on a global scale, bringing extensive capabilities in equity, fixed income, alternatives and multi-asset solutions.
For over 75 years, we have been committed to providing clients with exceptional investment management services and have developed a globally diversified business, including through strategic acquisitions.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Next report By 11/28 · the annual report (10-K) for the fiscal year ended late September · due within 60 days of period end · has filed ~43 days after · the wire records it on arrival
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What it is
- Revenue is Investment management fees (80%), Sales and distribution fees (17%) and Shareholder Service (3%).
- What moves the needle
- Assets under management and the fee rate on them. What decides it: net flows in or out, the market's move on the assets already there (the firm rises and falls with the indices it invests in), the drift toward cheaper passive products, and the operating leverage on a largely fixed cost base. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Operating margin has been modest for a fee business (median 22%). It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 10%, the leverage of a model that needs almost no plant to grow. A high return that does not fade can mark a moat, but whether the assets stay (net flows, not last year's market) is what the flow disclosures and the 10-K settle, not the multiple.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →Investment management fees is 80% of revenue, with Sales and distribution fees the other meaningful line at 17%.
- Investment management fees80%$7.0B
- Sales and distribution fees17%$1.5B
- Shareholder Service3%$265M
- Other1%$50M
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMJun 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $6.6B | $6.4B | $6.2B | $5.7B | $5.6B | $8.4B | $8.3B | $7.8B | $8.5B | $8.8B | $9.3B | RevenueRevenue |
| 35.7% | 35.4% | 32.7% | 25.9% | 18.8% | 22.3% | 21.4% | 14.0% | 4.8% | 6.9% | 9.7% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| 26.1% | 26.5% | 12.3% | 21.1% | 14.4% | 21.7% | 15.6% | 11.2% | 5.5% | 6.0% | 8.7% | Net marginNet mgn |
| $2.5B | $2.5B | $2.2B | $1.6B | $1.0B | $2.4B | $1.7B | $1.3B | $823M | $787M | — | Pretax incomePretax |
| $1.7B | $1.7B | $764M | $1.2B | $799M | $1.8B | $1.3B | $883M | $465M | $525M | $813M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 30% | 30% | — | 27% | 23% | 14% | 23% | 23% | 26% | 30% | 32% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $1.6B | $1.1B | $2.2B | $190M | $1.0B | $1.2B | $1.9B | $985M | $855M | $912M | $232M | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| $192M | $52M | ($290M) | ($1.3B) | ($4.1B) | ($2.6B) | ($3.3B) | ($3.6B) | ($2.4B) | ($2.3B) | — | Investing cash flowInv. cash |
| ($1.8B) | ($956M) | ($3.8B) | $340M | $734M | $2.0B | $1.6B | $2.1B | $1.4B | $452M | — | Financing cash flowFin. cash |
| ($4M) | $35M | ($17M) | ($37M) | $27M | ($2M) | ($77M) | $34M | $43M | ($11M) | — | Exchange-rate effectFX |
| $115M | $266M | ($1.8B) | ($704M) | ($2.2B) | $657M | $135M | ($380M) | $7M | ($835M) | — | Change in cashΔ cash |
| 14% | 13% | 8% | 12% | 8% | 16% | 11% | 7% | 4% | 4% | 7% | Return on equityROE |
| 11% | 10% | −14% | 7% | 3% | 11% | 6% | 2% | −2% | −1% | 1% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $16.1B | $17.5B | $14.4B | $14.5B | $21.7B | $24.2B | $28.1B | $30.1B | $32.5B | $32.4B | $36.2B | Total assetsAssets |
| $8.5B | $8.7B | $6.9B | $6.2B | $4.0B | $4.6B | $4.8B | $4.4B | $4.4B | $3.6B | $3.8B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $3.5B | $2.7B | $3.1B | $3.2B | $10.3B | $11.4B | $14.2B | $16.5B | $17.9B | $18.2B | — | Total liabilitiesTotal liab. |
| $61M | $1.9B | $1.0B | $747M | $542M | $933M | $1.5B | $1.0B | $1.3B | $1.2B | — | Redeemable interestsRedeemable |
| $592M | $316M | $309M | $718M | $755M | $587M | $824M | $631M | $735M | $929M | — | Noncontrolling interestsNCI |
| $11.9B | $12.6B | $9.9B | $9.9B | $10.1B | $11.2B | $11.5B | $11.9B | $12.5B | $12.1B | $11.7B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 584M | 559M | 538M | 504M | 492M | 491M | 489M | 491M | 510M | 517M | 518M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $11.34 | $11.43 | $11.53 | $11.24 | $11.30 | $17.17 | $16.91 | $15.99 | $16.61 | $16.95 | $18.02 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $2.96 | $3.03 | $1.42 | $2.37 | $1.62 | $3.73 | $2.64 | $1.80 | $0.91 | $1.01 | $1.57 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $2.79 | $1.90 | $4.01 | $0.38 | $2.05 | $2.38 | $3.81 | $2.01 | $1.68 | $1.76 | $0.45 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| $0.70 | $0.79 | $3.93 | $1.03 | $1.08 | $1.14 | $1.19 | $1.24 | $1.29 | $1.32 | $1.34 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $20.45 | $22.57 | $18.40 | $19.64 | $20.54 | $22.88 | $23.45 | $24.28 | $24.51 | $23.34 | $22.68 | Book value / shareBVPS |
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +4.6%/yr | +8.4%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | −5.0%/yr | −3.0%/yr |
| EPS | −11.2%/yr | −9.0%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +7.3%/yr | +4.1%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | +6.7%/yr | +7.2%/yr |
| Book value / share | +1.5%/yr | +2.6%/yr |
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Is it a good business?
- Operating margin 6.9%Thin for a fee businessOperating income $604M ÷ revenue $8.8BIndustry peers: median 21%
What this means
The heart of a asset manager: how much of each fee dollar survives the cost of running the business. Fees ride on assets under management, so the swing factors are net flows in or out and the market's move on the assets already there; the cost base is largely fixed, which lifts margins in a bull market and squeezes them in a bear one. A high margin held for years, through a market it does not control, is the operational mark of a real franchise.
- Net margin 6.0%SolidNet income $525M ÷ revenue $8.8B
What this means
What reaches the owner after tax and interest. For a capital-light fee business this should be a wide share of revenue; when it is thin despite a high operating margin, debt taken on for acquisitions is usually the reason, so read it next to the balance sheet.
- Below the cost of equityNet income $525M ÷ equity $12.1BIndustry peers: median 23%
What this means
Because the business ties up little capital, a healthy fee stream throws off a high return on the equity behind it. Read it with the buyback record: returning capital lifts this ratio honestly, but heavy debt taken to do so can flatter it.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Lease obligations
the lease note, SEC EDGAR →Debt by another name. What the business owes on the property, aircraft, stores and equipment it rents rather than owns is a fixed claim due on a schedule; added back to the debt, it is the true leverage. That ladder, and what it adds to the debt on the page above.
Lease payments by year, scaled to the largest; “later” is everything beyond year five, shown apart. These are the contractual cash payments, before the interest the filing imputes back out to the balance-sheet liability.
True leverage: debt plus leases
Counting the leases the way Buffett does, the fixed claims on this business come to $3.4B, of which the leases are 29%. The lease wall above and the debt schedule together are the calendar of what must be paid, and when.
Lease ladder read from the ASC 842 tags in the company’s Sep 30, 2025 annual report and reconciled: the yearly buckets sum to the undiscounted total, which less the imputed interest equals the balance-sheet liability; a ladder that doesn’t tie out is withheld.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow recordGoodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.
$24M written down across 1 year (2020): goodwill the company has already conceded it overpaid for, charged against earnings. A write-down costs no cash (the cash went out when the deal was signed), but it is management marking its own past judgment to market.
Beside that spending sits $1.8B of cumulative amortization of acquired intangibles charged against earnings since fiscal 2010 — the purchase price of past deals, expensed over time.
Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and amortization summed across the company's full tagged history, write-downs across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Ms. Johnson | $9.9M | $13.2M | $1.2B |
| 2022 | Ms. Johnson | $15.7M | $10.1M | $1.9B |
| 2023 | Ms. Johnson | $15.7M | $18.8M | $985M |
| 2024 | Ms. Johnson | $17.2M | $11.6M | $855M |
| 2025 | Ms. Johnson | $16.8M | $21.5M | $912M |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership23.4%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2025 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$215M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares in fiscal 2025, 2.4% of revenue, equal to 35.6% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Acquisitions as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Capital Markets & Asset Management
The same industry, side by side on fee margins. Each column names the period it is read over; the group median at the foot is the line to read each figure against.
| Company | Revenuelatest FY, USD | Op. marginmedian over the record | Net marginmedian over the record | ROEmedian over the record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMPAmeriprise Financial Inc. | $18.5B | 20.1% | 16.4% | 46% |
| BXBlackstone Inc. | $14.5B | 46.3% | 20.7% | 23% |
| BENFranklin Resources Inc. | $8.8B | 21.8% | 15.0% | 10% |
| TROWT. Rowe Price Group Inc. | $7.3B | 41.5% | 30.2% | 25% |
| IVZInvesco | $6.4B | 18.4% | 10.3% | 4% |
| ARESAres Management | $5.6B | 13.1% | 9.0% | 13% |
| CGCarlyle Group | $4.8B | 23.5% | 11.6% | 12% |
| EVREvercore | $3.9B | 21.1% | 15.0% | 29% |
| Group median | — | 21.5% | 15.0% | 18% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Franklin Resources Inc. has delivered.
Through the cycle, Franklin Resources Inc. earns about $1.3B on its 15.2% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 10.4% margin runs below that; the reported figure may understate a lean year. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
—
9.0% = the 4.71% 10-year Treasury (Aug 18, 2026) + 4.29 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.71%, as of Aug 18, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Owner earnings $232M on 508M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-07-22; net cash $1.4B. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Manual order: ← BELFB its page in the Manual BERY →
Industry order: ← BAM the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter BGC →