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T. Rowe Price's $11 Billion Take Shows Stock Pickers Aren't Dead

T. Rowe Price's $11 Billion Take Shows Stock Pickers Aren't Dead

(Bloomberg) -- Active money management is alive and well, at least at T. Rowe Price Group Inc.

The firm attracted $11.3 billion in client cash in the first quarter, the biggest inflow in six years and the second biggest quarterly haul in the company’s history, spokesman Brian Lewbart said in an email. Its target-date retirement products collected $6 billion of that total, T. Rowe Price said in its first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. The shares rose the most since July 2017.

T. Rowe Price's $11 Billion Take Shows Stock Pickers Aren't Dead

The Baltimore-based company has emphasized its stock-picking skills at a time when money has been flowing into funds that track indexes. The $51.7 billion T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund, the firm’s largest actively managed equity fund, beat 93 percent of rivals over the past five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its biggest holding by value is Amazon.com Inc.

T. Rowe Price reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.74, beating the $1.68 estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Revenue also topped forecasts. The stock gained 2.9 percent at 12:09 p.m. in New York after earlier rising 4.7 percent.

Click here for more on the company’s first-quarter performance

To contact the reporter on this story: Charles Stein in Boston at cstein4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Alan Mirabella, Daniel Taub

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