A mutual fund firm's publicly traded parent is ready to acquire, including in the asset management space, according to one of its top executives.

Philip James Sanders Waddell & Reed, Inc. CEO, Chief Investment Officer

"Given the progress we've made in strengthening both our investment management and wealth management platforms of our business, we feel that we're now positioned to execute on a transaction," Ben Clouse, chief financial officer of Ivy Investments' [profile] parent, Waddell & Reed Financial, told analysts yesterday on the Overland Park, Kansas-based firm's Q3 2019 earnings call (as transcribed by Seeking Alpha). Clouse, who was responding to a question from RBC Capital Markets analyst Kenneth Lee, elaborated:

We're looking for an acquisition with strategic rationale and of course, that makes financial sense. Transactions certainly are hard to predict, as you can imagine there are a lot of factors that we will consider. I can tell you from our perspective, the market is active. There is a lot of activity going on and we are studying opportunities.

Also on the call, among other topics, Ivy Distributors president Amy Scupham offered some sales and channel updates, and Waddell CEO Phil Sanders and retail wealth management business president Shawn Mihal shared insight into the opening up of the firm's broker-dealer's investment platform.

Before the call yesterday, the Waddell team released their Q3 2019 earnings results, reporting earnings per diluted share of $0.46 and revenue of $270.7 million, beating analysts' expectations by $0.07 and $3.86 million, respectively. The brokerage and asset management firm's AUM slipped 4.3 percent (mostly due to net equity fund outflows) in Q3 to $68.782 billion on September 30, 2019. 77.18 percent of that AUM was in equity funds, 1.99 percent was in money market funds, and 20.83 percent was in other fixed income funds. 

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