T. Rowe Price Group, Inc.

The core business is shrinking: clients keep pulling money out of high-fee active equity and mutual funds and into ETFs, separate accounts and blended retirement funds that charge far less. The question is whether the new products and the cost cuts outrun that price squeeze. Where does the fee rate bottom out as money keeps moving to cheaper funds?

• Cheaper products are growing as the expensive ones shrink.

  Clients redeem high-fee equity and mutual funds while sales go into ETFs, trusts and separate accounts, so the fee on each dollar of assets keeps falling. Assets rose 10% last year but revenue rose under 3%: more assets, less new money. How much of the 2025 asset growth came from markets rather than new client money?

• The growth engines are real and getting big enough to matter.

  ETFs have grown past $30 billion and separate accounts past $20 billion, and management says the strategies blending research with models are the ones clients now want. Those are the pools meant to replace what equity redemptions drain. How much of that $16 billion came from clients switching vehicles?

• Costs are climbing faster than management planned, despite cuts.

  Expense growth guidance was raised to as much as 7%, driven by technology and year-end pay. The firm cut jobs and outsourced technology, but the savings get reinvested — so what it saves becomes new spending, not a smaller cost base.