Founded in 1937, T. Rowe Price (TROW) is one of the world’s largest investment managers. The company uses fundamental and quantitative analysis to create and manage a wide variety of equity and bond funds, which have historically beaten their indexes and thus attracted consistent inflows of investor capital. The company makes most of its money through investment advisory fees (90% of net revenue) charged for managing clients' portfolios. Fees are generally assessed as a percentage of assets under management, so they are driven by the total value and mix of the funds T. Rowe Price manages for investors. T. Rowe Price had $962 billion in assets under management at the end of 2018, with roughly two-thirds of its assets in retirement accounts. [...]

Automatic Data Processing (ADP) was founded in 1949 and is one of the largest providers of human capital management (HCM) solutions in the world. ADP offers a wide range of cloud-based software solutions and services, which companies use to pay, recruit, staff, manage, and retain employees.Over 40 million people around the globe depend on ADP for accurate pay, reliable benefits administration, effective performance management, or other human resource services.The company generates most of its revenue on a recurring basis from providing payroll services (handles the preparation of employee paychecks, pay statements, journals, and summaries), including paying 1 out of every 6 workers in the U.S., but has expanded its suite of products over the last decade to cover most of [...]

Blackstone (BX) announced it will convert from a publicly traded partnership to a corporation on July 1, 2019. Investors cheered the move, sending shares of BX higher by 7.5%. Let's review Blackstone's rationale for the change and what it could mean for income investors. Blackstone decided to convert from a partnership to a corporation due to tax reform, which reduced the highest corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. While Blackstone's tax bill will increase due to this change (partnerships pass on their income tax obligations to their owners, but corporations pay income tax), management believes that incremental cost will be more than offset by the benefits of a simpler structure.

Qualcomm (QCOM) shareholders received good news yesterday: the chip maker and Apple agreed to drop all litigation, sending Qualcomm's stock surging more than 20%. In February 2019 we outlined the significant legal risks Qualcomm's core licensing business faced. I recommend skimming our note for more background on the situation, but essentially Qualcomm was accused by Apple and others of abusing its monopolistic position in wireless chips and charging excessive royalty rates. As we noted, the stakes were high.