Arizona State University notches 2.4% return, scorching benchmark's -13.6%

Arizona State University Foundation's $1.3 billion endowment returned a net 2.4% for the fiscal year ended June 30.

The endowment's return exceeded the -13.6% return for the benchmark of a 70% equities/30% fixed-income portfolio, said Jeffrey Mindlin, chief investment officer of ASU Enterprise Partners, which oversees the Tempe-based foundation, in an email.

For the three, five and 10 years ended June 30, the endowment returned an annualized net 10.3%, 9.6% and 8.4%, respectively, above their respective 70/30 benchmarks of 4.3%, 5.5% and 7%.

The foundation's endowment returned a net 24.9% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021.

For the most recent fiscal year, the endowment well exceeded the median return of -4.1% among the 37 university endowments whose returns have been tracked by Pensions & Investments as of Friday.

The negative median return reflected a challenging market environment for the period. For the year ended June 30, the Russell 3000 index and Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond index returned -13.9% and -10.3%, respectively, in sharp contrast to returns of 44.2% and 4.6% for the year ended June 30, 2021.

Mr. Mindlin said the foundation does not provide specific returns by asset class, but he said the foundation saw strong performance from real assets, which provided intended inflation protection, and hedge funds also provided positive returns. He added that the endowment had "strong outcomes from early efforts in mission-aligned investing within private equity related to sustainability and education technology."

As of June 30, the endowment's actual allocation was 31.3% public equities, 28% private equity, 15.4% diversifying strategies, 14.7% real assets, 10.3% fixed income and 0.3% cash.