Syracuse University's $1.76 billion endowment returned a net -2.1% for the fiscal year ended June 30, according to the Syracuse, N.Y.-based university's latest annual financial report.
For the three and five years ended June 30, the endowment fund returned an annualized net 9.3% and 8.6%, respectively.
The endowment fund returned a net 30.8% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021.
The annual report did not disclose benchmarks or returns by asset class.
For the most recent fiscal year, the negative return for the endowment pool reflected a challenging market environment for the period, particularly for public equities and fixed income. 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.
However, Syracuse's return did exceed the median return of -4.2% among the 48 university and college endowments whose returns for the year ended June 30 have been tracked by Pensions & Investments as of Friday.
The endowment likely benefited from a low total allocation to public markets. The report did not provide the actual allocation of the endowment fund, but did provide the allocation of the university's total $1.83 billion investment portfolio, of which the vast majority is made up of endowment assets.
As of June 30, the investment portfolio's actual allocation was 20.5% global and other hedge funds, 13.6% domestic equities, 12.5% long/short equity, 12.4% buyout funds, 11.5% multistrategy hedge funds, 9.5% fixed income, 6.9% venture capital, 6.3% real assets, 2.8% international equities, 2.3% private debt and the rest in other.
