University of Arkansas Foundation's $2.2 billion endowment investment pool returned a net -11.9% for the fiscal year ended June 30, according to a report on the Fayetteville-based foundation's website.
For the three, five and 10 years ended June 30, the investment pool returned an annualized net 8.5%, 8.4% and 8.8%, respectively.
The investment pool returned a net 40.1% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021.
Benchmark information and returns by asset class were not provided in the report.
For the most recent fiscal year, the endowment pool had the lowest return among the 49 university endowments whose returns for the year ended June 30 have been tracked by Pensions & Investments as of Monday.
The return reflected the 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.
The median return among endowments tracked by P&I was -4.2% for the period.
The foundation's underperformance against that median is likely due to an outsized target allocation to global public equities of 53%. The rest of the target allocation is 25% private investments, 12% hedge funds and 10% fixed income.
