Investment manager Milford Funds boosts dividend despite profit dip to $16.9m

Blair Turnbull is the chief executive of Milford Asset Management.

Fund management heavyweight Milford has held its own profits steady, and boosted dividends to its parent, despite choppy international investing conditions.

Financial results for Milford Funds posted to the Companies Office for the year to March 2025 saw the company post a $16.9 million profit after tax, a decline from $19.5m the year prior.

A decline in total revenue for the fund manager, from $271m to $235m, was softened by a trimming of management services fees paid by the company to its parent, with this declining from $227m to $194m.

Milford Funds is the manager and issuer of 23 wholesale and retail funds, including six KiwiSaver offerings. Its Australian website claims to have $24 billion under management across its Australasian operations.

The filed results are less a reflection of the performance of its funds for Milford investors than the profitability of fund operation for its management and shareholders.

Performance fees receipts from its subsidiary funds sharply declined from $84m in 2024 to just $1m in the 2025 financial year.

The decline was partly offset by management fees collected by Milford Funds increasing from $186m to $231m.

Milford Funds is wholly owned by Milford Asset Management. The largest individual shareholder of the parent, outside staff register Mitre Peak Nominee 1 which holds 47.8% of shares, is Anna Gibbons with 25.4%.

Gibbons is the wife of late Milford founder Brian Gaynor.

Milford Funds increased the dividend paid its parent to $17.5m from $10.2m over the year.

Despite the dividend bump, its cash balance ended 2025 at $47.4m – sharply up from $18.3m the year prior, largely from the redemption of $20m in term deposits.

Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism – including twice being named Reporter of the Year – and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting from business newspapers and national magazines. Earlier this year he received funding from Brian Gaynor Initiatives to report a story on international shipping.