SEI's Record Quarter Signals a New Growth Regime
After years of repositioning, SEI's pipeline is converting into profit — and the market is starting to pay up.
SEIC · Earnings Call · 2026-07-22
A Quarter That Was Decades in the Making
When SEI reported second-quarter 2026 results, the numbers were unambiguously remarkable: revenue up 15%, adjusted operating profit up 36%, and adjusted EPS up 38% — all quarterly records. “This quarter is less about what happened during the last 3 months and more a reflection of the changes we have made over the past few years.” — Ryan Hicke, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-07-22 That line from CEO Ryan Hicke captures the story: the company has been quietly building a more disciplined capital allocation framework and a broader enterprise value proposition, and the results are finally compounding. The street is noticing. SEI's stock has climbed more than 42% over the past 90 days, with the most recent nine weeks alone adding 21%. The full tape shows a long-term uptrend, but this acceleration feels different — it's being driven by fundamental momentum, not just beta.The Sales Engine Is Converting at Scale
SEI has been touting record sales events for several quarters, but this quarter the narrative shifted from quantity to quality. Total sales events were $43 million in Q2, following the prior record of $67 million in Q1, bringing the year-to-date total to $110 million. As CFO Sean Denham noted, “For perspective, just a few years ago, $110 million would have been a record for an entire year.” — Sean Denham, Chief Financial and Chief Operating Officer · 2026-07-22 More importantly, the mix is improving. Approximately three-quarters of IMS sales events came from private credit and alternative investments, and the company says the economics of new business are now margin accretive. This is not just a cyclical uptick. In the prior quarter's call, Phil McCabe described winning “2 of the largest and most complex alternative managers in the entire industry” — Phil McCabe, Unknown · 2026-04-22 — a sign that SEI's position in the alternatives services stack is becoming a genuine moat. The trend is reinforced by the New client momentum across IMS and private banking, with the latter posting $13 million of sales events and strong recontracting activity.New Growth Engines Are Coming Online
The more interesting development is that SEI is now layering entirely new growth vectors on top of its core. The push into retail alt and retirement channels — via its expanded transfer agency and CIT trust platform — is early but strategically significant. Ryan Hicke framed it as a potential $100 million+ annual run-rate business within five years, and the company is already signing big names: five household alternative managers for retirement solutions, with the first retail fund going live August 3. The ETF business is another proof point. SEI launched its tenth active factor ETF (SEUS) and grew its ETF assets from roughly $3 billion to over $8 billion in twelve months. Combined with the Carlyle partnership to distribute private markets, SEI is deliberately repositioning its asset management arm from a laggard to a growth contributor. As Sean Denham put it, “The 38% increase in adjusted EPS from the second quarter of last year was driven primarily by core operating performance, mid-teens revenue growth, 500 basis points of margin expansion and a 3% reduction in share count.” — Sean Denham, Chief Financial and Chief Operating Officer · 2026-07-22AI and Data Cloud: The Next Moat
Beyond the headline growth, SEI is threading AI and data into its operating fabric. The Data Cloud offering is rapidly becoming a wedge for professional services sales — clients are asking for AI readiness help, and SEI is responding. The IBM partnership is enterprise-wide, focused on automating labor-intensive processes to scale without proportional headcount. Sneha Shah described the demand:This isn't just cost-cutting; it's creating a defensible, higher-margin services layer that clients can't easily replicate. The margin trajectory is visible in the fundamentals: operating margin has trended from roughly 36% in 2016 to over 37% today, and the latest filing shows Total Revenue at $622M with operating income at $231M, up 18% YoY. The Q2 numbers are even better, with 500 bps of margin expansion year-over-year.Since we're a trusted partner in so much of their business, the first question they're asking us is what more can you do for us? So we're starting with just sharing the learnings of our journey and how we're deploying it and what we're seeing. We're now getting a lot of demand for our Data Cloud services and our Professional Services around AI readiness.