DoubleLine Capital posts 23rd straight month of inflows

By Sam Forgione

NEW YORK (Reuters) - DoubleLine Capital, the investment firm with $85 billion in assets overseen by widely followed co-founder Jeffrey Gundlach, posted a net inflow of $1.03 billion into its open-end mutual funds in December, marking the 23rd straight month of inflows.

The Los Angeles-based firm said on Tuesday those funds attracted $14.31 billion overall in 2015, the second-biggest annual net inflow into the funds since the firm was founded in late 2009.

The firm’s flagship DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund had a net inflow of $688.82 million in December. For 2015 overall, the fund attracted $10.94 billion. With total assets at $51.78 billion, the fund invests primarily in mortgage-backed securities.

The $5.23 billion DoubleLine Core Fixed Income Fund also attracted new money last month. The fund had a net inflow of $284.61 million in December, for a 2015 net inflow of $1.87 billion.

That marked the fund’s biggest annual net inflow since its launch in June 2010. The DoubleLine Core Fixed Income Fund is an open-end intermediate-term bond fund that invests in different sectors of the fixed income universe, including corporate securities, bank debt, collateralized loan obligations, emerging markets debt, municipal bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

The Total Return fund gained 2.3 percent in 2015 to beat 98 percent of peers, according to Morningstar data. The fund slipped 0.2 percent in December, but still beat 92 percent of its peers.

“DoubleLine is known for its active management,” said Ron Redell, president of DoubleLine Funds. “Active management in a multi-sector fixed income portfolio where you give the portfolio manager flexibility to allocate to various sectors was a strong attractiveness to the fund," he said in reference to the Core Fixed Income Fund's record annual inflow.

Redell said that across the entire organization, including vehicles other than open-end mutual funds such as separately-managed accounts, DoubleLine attracted a net inflow of over $21 billion in 2015.

The SPDR DoubleLine Total Return Tactical ETF, an actively-managed exchange-traded fund co-managed by Gundlach that debuted last February, attracted $1.7 billion in assets in 2015 to make it the fastest-growing ETF of the year, according to Morningstar data.

The ETF attracted $265.7 million in December, its biggest monthly inflow. DoubleLine partnered with State Street Global Advisors to bring the product to market.

"The growth of TOTL is emblematic of the acceptance of ETFs in investor portfolios," said David Mazza, head of research for SPDR ETFs and SSGA funds at State Street.

(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by Paul Simao)

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