Franklin had a pretty solid year, but you wouldn't really know it from analyst griping about flows.

If you peruse the SeekingAlpha transcript of the earnings call and the company's earnings release, you'll note that Franklin Resources reported first quarter net income of $572.8 million, or $2.69 per share, up 14 percent from the same period a year ago.

It also reported revenue of $2.013 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago, and saw its AUM grow 14 percent $823.7 billion.

Nonetheless, during the conference call, analysts continuously brought up the subjects of flows and sales, to which chief executive officer and president Gregory Eugene Johnson, former vice president Christopher James Molumphy and chief financial officer Kenneth Allan Lewis, replied:

THEME 1: Retail Is Important
THEME 2: They Are Building Up Their Alts Infrastructure
THEME 3: They Ain't Afraid to Pay for Sales Performance


THEME 1: Retail Is Important
One analyst had remarked that he thought, when it comes to flows, "It seems like you should be doing much better."

Johnson had this to say.

I think it's Templeton retail that is the key because we are doing very well. If you were looking at the organic growth rates in Europe or, as I mentioned earlier, Asian growth, Asian Growth Small Cap, Frontier funds, tremendous growth rates there. All of that gets somewhat lost in the net negative numbers coming out of the retail U.S., so it just takes time to turn around the mindset. The advisor moves on. You get the benefit sometimes of them still selling after you underperform for awhile. But once they -- once you are removed from -- it takes a while to get back and that has been 100% focus of our distribution groups to make sure that, that story and performance is heard. And we feel like we are making good progress there. But again, to me, it's very simple. It's getting that back on-track and then you'll see the right levels of organic growth in global equities.

THEME 2: They Are Building Up Their Alts Infrastructure
An analyst asked what the company was up to in terms of alts distribution. Johnson had this to say in response.

Well, I think it's gradual like most things we do and the -- we have dedicated senior resources to the alternative side. People that have been here with the firm a long time and really 100% of their job now is to try to make sure that we're leveraging the stories wherever we can across relationships in the firm. And so I think that's been a big step forward. I think we still debate at the actual sales client interaction level, what the right mix is. And in some cases, I think we're concluding we need more dedicated people out there. So I think that's something that we'll continue to add. And we've got the infrastructure and senior management team in place to build that out now where we didn't before. So I don't think there'll be a big change, but it's just gradually we will keep adding people on there.

THEME 3: They Ain't Afraid to Pay for Sales Performance
An analyst asked, if sales were to pick up, would Franklin use the money to pay for better performance.

Chief financial officer Kenneth Allan Lewis had this to say on the subject:

And yes, I have to agree, we do pay our people well. We will continue to do that. We talked about this a little bit in the past. It's kind of more of an art than a science. 2 things drive it, the overall company profitability, it's also the individual group's performance. And so we kind balance those 2 things and we'll continue to do that. Having said all of that, you go back and you look at our compensation ratio and investment advisory fees, it does vary. But over the long term, it's been within a pretty tight range, I would say.

To learn more, read a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/1386181-franklin-resources-management-discusses-q2-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript?source=email_rt_article_title">SeekingAlpha transcript of the earnings call and the company's earnings release. 

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