WisdomTree Investments says it remains in a relatively strong financial position, despite continued erosion of its asset base and a nearly $4.7 billion gap needed to break even.

"This has been a challenging environment," said Jonathan Steinberg, the exchange-traded funds sponsor's chief executive officer, in a conference call Friday morning before markets opened.

Ultimately, "the sell-off and huge amount of money on the sidelines" provides an attractive opportunity for the ETF industry down the line, he added.

But like mutual fund companies and other asset managers, Steinberg said that uncertainty created by a steep sell-off in the past two months is making it difficult to clearly forecast near-term consequences for WisdomTree.

In fact, he pointed out that the firm was headed for another quarter of positive inflows until markets started eroding with gusto in September. The third quarter's net outflow marked the first time that had taken place for WisdomTree, noted Steinberg.

"Only 13% of our loss in assets was due to redemptions. The rest were from market losses," he added.

The call came after WisdomTree released its third-quarter earnings late Thursday. (See story here.)

Steinberg highlighted several results from the quarter, the key being an analysis of where the company stood in reaching profitability. He noted that through aggressive cost-cutting, WisdomTree had shaved about $1 billion from the previous quarter from the amount of assets it needed to attract to move into the black.

That number now stands around $8 billion, company officials estimated. But with current total assets under management at around $3.3 billion, that leaves nearly $4.7 billion needed to break even.

"Our operating losses are a good approximation of our cash burn position," said Bruce Lavine, WisdomTree's president.

Amit Muni, the company's chief financial officer, added that the company's assets under management continue to dip in October. He provided an update of the firm's assets under management, which had dropped from $4.1 billion at the end of September to the $3.3 billion mark through Thursday.

Muni cautioned if markets keep selling off and assets under management slide, the combination could lead to lower revenue growth for the full fourth quarter.

Both Lavine and Steinberg, responding to questions about possible discussions with other asset managers of a merger or takeover, didn't sound too receptive to the notion. However, they didn't exactly shut the door on such talks down the line.

"We currently have about $35 million [in cash] on our books. So we have no leverage on our balance sheet," said Steinberg. "We certainly can last through at least next year ... though this is a very difficult and challenging environment."

He added: "You don't want to have to entertain anything in this environment. It's quite flattering that so many people think there are so many people interested in us. But there are no discussions at the moment."

Steinberg also said on the call that Luciano Siracusano, a company co-founder and research director, had been promoted to WisdomTree's chief investment strategist. That move is expected to allow him to engage in more business-related functions.

For his part, Siracusano painted an optimistic picture that investors would continue to stick with WisdomTree ETFs, even if market conditions remain challenging. He said that 32 of 41 equity WisdomTree ETFs outperformed their closest competing indexes.

"So putting it differently, two out of every three WisdomTree ETFs are doing better than their relative benchmarks," he added. "We believe this performance positions us well with investors for the rest of the year."

Also, Siracusano said that his preliminary estimate is that no capital gains or distributions will be made this year in WisdomTree stock ETFs.

However, the company says that its plans to launch three new products will probably be delayed, at least until market conditions become clearer. It does expect that a dividend-based broad international stock ETF with hedging characteristics will still come to market in November.