Bridge Investment Group Q3 2024 Earnings Report

Bridge Investment Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.15
• Consensus EPS: $0.18
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.03
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.22

Bridge Investment Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $101.51 million
• Expected Revenue: $85.00 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$16.51 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Bridge Investment Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2024
• Date: 11/6/2024
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, November 7, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 9:30AM ET

Bridge Investment Group (NYSE:BRDG) is a publicly traded alternative investment firm that specializes in real estate and real asset strategies. Founded in 2015 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in mid-2019, the company provides investors with access to a diversified range of credit and equity solutions across commercial and residential property sectors. Bridge seeks to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns through disciplined underwriting and active asset management.

The firm’s main business activities include originating and investing in commercial real estate debt, acquiring and managing single-family rental homes, and structuring renewable energy credit strategies. Bridge operates both open-ended and closed-end private funds as well as listed vehicles, enabling it to serve institutional clients, financial intermediaries and high-net-worth investors. Its credit platform focuses on senior and mezzanine debt, while its equity platform pursues value-add and opportunistic real estate investments.

Bridge Investment Group also offers separately managed accounts and co-investment programs tailored to the specific return objectives of its clients. Its permanent capital vehicles provide liquidity and longer-term hold periods, and its single-family rental strategy leverages a national operating platform for property acquisition, leasing and maintenance. The firm employs a proactive asset management approach aimed at enhancing property value through capital improvements and operational efficiencies.

Serving markets across the United States, Bridge Investment Group is supported by an experienced management team with deep expertise in real estate finance, investment research and portfolio management. The firm’s integrated platform combines credit and equity capabilities to deliver a broad set of investment solutions intended to meet diverse client needs in both rising and uncertain market environments.

Bridge Investment Group Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Bridge reported strong Q3 results with distributable earnings of $28.2 million ($0.15 per share) and declared a $0.10 quarterly dividend on Class A common stock.
• Management believes the real estate downturn has bottomed and deployed $349 million in multifamily/workforce assets, $40 million in logistics, and $966 million in debt strategies during Q3 at attractive cap rates.
• The firm expanded its platform by launching three specialized logistics strategies, a single-family rental business, PE secondaries, and wealth solutions, raising a total of $607 million in Q3 and adding 11 new institutional investors globally.
• Operational outperformance was notable, with multifamily NOI 6.8% above underwriting, logistics net effective rents 19.6% higher than projections, and single-family rental occupancy at 94% delivering 11% NOI growth year-to-date.
• Distributable earnings per share declined by $0.04 sequentially due to higher compensation expenses and a $1.6 million insurance loss, though management expects normalized insurance income in Q4.

Presentation

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. My name is Mark, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Bridge Investment Group 3Q24 earnings call and webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Bonni Rosen, Head of Shareholder Relations. Bonni?

[Bonni Rosen, Head of Shareholder Relations at Bridge Investment Group]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bridge Investment Group conference call to review our third quarter 2024 financial results. Prepared remarks include comments from our Executive Chairman, Robert Morse, Chief Executive Officer, Jonathan Slager, and Chief Financial Officer, Katie Elsnab. We will hold a Q&A session following the prepared remarks. I'd like to remind you that today's call may include forward-looking statements which are uncertain, outside the firm's control, and may differ materially from actual results.

[Bonni Rosen, Head of Shareholder Relations at Bridge Investment Group]

We do not undertake any duty to update these statements. For discussion of some of the risks that could affect results, please see the risk factor section of our Form 10-K. During the call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial metrics. The reconciliation of the non-GAAP metrics is provided in the appendix of our supplemental slides. The supplemental materials are accessible on our IR website at ir.bridgeig.com.

[Bonni Rosen, Head of Shareholder Relations at Bridge Investment Group]

These slides can be found under the presentations portion of the site, along with the third quarter earnings call event link. They are also available live during the webcast. We reported GAAP net income to the company of approximately $10.6 million for the third quarter of 2024. On a diluted basis, net income attributable to Bridge per share of Class A common stock was $0.04. Distributable earnings of the operating company were $28.2 million, or $0.15 per share after tax, and our board of directors declared a dividend of $0.10 per share, which will be paid on December 20th to shareholders of record as of December 6th. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Bob.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Thank you, Bonni, and good morning to all. It's a pleasure to speak to you this morning and to share our results and outlook. As we assess our daily activities of interacting with our 13,000-plus investor base to raise capital and of buying and selling assets across our specialized verticals, we believe that the long winter of real estate declines has bottomed and the sector has begun to reemerge. Not in full force, but we are seeing more substantive dialogue with investors, more deals to evaluate, and generally more activities. As we look across the alternative asset investment landscape, there are fundamental reasons why activity has picked up. So many asset classes are trading at or around all-time highs: public equities, gold, even Bitcoin. Real estate, broadly defined, has reset in value, in large part due to the rate environment.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Although value declines since the 2021 peak vary across sectors within real estate, on average, values have decreased by 19%. We see in this environment echoes of the aftermath of the global financial crisis, when values declined and offered an attractive entry point for buyers, with assets pricing at a meaningful discount to replacement cost, ultimately resulting in outsized investment performance over the ensuing 10-plus years. Such investment opportunities have reemerged today.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

As we outlined in our 2024 outlook entitled Navigating the Curve, we think it is appropriate to lean into these opportunities, remaining selective and precise in where we deploy capital, not only taking advantage of a buyer's market in several sectors, but also focusing on segments with secular tailwinds behind them. To that end, which Jonathan will further detail, in the third quarter of 2024, we were selectively active in deploying capital.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

We acquired $349 million of multifamily and workforce assets at attractive cap rates, $40 million of logistics assets, and deployed $966 million of capital in our debt strategies vertical, including meaningful recycling of investments. We expect deployment opportunities to increase over the next several quarters. In an improving but still muted environment, Bridge's business, operations, and financial results remain resilient and position us well to capitalize on the opportunities ahead.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

We have expanded our areas of competence since the last cyclical peak. We have three industrial logistics strategies: one focused on value-add infill logistics equity, one on develop-to-core logistics, and one on net lease industrial manufacturing and logistics that have been well received in the institutional and retail markets. We have a top-performing, albeit small, single-family for rent business that performs best in class. We now have a PE secondaries business which has developed a pre-specified portfolio with attractive marks.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

And we have a wealth solutions team with distribution in place and a specialized high-performing investment strategy with more to come. All these initiatives have been financed off the Bridge balance sheet, either via income statement capital, which previously decreased FRE and DE but are expected to be meaningful contributors over time, or via balance sheet capital. The net result is that going into the anticipated upturn, we have a broader offering of high-demand investment capabilities, more distribution and capital-raising resources, and more opportunity. I want to further illustrate this point by highlighting our investment in logistics value-add. Since 2021, we have assembled a strong team of professionals, now numbering 33, and opened local offices in major logistics markets of Southern California, Dallas-Fort Worth, South Florida, and the Meadowlands area of New York, New Jersey.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

We have invested $22 million to build these capabilities, which is substantially less than what it would cost to acquire an existing logistics business. We raised $336 million in our first value-add closed-end vehicle, $428 million in develo-to-core SMAs, and expect the first close of our next vintage fund in the value-add logistics area to raise more capital in its first closing than the entire fund size of our first vintage. In addition, we are in advanced dialogue with a leading state pension plan regarding a multi-year develop-to-core SMA. We believe that this initiative, although it so-called cost us $22 million of FRE to the operating company to create, will result in one of the best-positioned specialized logistics businesses and a major profit contributor in the future.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Money well spent, often overlooked as an internal initiative, but very characteristic of Bridge's internal capabilities to recognize opportunity, create and nurture teams, and drive results. An earlier example of the same practice is our development Opportunity Zone vertical, which has deployed over $4 billion of equity in six vehicles since 2019. In addition to developing the product capabilities mentioned above, we have continued to invest in our distribution capabilities, both domestically and abroad. Our institutional coverage efforts are stronger than ever, and we've added or are in the process of closing 11 new institutions as meaningful investors this year. For some time, we have also focused on expanding our penetration with major pension funds and consultants. We've increased penetration to this important segment by 20% year over year based on expected capital raise for 2024.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

We have opened an office in Dubai to further augment our already significant Middle Eastern investor base, and we continue to add LPs in Europe and Asia as well as domestically. We introduced our retail accredited investor strategy last quarter. We've already made progress in this channel. Our net lease industrial strategy is approved with several major custodians. We have partnered with leading RIAs, independent broker-dealers, and are in discussions with several major wealth platforms to expand our distribution of what we believe to be a differentiated offering to this part of the market. We've demonstrated some early success, expecting to break escrow and have our first closing for the strategy in the fourth quarter. While we are still in the early stages, we're encouraged by the progress we've made to date.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

As a culmination of capital-raising efforts, we raised approximately $607 million in the third quarter, led by $429 million in debt strategies and $115 million in workforce and affordable housing. We also had $48 million of inflows into our solar infrastructure strategy. We continue to have engagement from both repeat and new LPs in our secondaries business, and we expect to see meaningful capital flows in the coming quarters. Third quarter fundraising improved from second quarter, and we expect fourth quarter to be even stronger. This we believe will be the manifestation of our determination and focus on high-quality investment teams in the right sectors and explains why we have such confidence in the increasing LP demand in our sectors. With that, I will turn the call over to Jonathan.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Thank you, Bob, and good morning. There's much to be optimistic about in the outlook for commercial real estate over the next year. Real estate prices continue to show signs of stabilization, with major indices turning positive in 2024. Green Street's Commercial Property Price Index bottomed in late 2023 and is up 3% in 2024. Our portfolios were also positive for the quarter, yet the impact of an improving debt market and increased transaction volumes has just begun to be reflected in the market. We anticipate more meaningful improvements in valuation and volumes in the coming quarters. The improvement in the debt capital markets is illustrated by a rise in CMBS issuance and a significant narrowing of credit spreads.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

As noted last quarter, we've capitalized on this in our SFR business by completing a securitized debt financing for Bridge SFR Fund IV, 200 basis points lower than our prior-to-securitization in November 2022. Another transactional green shoot this quarter was our debt strategies vertical had its biggest lending quarter in over two years, with 15 loans totaling over $720 million being originated, much of which was recycled capital so not fully captured in our deployment numbers for this quarter.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Additionally, Freddie Mac chose Bridge to anchor its first-ever multi-contributor Q-Deal, which we issued with Harbor Group in September. Furthermore, Bridge Debt Strategies issued its 13th CRE CLO deal totaling over $638 million. It was our first CLO in two years, and the deal was overwhelmingly well received, with oversubscriptions on every offered tranche, allowing the deal to price well inside of other issuers' preceding deals.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

This improving liquidity in the market provides the foundation for greater transaction activity on the real estate equity side of our business. Although overall real estate transaction volumes are still far below normal levels, momentum is building, and our investment teams remain nimble to transact at attractive pricing. Deployment for the quarter totaled $617 million, led by debt strategies. We also had a pickup in activity within multifamily as we continued to lean into select investments.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Notably, on a year-to-date basis, within our largest segment, multifamily, our $784 million of investments were underwritten to unlevered IRRs that are 23% better than pre-pandemic levels. On the credit side, in the first three quarters, we were able to deploy $1.9 billion in debt strategies, inclusive of recycled capital. In our multifamily pipeline, we are beginning to see medium to large-sized portfolios sourced through off-market relationships as well as lender-driven transactions.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

There's a widespread expectation that a significant amount of product will come to market in Q1 and a view that if the debt markets remain active and the short end of the yield curve continues to improve, we will see significant volumes in 2025. While dispositions have been more limited, the results have demonstrated continued demand for our product with a weighted average IRR of 23.6% and a 2.39 gross multiple on year-to-date multifamily dispositions. In our logistics vertical, with the quick interest rate reversion, we've seen more and once untouchable properties come available in the super prime markets as users and private owners have limited liquidity alternatives. Our entry price point is approximately half of peak pricing, and we are finding opportunities where we can stabilize assets to an approximately 7% yield.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

This stabilization point translates to some of the widest spreads we have seen since the early 2000s, making this an exciting time for our next fund series in this strategy. Despite laboring under near-peak delivery levels in multifamily, with 163,000 units coming in Q3, absorption exceeded this at 193,000 units, bringing our four-quarter total to 490,000 units, which is 50% above pre-pandemic average absorption levels of 330,000 units. We expect similar deliveries and absorption in Q4, but the picture gets much more compelling as multifamily starts are down 42% off peak, juxtaposed against a continuing strong demand picture. On the industrial side, we have a similar story, only slightly behind multifamily, but starts are 76% off peak levels at just 43 million sq ft. The impact of high deliveries and supply has impacted rent growth at just 0.3% nationally on the multifamily side.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

However, our operational skills allow Bridge to mitigate some of this. In our most recent multifamily and workforce vintages, we have exceeded our NOI projections by 6.8% live to date. In our first logistics value-add vintage, we have exceeded underwritten net effective rents by 19.6% on average since inception. And in our single-family rental portfolio, Bridge maintains a 94% occupancy and year-to-date performance of just over 5.9% blended rent growth and 11% NOI growth, which is solidly ahead of our public peers who have reported NOI growth in the 5% range.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Now, turning to performance, as mentioned earlier, we had a positive performance for Q3 in our real estate valuations, up 0.2%. While the downward movement in the interest rates is positive for commercial real estate, historically, there is a lag before this is reflected in fund valuations, especially as transaction volumes have yet to fully rebound.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

We are encouraged by many leading indicators, such as public REITs increasing 41% since they troughed in October of 2023. From a commercial real estate perspective, all signs are pointing up following declines in both volumes and values reminiscent of the GFC, resulting from the rate hiking cycle. Surveys of CRE participants by CBRE indicate that over 90% of them see significant improvement in volumes in 2025. According to PERE, nearly half of all institutional investors are underallocated to private real estate, and our own interactions indicate that they are recognizing that the reset in values makes this an attractive entry point.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Bridge has invested significantly in building out best-in-class investment teams in the most attractive sectors of commercial real estate and PE secondaries, and we are well positioned to emerge from this downturn to an even more compelling and scaled platform. I'll now turn the call over to Katie.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

Thank you, Jonathan. Bridge's business continued to exhibit stability in the quarter, with fee-earning AUM increasing 1.3% from last quarter, driven by increased inflows into workforce and affordable housing and debt strategies. Fee-related revenue was $82.5 million, increasing 3% from last quarter, mostly due to the inclusion of fee-related performance revenues related to the crystallization of carried interest for our open-end net lease strategy we discussed on our last earnings call.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

This was partially offset by lower other asset management and property income and net earnings from Bridge Property Operators. The lower other income line item was impacted by a one-time benefit of $1.9 million included in Q2, which we noted last quarter. The decrease in net earnings from Bridge Property Operators was mostly driven by lower revenue from the office vertical, as that strategy becomes a smaller part of our overall business.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

We anticipate that this trend will carry on in the future. Transaction fees were roughly flat versus Q2. As Jonathan noted, real estate deal volumes in the market appear to be improving. However, transaction-related revenue will grow more modestly in the future due to the mix of the capital we're raising. I would also note we expect transaction fees to be smaller percentages of revenues as we continue to grow and scale our strategies. Historically, we have always focused on recurring management fees as a better indicator of the underlying performance of our business. This metric has grown at a 26% CAGR since IPO and has exhibited stability during the past two years of real estate volatility, highlighting the attractiveness of our long-tenured AUM profile. 97% of our capital remains invested in closed-end funds with a weighted average duration of 6.4 years.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

Fee-related earnings to the operating company were $32.4 million, decreasing from last quarter, mostly attributable to higher compensation-related expenses, which increased by approximately $3.1 million, excluding approximately $3 million in compensation associated with the fee-related performance revenue. We have weathered the downturn by growing fee-earning AUM during the last two and a half years with a careful eye towards cost management. As the cyclical recovery has started materializing, we have begun reinvesting in the growth of our platform, including on the investment and fundraising sides of the business, positioning the company for this upcycle as outlined by Bob earlier. The long-term earnings power of the platform is substantial, driven by our brand, our track record, and our people. On the people side, we expect compensation expense to grow off of the adjusted $42 million in Q3.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

Distributable earnings to the operating company for the quarter were $28 million, with after-tax DE per share of $0.15, a decrease of $0.04 from last quarter. The decrease was mostly due to the items discussed within fee-related earnings, along with a net insurance loss of $1.6 million versus a gain of $2 million last quarter, representing approximately $0.02. The net insurance loss included a one-time loss of approximately $2 million associated with a large claim in our captive. Additionally, the large claim impacted our claims history, which also resulted in higher IBNR reserves for the quarter of $1.5 million. Our general expectation is that our insurance income will stabilize to more normalized positive levels next quarter. Similar to the last few quarters, performance fee realizations primarily consisted of tax distributions within debt strategies.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

As a reminder, the non-controlling interest for this vertical is 60%, leading to a ratio of 24% of the gross realized performance fees that will flow through to the operating company. Net accrued performance revenue on the balance sheet stands at $339.5 million, which slightly increased compared to last quarter and is recorded one quarter in arrears. It's important to note that 81% of the carries are related to Multifamily Fund IV and Workforce I, where we are currently monetizing assets. With European waterfalls, these funds are expected to drive substantial distributable earnings in the latter part of 2025 through 2026. With that, I would now like to hand the call back to Bob for some closing remarks.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Thank you, Katie. Bridge has managed expenses carefully through the last two years of the real estate winter. Now we are seeing a substantial uptick in investor interest, early signs of rising values, and indications that transaction volumes are beginning to recover. For Bridge, this is the time to lean into our future growth by investing heavily in our manufacturing and distribution teams to take advantage of these opportunities. You will see our trajectory and plan are proving out as we raise and deploy more capital, although the financial performance in our FRE and distributable earnings may lag several quarters, after which you will see a much more scaled business emerge.

[Bob Morse, Executive Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

We believe the many investments we have made in distribution, logistics, PE secondaries, and renewable energy will become meaningful contributors going forward to supplement our historic presence in residential rental and commercial real estate backed fixed income. With that, I would now like to open the call for questions.

[Operator]

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And your first question comes from the line of Mike Brown with Wells Fargo Securities. Mike, please go ahead.

[Mike Brown, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Great. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess I just wanted to maybe start off by maybe trying to put a little bit of a finer point on the real estate market recovery here and outlook. Can you just maybe add a little bit more thought or color around when we can start to see a pickup in kind of three main places? I guess one, fundraising, particularly from the retail side.

[Mike Brown, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Two, transaction fees. Sounds like the outlook there is that that will start to pick up, but just how do we think that could play out over the next 12-18 months? And then realizations. And then I guess a lot happening in real time here, and we're seeing kind of a backup in the yield. So just curious if that gives you a little bit of pause?Do you think that that could kind of moderate the pace of the recovery? Thank you.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. So that was a very multi-part question, and I'm not sure I did a great job. This is Jonathan Slager. Great job of getting all of the notes, but if I miss something, please feel free to interject and make sure that I cover it. I do want, before I respond to your question, to mention that, unfortunately, Bob has had to leave for an important client meeting. They couldn't move. But we do have Dean Allara, our Vice Chairman, who's going to be on the line to be able to support with questions related to client solutions and capital raising and provide additional support for the team, in addition to myself and Katie.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

With respect to the overall commercial real estate market, I think taking your last question first about the impact of rates and the outcome of the election and what we've seen so far, I think our perspective is that overall, it's early days to kind of be able to start assessing whether we have a change. Obviously, the Fed has a meeting later today, and I expect, and all of us expect, that they'll continue the trajectory down on the short end of the curve in terms of bringing their rates closer to the neutral rate overall.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

And so despite the fact that there's some optimism and a buoyancy, and there's been whatever the so-called Trump Trade that has impacted yields, we expect that to come back in, and we expect that the impact of that in the short run will be to slow down the pace of transaction flow and the pace of recovery and values. But we still expect that to take place, meaning there is a significant pent-up demand for transaction volumes among the participants. There's also, as we talk about, and we've talked about many, many times, a significant loan maturity wall that's coming into commercial real estate that's going to kind of force transactions to take place into the market as borrowers can't bring capital to refinance the loans at the new lower loan amounts. So we see that contributing.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

And again, the overall sentiment is there's a tremendous amount of dry powder and demand, and we're really optimistic. I think we mentioned the absorption in my opening remarks in my script. We talked about the 193,000 units that were absorbed versus the deliveries of 163. So we're getting toward the back end of the deliveries on the multifamily side, but the demand at 590,000 units in the last four quarters continues really strong, and we expect that to continue strong. And obviously, one of the positive parts of the expectations under a Trump administration is going to be continued growth, and all of that is good for commercial real estate. So we're expecting values to recover.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

And again, what's challenging and has been challenging for a long time is the pace at which values recover, the pace at which rates ultimately do come down, especially on that kind of shorter end of the yield curve, and the curve hopefully will start to show a more normal shape with lower front-end debt. So I think, broadly speaking, that's my response to the overall market, is that we see a lot of enthusiasm. Dean's on the phone, but he's out there every day talking to our LP base, and I think that there's a huge amount of them that have been paused in terms of allocation into commercial real estate, and now they're meaningfully and actively looking to allocate, and the place they want to allocate is in industrial and multifamily, which are two really strong suits for Bridge.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Hey, Jonathan. I just added, good morning, Mike, your question about retail fundraising. So we have a vehicle that we expect that we will break escrow on this quarter. We are pretty excited about that. Currently, it's on breaking escrow likely because of our number of custodian platforms. We're on a couple of larger RIAs, to put it that way. We're in dialogue as we look to the future with multiple wirehouse-type folks as well.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

So that all feels pretty good as the momentum sort of swings here, I think, is what's happening, and we expect over the coming quarters to be pretty positive, as Jonathan mentioned. Also, worth mentioning that we expect in time that we'll have multiple products as we continue to build out. Not only the distribution is being built out right now, but obviously the marketing as well, the product set as well. So, further questions on that, but just quick.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Thanks, Dean. Did we miss anything there? Because that was a lot of multi-part questions, so I feel like I want to make sure that you got covered there, Mike.

[Mike Brown, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Yeah. No, I think you hit all of my four or five sub-questions in there. Thank you for all that.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Fantastic. And thanks, Dean, for helping me out on that retail one.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

No, no problem. We said retail fundraiser. I'll make sure you got it.

[Mike Brown, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

And if I could just ask a follow-up here on maybe on kind of like the theme of operating leverage. So as we think about that recovery that's playing out and the investments you've been making in the business, you talked a lot about the investments in the logistics side and also flagged some of the investments you're making on the distribution. Just curious how you think about that investment spend level at 25 relative to 24, and then balance that against, again, that recovery that's going to come through and the scale that's building in the platform and how that will kind of come through in terms of operating leverage.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. Well, I want to clarify when you refer to operating leverage, are you referring to the overall balance sheet at Bridge, and are you referring to the investments?

[Mike Brown, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

No, just to clarify, I'm just thinking through the kind of revenue growth potential relative to expected kind of expense growth.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Right. Okay. Well, I think on what I think is a very, very positive note, we have for the last few years, we keep talking about investing, but we've built out a pretty scaled national team, and Bob referred to that in his opening remarks on the logistics side. So we don't need to do a huge amount of team growth. Obviously, the team is there and in place. The other thing is a lot of what we've been doing on the logistics side is development. And that development, we now have like seven, maybe it's eight, seven to eight greenlit construction projects, development construction projects. And those will start generating significant development fees, which, again, don't require us to hire incremental folks. Those folks are already in place, and they've done all the work of getting everything entitled and ready to go.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

So we're going to start to see that coming through on the revenue side, and that will drop through toward the bottom line. So you start looking at a very significant investment we've made in the logistics team in particular over the last few years, and you look into 2025, and you say, "That's going to start turning positive in the back half of 2025." So we're really excited about that. With respect to retail distribution, and Dean might have something to add here, it's going to continue to be a significant investment, not just in retail, but also we've been expanding our institutional coverage and really made some amazing inroads.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Maybe Dean, you want to cover some of the statistics about how progress we've made there, but we need to continue to invest in our distribution. Raising capital through institutions is different than the wirehouses, and our business is transitioning toward that and regular way retail, so maybe you can jump in, Dean.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of comments here I'd make as it relates to investing in distribution. To give you a sense, Mike, over the past two years, our distribution team is up by headcount by 50%. And I don't know if we'll grow to that extent, but as we've built and we've made some pretty notable significant executive hires at the retail level in this year that we expect will start filling in below that as well next year there. So that, and that's always been an ongoing part. I think we've always believed and invested in distribution as we look to grow overall. So I don't see that I see that continuing to a degree. I can't give you exact numbers, but we're not stopping that investment, I'd put it that way. The success, I think we have retail sort of at our doorstep to some degree.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

This takes quarters. I don't want to say expectations higher, and then we're just starting to sort of launch through that so that feels right. Institutionally, we have 11 new accounts we're going to bring in this year, institutional accounts that are new, which is breaking new ground there. We think there's a lot of white space. We're seeing the white space, I'd say, or the execution of those new institutions is global. It's between, I know, Bob mentioned we just opened the office in Dubai. So we're seeing some Middle Eastern capital. We're seeing some additional European capital. We're seeing most of the new capital, to be honest, here in the U.S. and Canadian, but more U.S. pension institutional world.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

I think there was a comment about the 20% increase in consultant coverage we've got year over year as we penetrate. Much of that capital is harnessed with the consultants and the institutional side here in the U.S., and then we're seeing new institutional traction in Asia, mainly Korea, but we are seeing in other parts of Asia as well, so I don't know if that answers that second part of your question, Mike, but additional color there.

[Mike Brown, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities]

Yes. Great. Thank you for all that color. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Thanks, Mike.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Thanks, Mike.

[Operator]

very next question comes from the line of Ken Worthington with J.P. Morgan, Ken. Please go ahead.

[Operator]

Hi, Craig. Maybe first to follow up on that question. You mentioned that the outlook for fundraising is better in 4Q. What magnitude of improvement are you expecting relative to 3Q? And is it more funds in market? Should we end up seeing a close in Newbury, or is it just bigger contributions into the existing funds that we saw in 3Q?

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. Obviously, we can't be as specific as I know you want us to be, but Dean, maybe you can give them a flavor for where we think the energy is. I think we did say in the remarks that we thought logistics was going to be a big winner.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. Let me give you some directional comments here. I'll hit this as well. I think we're going to see in logistics, we're going to see some notable increase that will make those Q4 numbers be Q3 plus, maybe plus-plus. I can't say more than that, I don't think. But that feels very good. We also have what we call the Four Horsemen in our world. We have debt right now. We have workforce. We have logistics in the market, and we have Newbury. And so I think all those will contribute. Newbury, to just comment further on that, the re-ups, I'd say it this way. The re-ups feel good. The team has executed on the initial investments in this current vehicle and have executed, as you might expect, the marks have been pretty good there.

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

So they've done what they've done over their history back to the pre-GFC days. And so I think it's really a matter of over the coming quarters, liquidity to their current LPs is sort of the gating thing right now, but that feels like it's going to be cutting loose over the coming quarters. I'm clear about that. And we're all seeing traction across traditional Bridge clients as well as the cross-sell there. So I don't know if that did I get it all?

[Dean Allara, Vice Chairman at Bridge Investment Group]

Yep. Okay. That helps. And then you mentioned compensation. I think you said that $42 million was the right jumping-off point. This is sort of a higher comp ratio than we've seen either earlier this year or last year. So we've seen Bridge as a pay-for-performance company. Are you now sort of having to pay in advance of performance? You mentioned all the green shoots. What's driving the step up in compensation and sort of what we think of as a payout ratio?

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. I'll start with that, and maybe Katie and/or Dean might want to chime in. But I think, to be fair, Ken, we've been very. I think the remarks in the script say it all. We've been very careful about really tightly managing expenses, but we also have an important mandate to obviously maintain morale, maintain our teams, make sure that everybody's excited because we are coming into this phase where everyone has high expectations for significant increase in volumes, improvement in values, and we're incredibly well-positioned. So what we think is you're going to start seeing that flywheel of capital raised and capital deployed, but we need the team. We need the team both on the capital raising side. We need the team on the investment side to be motivated and excited. And I think our overall perspective is it's time to get everybody excited.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

And so, we need to make sure that we're not being super stingy about bonuses and comp. And so, a lot of it is just making sure that kind of we're sending the right message to the team about our confidence there and then making sure that going forward, everything is appropriately staffed to be able to accomplish what we think is going to be a much higher volume of total work. Business is growing. I think that's the encouraging news: the business is growing. We love our teams. We have great teams, and we want to keep morale solid.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Okay. Great.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. I would just add.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

Go ahead. Sorry.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

I was going to add that our employees are our greatest asset, and now is the time to invest in them.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Did you have a follow-on, Ken? Ken?

[Operator]

I think Ken is already back on the call, so we're going to go next to the next question. Michael Cyprys, Morgan Stanley. Michael, please go ahead.

[Michael Cyprys, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thanks so much. Good morning. Just a question on the deployment backdrop and multifamily. I was hoping maybe you could unpack that a bit more in terms of what you're seeing there, what you expect to see. You mentioned short end of the curve moving lower. The improvement there is a catalyst for volumes as you look ahead, but maybe you could unpack some of the moving pieces. We're also seeing the back-end yields move a bit higher. Curious how you think about the sort of moving pieces around that, the implications there. And if the back-end yields were to continue to go even higher from where they are today, how do you see the sort of implications of that? Thank you.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. Great question. I know there's a lot of debate around the treasury yields and the shape of the curve and all of that, but I think for commercial real estate, value-add commercial real estate investing, let's put it that way because that's primarily what Bridge is involved in. That's the bulk of our current investing activities. The shorter end of the yield curve is a much more impactful thing. So getting those, call it one month to call it three to five-year underlying indices tighter is important. It's also important that the debt markets be active and available. And that's part of the messaging that we gave you. The securitization markets, the CLO markets, we're having significant resurgence in those. And you're seeing that in the issuances that we've done. And all of that provides real liquidity.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

We're getting inbounds on a regular basis from banks who were literally out of the market for the last two years. And now they're calling us up saying, "Hey, we want to do deals with you guys." So I think that what that means to me between that and all the dry powder that's sitting in the credit funds is that spreads are going to tighten. So we can expect an available credit market. We can expect tighter spreads. And we do need a little bit of help from the short end of the yield curve to really accelerate the volumes and the values. But volumes and values will increase regardless, in my view. And it's just a question of how much time it takes and how long it takes for that to manifest. And I think I already mentioned some of the reasons for it.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

But at the end of the day, we have a really good supply-demand dynamic for residential and industrial. And those are the two sectors where we focus. So I think that's the response.

[Michael Cyprys, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thanks. And just a follow-up question. I think you mentioned some rent and NOI growth and occupancy stats for the SFR business, but just curious if you could elaborate on what that looks like across the multifamily workforce and some of the other sectors and how has that been trending? And then as you look into 2025, how do you expect NOI growth, rent growth, occupancy to trend into next year? Thanks.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. Go ahead.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

In general, we had rent growth in our multifamily workforce housing about 3.3% quarter over quarter. The same store revenue growth was 2%. Overall, the assets are performing very well. It's just really a matter of valuations, etc., a matter of the capital market.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. And I think to give you an idea of our forward view on that, I mentioned it, but to repeat that we are already seeing on the multifamily side in particular, absorption exceed deliveries. And deliveries are at the back end of their peak, right? So it's one of the things that's nice about real estate is that it takes a long time to build it, right? So it doesn't just magically appear and nobody knew it was coming. So we have a very clear view on deliveries, and they're down, and they're down hard coming forward. And we have a pretty good view on absorption. And you can see that that's maintaining very solid kind of record levels of absorption. And so those two dynamics give you a pretty solid picture.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

I think the other thing is in order to initiate new supply of real estate, you have to be able to get a decent return on that investment. And today, we don't see a lot of dynamics that are going to create lower costs to construct new real estate, either industrial or multifamily. And we don't see the cap rates either have to massively compress or the rents have to grow in order to justify new supply. Well, you pick either one of those or both of those. Both of them are good for Bridge and good for real estate. And they inevitably have to happen if the supply-demand story continues as we expect it to.

[Michael Cyprys, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thanks so much.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Great.

[Operator]

Again, if you'd like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And your next question comes from the line of Michael Roberts with TD Securities. Michael, please go ahead.

[Operator]

Hey, guys. I'm on for Bill Katz. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to come back to some of your prior comments. Given that 90% of inflows in the third quarter came from institutional, I wonder if you could give us some color on how that might impact your outlook for transaction revenues and what management fee rates will look like against the 110 basis points we saw in the quarter. Thank you.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Yeah. I'm going to give this one to Katie to give you some more guidance. I think she gave some in her remarks, but.

[Katie Elsnab, CFO at Bridge Investment Group]

Correct. So if we think about the inflows during the quarter, they're primarily related to our debt strategies, which historically has been primarily institutional investors. So in general, what we are seeing across the board is that we are seeing a greater shift to institutional investors. Traditionally, with institutional investors, we're going to see a slightly lower management fee rate as well as a change in our overall revenue mix where we'll see transaction fees being a lower percentage of our total revenue over time. And so when you think about our business, as we continue to grow and scale and diversify, you're going to see overall revenue growth, but transaction fee is going to be a lower percentage of that growth of that revenue.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Right. I think we're viewing transaction fees as being, there's some growth in it off of the place we are today. But again, when you look at the character of what was in our business back in 2021, where we had really large Opportunity Zone funds that were being deployed that did have transaction fees connected to them, those become smaller in overall scale and size. And then, as you point out, the mix of investors, where you have institutional investors where the transaction fees don't flow through, will impact it. But again, we continue to have generation of transaction fees as part of our long-term business.

[Jonathan Slager, CEO at Bridge Investment Group]

Okay. Great. Helpful color, guys. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

There's no further question at this time. That concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Bob Morse, Executive Chairman
• Bonni Rosen, Head of Shareholder Relations
• Jonathan Slager, CEO
• Dean Allara, Vice Chairman
• Katie Elsnab, CFO

Analysts

• Michael Cyprys, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley
• Mike Brown, Managing Director at Wells Fargo Securities
• Analyst
• Company Representative 2