Blue Owl Capital Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 1, 2024

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

morning, and welcome to Blue Owl Capital's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. I'd like to advise all parties that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Anne Dye, Head of Investor Relations for Blue Owl.

Speaker 1

Thanks, operator, and good morning to everyone. Joining me today are Mark Lipschultz, Co Chief Executive Officer and Alan Kirschenbaum, our Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to remind our listeners that remarks made during the call may contain forward looking statements, which are not a guarantee of future performance or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that are outside the company's control. Actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in Glau Capital's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

We'd also like to remind everyone that we'll refer to non GAAP measures on the call, which are reconciled to GAAP figures in our earnings presentation available on the Investor Resources section of our website at blueowl.com. Please note that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any Blue Owl fund. This morning, we issued our financial results for the Q2 of 2024 reporting fee related earnings or FRE of $0.21 per share and distributable earnings or DE of $0.19 per share. We also declared dividend of $0.18 per share for the 2nd quarter payable on August 30 to holders of record as of August 21. During the call today, we'll be referring to the earnings presentation, which we posted to our website this morning, So please have that on hand to follow along.

Speaker 1

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mark.

Speaker 2

Great. Thank you very much, Anne. Bluel had a very active second quarter reporting another record quarter of earnings and announcing highly strategic acquisitions that further diversify our business. Over the last 12 months, we have generated 23% fee related earnings growth and 19% distributable earnings growth from the prior year period. And since becoming a public company, we've had 13 consecutive quarters of management fee and FRE growth, highlighting both the stability and strength of our business.

Speaker 2

Our disciplined investment approach and compelling track record have appealed to a growing pool of investors looking for uncorrelated and income driven returns. We continue to expand the types of financing solutions we offer, making us an increasingly important counterparty and in conjunction, we continue to expand the range of strategies and product options we offer to our investors. Recently, we announced our intention to acquire one of the leading alternative credit managers in the market today, Adalaya Capital Management, adding substantial scale to Blue Owl's alternative credit capabilities and complementing our leading position in direct lending. Atalaya brings deep expertise in asset based finance with a strong 18 year record through market cycles and we believe our counterparties and clients will be very excited about the platform synergy opportunities we'll be able to create with the Adelaiya team on board. Alternative credit is a multi $1,000,000,000,000 market where legacy participants are pulling back and we think we have exactly the right team in place to become an increasingly significant player in the space.

Speaker 2

Looking back to when we announced the Oak Street acquisition in 2021, Oak Street's AUM was roughly $12,000,000,000 About 2.5 years later, we have more than $28,000,000,000 of AUM in triple net lease alone. And I think this is a great case study for what we hope to achieve with that a lot. Alan will talk more about this in a few minutes. More broadly, we now have added critical capabilities in alternative credit and real estate credit, further building out the water from solutions we offer. Both are deeply disrupted markets with huge addressable opportunity sets.

Speaker 2

And with the acquisition of Kubera Asset Management, we now offer a holistic asset management solution to insurance companies, broadening our potential investor base substantially. We expect integration of these businesses to go very smoothly, given that there is generally very little overlap between Balala's existing footprint and that of the businesses we are acquiring. The vast majority of the employees will see very little change in their day to day with investment teams remaining focused on their areas of expertise and continuing to be led by their founders or existing senior management teams. Our goal is to enhance what each firm is already doing well and create incremental opportunities for the combined entity. And critically, all of these were proprietary acquisitions not done through auctions.

Speaker 2

The leaders of these firms or the insurance partner in the case of Coubert wanted to grow their businesses as a part of Blue Owl. And not selling to BlueOwl, but rather joining BlueOwl. We plan to leverage BlueOwl's scale to benefit each of these businesses through our 700 plus sponsor relationships, our leading wealth distribution platform, a global and growing institutional platform and greater efficiency and best in class corporate infrastructure. We're very excited about the collaborations we can create across the Duol platform and look forward to sharing more about those in the quarters to come. Moving on to the quarter.

Speaker 2

We continue to see good fundraising progress across the business. Gross flows into our perpetually distributed products reached $2,800,000,000 in the 2nd quarter, over 30% higher than the 1st quarter and more than double what we raised in the Q2 of 2023. Notably, redemptions in the perpetually offered products remain nominal despite upticks across the industry, totaling less than $325,000,000 across all or under 20 basis points of our beginning AUM. That means we raised 9 times more than what's left the system in these products. Total gross flows from Private Wealth were $3,200,000,000 Our incumbency position as one of the leaders in the Private Wealth channel is a result of the relationships and the level of trust we have built with distributors through thoughtful partnership, strong performance and high touch service at every level of these organizations.

Speaker 2

What's remarkable about the opportunity in Private Wealth is the overall very modest amount of allocation to alternative products, which is in the low to mid single digit percentages. We think we're in the very early innings of the adoption of alts by individual investors as they begin to see the benefits of diversification and uncorrelated asset classes in their portfolios. We also raised $2,200,000,000 from institutional investors across a number of strategies, including GP Stakes, 1st Lien Lending, Liquid Credit, Diversified Lending and GP Land Secondaries, complementing our robust flows in Private Wealth and reflecting the ongoing diversification of fundraising across our business. To zoom out slightly, we have raised $32,000,000,000 across equity and debt over the past 12 months in an environment that most continue to describe as challenging. That's equivalent to over 20% of our AUM a year ago that we've raised in 12 months, a more than solid showing in our view and we continue to bring new capabilities to market.

Speaker 2

Turning to business performance, in credit, we had a record quarter of deployment with more than $18,700,000,000 of gross originations, primarily across new deals, add ons and refinancings where we decided to participate in the new loan. Repayments were $6,900,000,000 resulting in a higher quarter of net deployment. We continue to demonstrate that borrowers are drawn to the 3 Ps of direct lending: Predictability, Privacy and Partnership. And that value proposition is compelling whether the syndicated markets are active or not. The longer term secular trend of sponsors gravitating more and more towards direct lending remains in place and we see healthy sponsor appetite to deploy incremental capital and monetize existing investments over time.

Speaker 2

Direct lending metrics remain strong. On average, underlying revenue growth was in the high single digits and EBITDA growth was in the mid teens across the portfolio with no significant step ups in non approvals or amendment requests. If you

Speaker 3

think about the keys

Speaker 2

to our success in direct lending, there's a very straightforward formula we follow. 1, start by limiting loan losses through rigorous underwriting and being highly selective. This is evidenced in our 7 basis points of annualized realized losses since inception. And 2, when there is a default, do everything we can to ensure a higher recovery. I think we have demonstrated both of these tenants very successfully over the prior years.

Speaker 2

And more broadly, our portfolio companies continue to perform extremely well. We are pleased with what we're seeing across the business. In our GP States business, our partner managers continue to benefit from 2 meaningful secular trends, growing allocations to alternatives and GP consolidation. Collectively, our partner managers now manage over $1,800,000,000,000 giving us an unparalleled view over the alternative asset management industry. The ongoing diversification and scaling of alt managers, the emergence and rapid growth of asset classes such as direct lending and alternative credit, the partnerships being formed in insurance asset management solutions and the expansion of opportunity in private wealth, these are all trends readily observable across our partner managers and one for which Blue Owl's business is well positioned.

Speaker 2

This past quarter, we have also observed an uptick in the asset sales for some of the partner manager portfolios, which could reflect sponsors' greater willingness to monetize assets in older vintage PE funds. During the Q2, we made our first investment for our mid cap GP stake strategy and have 2 additional investments agreed to in principle, which we expect to close in the Q3. As for our large cap GP stake strategy, we remain on track to have Fund 5 substantially committed by the 3rd or Q4 of this year. We closed on an additional $1,000,000,000 for the latest vintage of the strategy during the Q2 and anticipate the fundraising in the 3rd quarter could be similar based on current visibility. But keep in mind, we're not focused on the timing of closes quarter to quarter.

Speaker 2

What is important is that we remain very focused and confident in our ability to achieve our $13,000,000,000 goal over the next 18 months. In Real Estate, we continue to actively deploy capital at attractive cap rates behind our 4 major themes: digital infrastructure, on shoring, healthcare real estate and essential retail. The capital needs in each of these areas is very significant and we are making good progress in deploying Fund 6, which we just finished fundraising during the last quarter. We believe we'll be approximately 60% committed for this fund by year end, which would put us ahead of expectations in deploying capital, demonstrating the strong demand for our net lease solutions. Earlier, we spoke about the disrupted dynamics in alternative credit and real estate credit.

Speaker 2

The same dynamic applies to triple net lease where we think we're seeing some of the very best risk reward this space has seen in a very long time. We are buying great properties at cap rates in the mid to high 7s facing generally investment grade tenants and there are very few others doing what we do. That's a compelling proposition and we are leaning into it. We continue to see nice step functions upward in the fundraising for O Rent. 2nd quarter flows were 130% higher than a year ago, bucking the trends seen across competitor non traded REIT products, and we continue to launch on additional distribution platforms.

Speaker 2

To bring it all together, there's a lot of growth happening across Blue Owl organically and inorganically. But the big picture is very simple. We're an alternative asset manager with leading positions in our direct lending, GP Stakes and triple net lease strategies. We have a leading position in private wealth distribution and an expanding global presence in institutional and insurance markets. We're adding scale alternative credit and real estate credit capabilities with teams that have generated strong track records over decades.

Speaker 2

And our P and L model is very simple. Almost all of our revenue comes from durable permanent capital with best in class fee rates and our earnings are made up entirely of fee related earnings. We think this makes our business quite unique and compelling and well positioned for strong and stable growth to come. With that, let me turn it to Alan to discuss our financial results.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. We're very pleased with the differentiated and strong results we continue to post quarter after quarter. As Mark mentioned earlier, we have been able to achieve 13 consecutive quarters of both management fee and FRE growth due to the durability of our asset base anchored by permanent capital and strong investor demand for the strategies we offer. Let's go through some of our key highlights on an LTM year over year basis through June 30. Management fees are up 21% and 92% of these management fees are from permanent capital vehicles.

Speaker 3

FRE is up 23% and the DE is up 19%. As you can see on Slide 12, we raised $5,400,000,000 of equity in the Q2 and $19,200,000,000 of equity for the last 12 months. I'll break down the 2nd quarter fundraising numbers across our strategies and products. In credit, we raised $3,400,000,000 $2,400,000,000 was raised in our diversified and 1st lien lending strategies, of which $1,700,000,000 came from our non traded BDC, OCIC double what we raised in the Q2 of 2023. Inclusive of the July 1 close, we have now raised over $12,000,000,000 for OCIC since inception.

Speaker 3

The remainder was raised across software lending, liquid credit and strategic equity. In GP Strategic Capital, we raised $1,300,000,000 across our large cap strategy and co invest vehicles. And in real estate, we raised over $650,000,000 primarily in O Rent, our perpetually offered net lease products. We're pleased with the increasing breadth of fundraising across strategies and products, which will continue to expand with our new insurance solutions offering and the Prima and Adelai acquisitions. Prima closed in June adding approximately $11,000,000,000 to AUM.

Speaker 3

And in early July, our acquisition of Kubera Asset Management also closed, adding approximately $20,000,000,000 to AUM for the Q3. Pro form a for Adelai closing, which is expected to add approximately $10,000,000,000 our AUM will be over $220,000,000,000 As a reminder, we also have substantial embedded earnings in our business. AUM not yet paying fees was $15,900,000,000 as of the end of the second quarter, corresponding to roughly $200,000,000 of incremental annual management fees once deployed. We also have approximately $135,000,000 of incremental management fees that will turn on upon the listing of our remaining private BDCs over time. These two items alone would represent an increase of almost 20% from our last 12 months FRE revenues.

Speaker 3

These aspects combined with our business model of being virtually all permanent capital and 100 percent FRE just gives us a higher quality of earnings than any of our peers in the industry. Moving on to our credit platform, we had gross originations of more than 18.7 $1,000,000,000 for the quarter, a record high and net funded deployment of $7,200,000,000 This brings our gross originations for the last 12 months to over $40,000,000,000 with $15,500,000,000 of net funded deployment. Our credit portfolio overturned 3% in the 2nd quarter and 16.4% over the last 12 months. Weighted average LTVs remained in the high 30s across direct lending and in the low 30s specifically in our software lending portfolio. For our GP strategic capital platform, total invested commitments for our 5th GP stakes funds including agreements in principle are over $11,500,000,000 of capital with line of sight into over $3,000,000,000 of opportunities, which if all are signs would bring us through the remaining capital available in Fund 5.

Speaker 3

And performance across these funds remain strong with a net IRR of 24% for Fund 3, 41% for Fund 4 and 12% for Fund 5. And in our real estate platform, our pipeline continues to grow with nearly $10,000,000,000 of transaction volume under letter of intent or contract to close. As Mark mentioned earlier, we think we could be roughly 60% committed for Fund VI by year end, reflecting the strong demand we're seeing for our net lease solutions. Many of these opportunities are built to suit arrangements, which are very capital efficient for the tenant and where we get a premium cap rate for providing flexible balance sheet friendly solution to our partners. These can take between 18 24 months to fully deploy the capital we've committed.

Speaker 3

And as a reminder, we charge management fees mostly on invested capital. So we will earn incremental management fees as this capital is deployed. We're seeing such strong deployment opportunities, this could position us well to be out in the market with the next vintage of this strategy before the end of next year. With regards to performance, gross returns across our real estate portfolio were 2 point percent for the Q2 and 6.7% for the last 12 months, comparing favorably to the broader real estate market over this time period. The net IRR across our fully realized funds has been 24% for investment grade and creditworthy tenant risk, reflecting the favorable value creation driven by our scale and solutions based partnerships.

Speaker 3

Okay, let's wrap up with a few closing thoughts. We continue to track to be in or around our dollar per share goal for 2025. We've talked about the 4 things, now three things that need to happen to be on track for this fall, which are 1st, accretive acquisitions, which we achieved through Hubert, Prima and the announcement of Adelaiya, except that. Three remaining things: 1, continued strong fundraising levels for OTIC, OTIC and Orem. We continue to see strong fundraise levels coming through for these products and especially in the case of O RENT where we have seen a step function upwards with another step up expected in the back half of this year.

Speaker 3

So overall on this first one, we expect we are on track. 2, a successful fundraise for our large cap GP stake fund and we are pacing at a good level here. As we have noted previously, our expectation is this will be a little more back ended with more fundraise expected in 2025 than 2024. Overall, on the second one, we expect we are on track. And 3, the listing of some of our BDCs.

Speaker 3

We completed the listing of OBDE earlier this year. We continue to deploy capital in OTF II and for the BDCs that remain private, we are focused on executing on the strategy we outlined during last year's BDC Investor Day. So overall on the third one, we expect we are on track. Bringing this all together, we feel good about being in or around our dollar per share dividend goal and reporting a very strong dividend growth rate for 2025 in the lowtomid30 percent range, resulting in a dividend CAGR of 30% since going public. Now let's talk a little more about our Adelai acquisition for a moment, where we think there is a meaningful opportunity akin to what we saw for Oak Street.

Speaker 3

Mark mentioned earlier that we have more than doubled Oak Street's AUM in just under 3 years. So let me put some color around how we've achieved that. Since acquiring Oak Street, we have doubled the net lease team, including the addition of Jesse Hallum as CIO of the platform. We have created new product offerings for the private wealth channel and are in the process of launching a European net lease product. And the investments have started to pay off with O Rent out raising all of our peers on a net basis and Fund VI well exceeding its $5,000,000,000 hard cap.

Speaker 3

Bringing it all together, we have been able to accomplish a great deal in a relatively short amount of time in our net lease business. We have more than doubled AUM. We have almost tripled permanent capital. We have tripled FRE revenues and we have grown our average management fee rate by over 30%. And most importantly, based on the increase in FRE that we have generated in our triple net lease platform, we have created almost $1,000,000,000 of additional value for our shareholders in just a few years in a very tough environment to raise real estate funds.

Speaker 3

We are equally excited about our Adelaya acquisition. The Adelaya team is one of, if not the best in the alternative credit industry and we have a lot of runway ahead of us to grow this business together. We have mentioned that this acquisition is modestly accretive in 2025 and we think much more accretive as we really ramp this business over the next number of years, similar to Oak Street. It is however margin dilutive for Blue Owl. As we continue to do acquisitions, we won't always find businesses with the same FRE margins.

Speaker 3

The margins here are well below our level. We believe we can increase them over time, but may not ultimately get up to 60% with each of our acquisitions. That's okay. We expect this deal will be very value accretive for us over time and still is a very strategic product area for us in a huge industry growth area. So as we go into the next year or so, we can see margins for the remainder of this year being slightly below the 60% level and for 2025 being 2% to 3% lower.

Speaker 3

On a last note, we have led the alternative asset management industry in growth since we listed in 2021 and we have every intention on continuing to lead the industry for this foreseeable future in the key metrics that matter to all of us, management fees, FRE revenues, FRE and dividend growth. And we feel very confident we will accomplish these goals through continued organic and inorganic growth and reinvestment back into our business. With that, I'd like to thank everyone who has joined us on the call today. Operator, can we please open the line for questions?

Operator

Thank you. And the floor is now open for your questions. Our first question comes from the line of Alex Bustin with Goldman Sachs.

Speaker 4

Thanks. Hey, good morning, everybody. So first question maybe on the deployment opportunities in private credit and direct lending, very big step up in the quarter on Girl Surginations and Net as well. And that's obviously despite a fairly high level of syndicated market activity as well as higher refi volumes across the industry. So maybe talk a little bit about how broad based was the deployment you saw this quarter?

Speaker 4

Anything in particularly kind of lumpy that you would call out? And I guess how would you characterize gross and net deployment backdrop for the rest of the year?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Alex. Look, it's a great environment for direct lending and I actually think this quarter is very revealing about the power of the model. Given this is also a time where the syndicated market is as open as it's ever been and PE activity remains actually I think by our collective measure tepid relative to the dry powder. That's the backdrop. And yet as noted, it was by far our biggest origination quarter.

Speaker 2

And I take those 3 together and I would actually say, yes, that is meaningful, There's a There's a lot of broad activity. We thankfully have a combination of add ons, which of course are proprietary, people that are assets that are being sold and we're the incumbent and that often gives pretty proprietary angle on things. And then of course just new investments. And we are, I think, well positioned to continue to do very well in that marketplace. So I look at this quarter as a pretty strong indicator going forward and every quarter will vary based on indeed the exact volume what we choose to do.

Speaker 2

But I think what we can read from this is the continued demand for direct lending by users of capital is extremely strong even when the syndicated market is widely available. And I think that's actually a really meaningful data point because people have always sort of over read this idea that, oh, it's when the market's closed, then direct lending is a solution. I think what we're seeing is the extreme durability of having long term capital to provide long term solutions and deliver the 3 P's predictability, privacy and partnership to the users of the capital. The part that I think gets us excited and again I'm not going to try to time the moment this happens, but starting from what we just said, there are a few things going on. 1, as I just said, there is the relatively tepid PE activity.

Speaker 2

That will pick up. There's a huge amount of dry powder as we all know. It will get deployed. And we can read from this quarter that whether the syndicated market is wide open or not, direct lending gets a big piece of that. Well, at some point, either we're going to have a less active syndicated market that's inescapable at some point given the relative strength today and we're going to have a more active PE market.

Speaker 2

So combine that with what we're seeing in this environment, that's a very robust outlook from our point of view. And if I want to add one more cherry to that, slight moderation in interest rates, which seems to be forthcoming, will be good. That'd be really good for continuing accelerated interest by people in doing financings and doing deals. So, yes, we're feeling like it's a pretty good moment.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Alex.

Operator

Before we move to the next question, I'd like to let people know that if you have a follow-up question, you can hop back to the queue. And our next question comes from the line of Brian Kenna with Citizens JMP.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. Thanks. So just a question on all the recent M and A you've done. Strategically, all these deals make sense and round out the capabilities across the firm. But how should we think about the incremental growth from these deals relative to the legacy Blue Owl growth rate?

Speaker 5

It would seem like the revenue opportunities for all of these are quite a bit better than their legacy historical growth rates, similar to the outcome with Oak Street. So I'm just trying to figure out if these deals will ultimately be accretive to the firm wide growth rate of Blue Owl over time.

Speaker 2

So the acquisitions as of course you observe have been really important parts of our strategy. And I think it's important to make 2 core observations before we get into the sort of specifics of the actual underlying businesses. The acquisitions in the context of BlueOwl are really people not selling to us, but joining us. And we said I said this in my remarks a moment ago, but it's really important framework when you think about what Blue Owl is doing. What we have done before and are continuing to do is say, look, where there are best of breed investment capabilities and where's a great fit between that organization and ours and those leaders and our leadership group, then we can make over the use 1 plus 1 equal, I'm not going to use 3, I think it's 45.

Speaker 2

We're going to really try to combine, not change the world class investment capabilities, but be able to bring our infrastructure and kind of the, if you will, the origination synergies, the intellectual capital synergies between the businesses. And it works. Look at Oak Street. Oak Street at the time we announced it had $12,000,000,000 of AUM. Today, $28,000,000,000 of AUM.

Speaker 2

And we have dramatically increased the amount of permanent capital. We have created the wealth product. We've had a record the largest real estate fund ever completed last year was in our product suite. So I think we've seen that we know how to bring these world class capabilities together with the Blueout platform and that's a winner for our LPs and a winner for our shareholders. So that's sort of I think key observation well, 2 observations really, which is joining, not selling or buying things in an auction and someone exits, they join us.

Speaker 2

We are so fortunate to have Mark Zarr, you can see it in the leadership of the firm and in the leadership of real estate. You can we have Ivan Zinn joining us, leading Adelaiya. I mean, he is a superstar of the world of asset based finance and it goes on. So that's the way I would read the collection of assets. Now what does it mean for our business?

Speaker 2

And Alan, I'm sure will add to this. These are accretive acquisitions just on their face. And so we'll see the benefits of that, but they're kind of inconsequential, if you will, in the scheme of the very near term, but they're critical for the long term. What we're doing now is setting the stage for the years beyond 2025. What we're doing is setting up products that have very large addressable markets where we have distinctive capabilities.

Speaker 2

That again, distinctive capabilities is key. So we look at things like alternative credit, asset backed credit. The next 10 years look a lot like the last 10 years did in direct lending. When we came to direct lending with this notion of, hey, listen, what we're going to do is go offer private solutions. And we want to finance the best credits from the best users of capital, not lender of last resort and provide those 3 Ps that people value, that certainty.

Speaker 2

We're going to do the same in asset backed credit. It's a bigger market. It's a $7,000,000,000,000 market. It's only 5% penetrated by private solutions today. And now BlueOwl combined with Adelaiya, Adelaiya, it's a great idea on Wall Street today asset backed.

Speaker 2

Adelai has been doing it for nearly 20 years, 20 years with spectacular results. So now you have the Blau credit platform married with 1 of kind of the couple best in the world probably in this business and that gives us the legs we need for not even just the next handful of years, but what we think can be the next decade version of direct lending. Prima, our leg into real estate credit. You say real estate credit, everyone thinks, oh my gosh, look at all the problems there. Prima has been doing this business for over 30 years.

Speaker 2

They've had 2 losses, 2 losses in 32 years. So there are ways to go into each of these markets with exceptional talent and the very focused strategies that I will characterize as the boring versions. We're very into doing boring products, products that deliver in and out, up and down through all markets. And it turns out when you do that over and over and over again, that turns out to be pretty exciting. So that's where we bring prima to the mix.

Speaker 2

Prima, that's probably a $5,000,000,000,000 addressable market in the case of real estate credit. So we are looking at these as critical pieces along with our insurance, now distribution. Remember, we're not getting the insurance business, but we've now created an insurance alternative of management capability where we can package capabilities. No coincidence and things like La Prima and asset backed credit are perfect marriages with that delivery to the insurance channel. So all this really kind of comes together around setting the stage for what comes in the next 5 10 years for us.

Speaker 3

Brian, to broaden that a little bit, I talked in my prepared remarks about the few things left for our in and around the dollar a share goal. And now as Mark's talking about now everything else, all the things we've talked about this year so far on the road when we're meeting with our investors are all growth initiatives beyond 2025. How do we keep this industry leading growth level well, well beyond this in and around a dollar a share goal? So you sprinkle in these acquisitions, very targeted focused acquisitions. We're going to continue to grow inorganically, but then you layer in the organic growth, to talk about our credit products, our evergreen diversified lending strategy, our evergreen first lien fund strategy, our healthcare vertical, our GP led secondary product.

Speaker 3

Then you add in some real estate products, our European triple net lease, which is getting really good traction, our growing our real estate finance products and potentially gearing up, as I said, by the end of next year for our Real Estate Fund 7. And as Mark said, Fund 6, we had a record year with where we ended up with Fund 6 and then our new mid market GP Steaks products. So when you layer in the organic and inorganic growth, this is what we've been talking about all year. How do we really keep that industry leading growth level well beyond 2025.

Operator

Question comes from the line of Glenn Schorr with Evercore ISI.

Speaker 6

Hi, thank you. So maybe another angle on the deal activity. So I agree Oak Street seems to be text book purchase integration and accelerated growth story. When you think about just you just did 3 deals in a reasonably short period of time. Is something different in the deal environment that has brought these companies to your doorstep and why?

Speaker 6

So one, asking about what's going on with the deal environment. And 2 is, history hasn't been great in asset management land for companies to buy a bunch of other companies, half leaving alone, half lever them. It usually hurt margins and eventually you had some grew, some didn't. It's a bad leaves a bad taste in investors' mouths. I think the underlying growth of the alternatives backdrop is significantly better than what we're looking at.

Speaker 6

But my question is, how do you make sure you integrate enough that you are one firm enough that you lever the brands and the best things and don't learn or do learn from the mistakes of the past of the traditional asset managers? Thanks. Sure. So

Speaker 2

these coming together in this form, I think mostly we ought to look at as just a reflection of the right opportunity at the right time. These are businesses that came to us. These are one off as we noted. So this is really about finding strong partnerships and I think that does start to address this question of how do you get the best of both worlds. This is us working in tandem with the leadership team of Prima, working in tandem with the leadership team of Adelaiya, continuing in our partnership with Kuvera's remaining in the insurance business and remaining a strategic partner.

Speaker 2

To us, we're providing asset management services. So I think the key for us here is these are one off world class team at investing? But is it a tremendous fit for our firm? And I can tell you the cultural assessment we go through when we think about something like a PRIMO or an Adelaiya is as important as the financial assessment. And I can tell you by the way, it scores just as high.

Speaker 2

These are great people and they are very much a part of the Blue Owl as we talked about. Everyone's going to wear the Blue Owl jersey and that is how we work. This is not a constellation of activities. It is absolutely one firm. That's how we operate.

Speaker 2

But what we don't change is the success of the investment strategies. And that's been the model for Direct London, it's been the model for GP States, it's been the model for Oak Street. So actually it's been done multiple times for us here how to get the best of investment performance with the full integration of the businesses into the firm. So I have to say we feel very good about the muscles we have built for that and everything is moving along the right direction. So I would tell you we're feeling like we understand very much the questions, the caution, if you will, that you're noting and the M and A and M and A and Financial Services.

Speaker 2

But in this case, Oak Street to me is a much better template to look at, in fact, because that's actually ours, actually a very analogous sized business, actually an analogous set of circumstances, where the senior leadership team came and joined this firm to be a part of the leadership of Blue Owl, didn't sell to this firm.

Operator

Go ahead. Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Davitt from Autonomous Research.

Speaker 7

Hi, good morning, everyone. I think the management fee trend in the quarter was probably a little disappointing relative to the very positive FP AUM inflow and AUM surprise. So were there any timing issues with like big deployments doing later in the quarter that maybe aren't showing up in the full quarter? And if so, maybe the level set, do you know what the run rate for management fees would have been with a full quarter of all those, a full quarter of Prima, etcetera?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Patrick. I don't have the run rate off the top of my head. I could tell you that we had some close things at the very end of the quarter. So didn't really have any time to accrete in for the quarter. And in 1Q, we had some small catch up fees, both in real estate and in GP Stakes, that elevated just slightly 1Q's numbers.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Craig Siegenthalen Bank of America.

Speaker 8

Good morning, Mark, Alan. Hope everyone's doing well. We wanted to come back to Allen's margin commentary near the end of the prepared remarks. So with the 2025 Efre margin now at 57% to 58%, longer term, after you scale digest these mergers, where do you see the long term target? Is that still 60% or maybe a little higher?

Speaker 8

How should we think about that?

Speaker 3

Growth numbers over the next few years. And it fits a very strategic area for us in a very big addressable market as Mark was talking about. So let's talk for a minute about what are we creating here. When I look backwards just for a minute and I look at our management fee growth for our real estate business on an LTM basis since we acquired the Oak Street business, we haven't had a quarter go by where we haven't had 50% growth on an LTM basis in management fees there. And overall BlueOwl, we haven't had a quarter go by that's been less than 20%.

Speaker 3

And when you take that up to the BlueOwl FRE revenues, we haven't had a quarter go by that's been lower than 25% revenues. And so that's looking backwards what we've created. Now looking forwards, when you think about the things that we have out there, AUM not yet paying fees, GP Stake 6 fundraise, the CIC and TIC fundraises over 202425 and then the BDC step ups in fees, that's another $1,000,000,000 of revenue from where we were at the end of 2023. So that's a 60% growth just from those few things and that doesn't include all the other things that I just rattled through in a previous question about growth initiatives beyond 2025. When I think about fundraising, we think we're going to almost double our equity fundraise versus where we were last year.

Speaker 3

And so what we're doing, it's working. We're reinvesting back into our business. It's fueling industry leading growth and it's accelerating between now and the end of 2025. So when you think about that 25% revenue number we just posted on an LTM basis, that growth we think will accelerate to approaching 30% growth for this year and for next year. And again, I wouldn't change the longer term 60% FRE margin.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Craig.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Steven Chubak Wolfe Research.

Speaker 9

Hi, good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning.

Speaker 9

So wanted to ask a question on Part 1 fees. Just given the expectation for rate cuts on the horizon, loan spreads tightening over the last 12 months, There's some concern that Part 1 fees could come under greater pressure as the higher yielding back book begins to roll off. Recognizing there's going to be a meaningful offset for ramping deployment activity, and truly in the comments there were quite constructive, but I was hoping to get just a mark to market for where current origination yields sit today relative to the back book. And maybe just speak to the ability to defend guess, what would now be a high-50s FRE margin in 25 amid deeper rate cuts and spread contraction?

Speaker 3

Sure. Thanks for your question, Stephen. Look, we have a BDC business that continues to grow. And so yes, as rates come down, we will see some pressure on Part 1 fees. We also see from a number of perspectives Part 1 fees going up.

Speaker 3

So we still have our software lending to BDC that's not fully deployed as we continue to deploy that capital. Part 1 fees are going to continue to go up visavishepriorquarter and we still have some ways to go to fully deploy that capital. We still have 2 BDCs and we'll continue to have 2 BDCs OCIC and OTIC that are fundraising at very strong levels today and will continue to for everything that we see on the go forward. So we will continue to see Part 1 fee stepping up quarter over quarter as it relates to our fundraising efforts and these continually offered products.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Kristen Brook with Piper Sandler.

Speaker 10

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Appreciate taking my question. Can you just give us an update on credit quality across the portfolio? What you're seeing?

Speaker 10

Are you seeing any degradation in the portfolio? And then when you look at Pluralsight specifically, how confident are you that that is a one off in the portfolio versus a potential for other credit stress elsewhere? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes, credit quality is very good. This is This is a strong environment. Our portfolio on average grew EBITDA in the teens, mid teens. So we continue to see very strong overall performance. We have not seen any material change in amendment requirements or requests or changes in demand for payment in kind if they were cash paid before, running down the revolvers.

Speaker 2

And we will always have one off companies that have some their challenges. That's, of course the nature of the beast. We fortunately as I described, look, we have a pretty simple system in theory, very complicated in execution, which is to find through rigorous work, great companies that are very likely to perform really well and the handful of times they don't perform well, make sure we get a strong recovery. And so that actually leads us right to put overall credit quality continues to march on very, very steadily and very well. In terms of Pluralsight, look Pluralsight, it's probably worth commenting on one thing.

Speaker 2

We care a lot about Pluralsight's performance in every credit and ultimately every recovery. For the Blue Owl shareholder, again, let's remember, we're a fee based business. So really, the underlying yields of the funds are not really directly a part of the Duval business. We get fees. We don't have carry.

Speaker 2

So I just want to put that again as a flag. Now we care a tremendous amount about the performance. Also context, just let's for those who owned up, Pluralsight is an IT training business that was bought by Thoma Bravo and that we led the financing of with several other private lenders. But very sorry, Vista, apologies. It is not a software business, just to make sure we're all clear on where it lands.

Speaker 2

But look, Vista is a great sponsor, make a lot of great investments, and we do a lot of business together. This one didn't work. I mean, obviously, that's disappointing to them. It's disappointing to us. It's not where we all like to be.

Speaker 2

At the end of the day, a small loan. It's a little over $300,000,000 out of our almost $100,000,000,000 portfolio. And now we'll end up owning it without a lot of strumming and drying. Again, it's not what this store we wanted to be the outcome. But actually, it's kind of a study in private lending working, which is here will be a smooth handoff I expect and we'll carry on in supporting the management and the business and stay tuned for the next few years and we'll find out what the exact recovery is.

Speaker 2

Do we get all our money back? Do we get most of our money back? We'll all find that out together in the next few years. But that's the limit of the drama. It just doesn't really matter to our business.

Speaker 2

And no, I don't think you can extrapolate anything from it.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Brandon Hofstedt with UBS.

Speaker 10

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Alan, I wanted to follow-up on and apologies if you hit on this, my line cut out a bit during your response to the question on the margin outlook. But it seems as though the margin compression is impacted by some of the deals that you guys have recently done. And you also reiterated your confidence to be at or around the dollar dividend.

Speaker 10

And so is the bridge there better revenue growth? And can you just confirm whether or not some of the recent deals are really what's pulling down the margin rather than anything beyond that that would be IDEO?

Speaker 3

Yes, that's right, Brennan. Thank you for the question. In particular, the Adelaiya transaction has the Adelaya as a business has roughly half the margin that we do. We know we can grow this over time. We just don't know yet whether we can get it to the same margin as where we are today.

Speaker 3

And we're investing in these acquisitions. So as I outlined what we did with Oak Street, so we could have some slight downward momentum before it swings back up, but we feel very confident and very strong about the long term trajectory of keeping that 60% or higher margin over time. And it is driven by the acquisitions that we're making and the investment we're putting into these acquisitions. From TD

Operator

from TD Cowen.

Speaker 3

Okay. Thank you very much.

Speaker 11

I just want to unpack the dividend a little bit further. So you affirmed the $0.72 this year and you think you can grow that in the low to mid-thirty percent range year on year and it does sound like top line driven. So if I take 35% as a reasonable proxy, I get to about $0.97 And so as I look at the year to date dynamics between distributor earnings and the dividend, the payout rate has been about 100% round numbers. So I'm wondering if you could just talk about the algorithm in terms of capital allocation and why the import on the dollar? And is there a broader argument here to potentially move away from a dividend growth story and think about a broader capital return opportunity?

Speaker 11

Thank you.

Speaker 3

Sure. Thank you, Bill. So that's right. We're targeting a lowtomidividendgrowth for 2025 versus 2024. That lowtomid would put us somewhere around the $0.96 That is a approaching if not 100 percent dividend payout ratio.

Speaker 3

That's really what we've been communicating to investors. It's where we've seen this year we'll step up to a 90% low 90% payout ratio. And then we would look to bring that back down over time as we get past 2025. So we've continued to keep our eye on that in and around the dividend in and around the dollar share dividend goal. And then over time, we'll bring that payout ratio back down a little bit.

Speaker 1

Patrick, I think you're on for a follow-up.

Speaker 7

Hey, thanks guys. Coubert just closed on July 1. Could you update us on how we should think about kind of the regular way annuity type quarterly inflow you'll start to see from that given the kind of ongoing annuity issuance from the insurance partner there? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. The Couvert acquisition is a very exciting one for us. And I want to reframe importantly what we did buy and what we didn't buy. So we bought the Cuver Asset Management business, getting paid fees to manage assets in fashions that are packaged, delivered both in terms of abilities and structures for insurance companies. We did not buy the insurance operations.

Speaker 2

We are not in the insurance business. We don't have a spread related earnings concept. We continue to have fee related earnings. That's very important to our business model. So Kuvera remains very active in the insurance business and very successfully so.

Speaker 2

That is to say that they continue to be very successful in issuing annuities. They have been in fact for an insurance company their size, I think it's quite impressive what they've accomplished in terms of access for example to the Japanese market. In 2023, there was $5,600,000,000 of flows. The expected growth rate this year has been higher for them, it's got to total originations. They've had a good strong start to the year.

Speaker 2

So we continue to expect, again, that was 2023 and we're rising from there. So this is something that will be contributing over time done the way we expect it will, 1,000,000,000 of dollars of flows for us on an annual basis and fact on a quarterly basis. So we are very happy to have this additional leg to our stool along with being one of the key leaders in wealth. Remember there we had $3,200,000,000 in the wealth channel. Institutional, great continued growth in institutional and access to new accounts.

Speaker 2

And now we add insurance where we have another set of flows started off in this base of $20,000,000,000 of assets we just took. And as you note in your question, as there are inflows, those come to us to manage. So this is yet another engine for us to continue to originate exactly what we want, which are long dated fee paying assets. So the insurance addition married, as I mentioned, with these other capabilities that, by the way, not a coincidence that something like prima and asset backed lending are perfect strategies for insurance users. I think we're going to have something pretty special to offer out to the marketplace.

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Brandon Hawkins with UBS.

Speaker 10

Hey, thank you for taking my follow-up. I would just like to make sure I understand what make sure I'm putting together the pieces correctly here. It seems like what's happened is you guys have had some good deals come together and you've done several deals rather quickly. You're realizing it's going to probably take a little bit longer to get all of these pieces put together. And so we're going to see some margin compression next year.

Speaker 10

You guys still feel good about the dividend and getting to the dividend, but you're kind of getting there via the higher payout rate ratio. And so it's more driven by that ratio rather than the earnings growth. Do I have that right and or would you course correct me in anything there?

Speaker 2

Yes. Let me try to course correct a little bit and Alan can add too. It's not that it's more complicated to integrate. It's not that it's anything unexpected. It's math.

Speaker 2

If you acquire at the time a lower margin business, it's going to for some short period of time be an impact to margins until we complete as planned the full integration and then continue to optimize across the whole integrated business. So it's I don't want to say it's anything about a change in expectations. But again, if I acquire something which we do with a lower margin and integrate and then operationalize, we'll return we expect fully to our 60% plus margin. But it will be essentially a near mathematical impossibility to buy something with a meaningful lower margin and not have it in the short term impact the margin. So no, I think it's pretty transitory.

Speaker 2

But I also would emphasize from our point of view and I would suggest from our investors' point of view, what you want to do is continue to encourage us and focus, we will, on how do we continue to deliver very high predictable growth in FRE and dividend. And margin is it's obviously a measure of obviously the profitability, but we'd rather have more revenue and have more growth and more opportunity whether that absolute what we want to do is drive absolute dollars. It happens to be the case that here we expect this to be, yes, a short term dilution from acquisitions and return to the 60% plus, but I actually don't think that ought to particularly be the measure of success. The measure of success is, are we substantially growing our per share absolute FRE, DE and dividend. And that's exactly what these acquisitions are augmenting for us in the short term and absolutely positioning us for the long term.

Speaker 3

And I'll just add to that, Brennan. The guidance of low to mid-30s dividend growth is right on top of our in and about a dollar a share that we've been talking about obviously well before we had our eye on frankly any of these acquisitions. And let's just pick 96. If 96 is the number, that's a I made this comment in my prepared remarks. It's a 30% CAGR over 4.5 years for our dividend.

Speaker 3

So we feel fantastic about that. We feel really great about it and we feel even better about what our future trajectory looks like for growth as we talked about well beyond 2025.

Speaker 2

Okay. I don't think we have any further questions. So look, we appreciate everyone's time. It was an exceptional quarter. I mean, we are really pleased with where things stand.

Speaker 2

We're pleased, most importantly, with the returns for our LPs and all of our strategies. We're extremely pleased to be here telling you the second verse same as the verse, which is we keep delivering marching forward our 13th straight quarter of increases. We see our continuing trajectory looking very bright. With the acquisitions, we have set the stage, which, of course, we'll talk about in much more detail in the future, set the stage to continue our highly predictable and stable growth plan and our very strong steady march on FRED and dividends. So we're very happy with where things stand.

Speaker 2

We think we've got very exciting opportunities ahead. So we look forward to keeping you all posted. And we think you'll all share our enthusiasm as you start to see us reveal the positives of what we can develop out of our continuing organic strategies and these inorganic additions.

Speaker 3

Thank you, everyone. Enjoy the rest of the summer.

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Key Takeaways

  • Record Q2 results: Fee related earnings of $0.21 per share and distributable earnings of $0.19 per share, marking the 13th consecutive quarter of management fee and FRE growth, with a $0.18 dividend declared.
  • Strategic acquisitions: Announced deals to acquire Adalayia Capital (alternative credit), Prima (real estate credit) and Kubera Asset Management (insurance asset management), expanding capabilities in multi-trillion-dollar markets.
  • Robust fundraising: Generated $8.2 billion in Q2 gross flows—over 30% higher quarter-on-quarter—and $32 billion over the past 12 months, while redemptions remained under 0.2%, pushing pro forma AUM above $220 billion.
  • Record direct lending deployment: Originated $18.7 billion in Q2 with $7.2 billion net funded, backed by low realized losses (7 bps annualized) and high single-digit revenue and mid-teens EBITDA growth across the portfolio.
  • Dividend and margin outlook: Reaffirmed low-mid 30% dividend growth for 2025 (approaching $1.00 per share) and noted temporary FRE margin dilution from recent acquisitions, targeting ~60% long-term margins.
A.I. generated. May contain errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Blue Owl Capital Q2 2024
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