Blue Owl Capital Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Blue Owl Capital EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.17
• Consensus EPS: $0.20
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.03
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Blue Owl Capital Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $620.19 million
• Expected Revenue: $636.44 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$16.25 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Blue Owl Capital Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 5/1/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 1, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Blue Owl Capital (NYSE:OWL) operates as an asset manager in the United States. The company offers permanent capital base solutions that enables it to offer holistic framework of capital solutions to middle market companies, large alternative asset managers, and corporate real estate owners and tenants. It also provides direct lending products that offer private credit products comprising diversified, technology, first lien, and opportunistic lending to middle-market companies; liquid credit; GP strategic capital products, which offers capital solutions, including GP minority stakes, GP debt financing, and professional sports minority stakes; and real estate products that focuses on acquiring triple net lease real estate by investment grade or creditworthy tenants. It offers its solutions through permanent capital vehicles, as well as long-dated private funds. Blue Owl Capital Inc. is headquartered in New York, New York.

Blue Owl Capital Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

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

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

The same this time around with the benefit of an even more scaled and diversified business. With that, let me turn it to Alan for our financial results.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. We are very pleased with the results we reported this quarter.

[Operator]

Good morning, and welcome to the Blue Owl Capital's First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. I'd like to advise all parties that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Ann Dye, Head of Investor Relations for BlueOwl. Please go ahead.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Marking our sixteenth consecutive quarter of management fee and FRE growth. It was another quarter of results right on top of where we expected and right on track.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Thanks, operator, and good morning to everyone. Joining me today are Mark Lipschult, our Co Chief Executive Officer and Alan Kirchenbaum, 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 BlueOwl Capital's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward looking statements.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

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 Shareholders 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 fourth quarter of twenty twenty four reporting fee related earnings or FRE of $0.23 per share and distributable earnings or DE of $0.21 per share. For the full year 2024, we reported FRE of $0.86 per share and DE of $0.77 per share. We declared a dividend of $0.18 per share for the fourth quarter payable on February 28 to holders of record as of February 19.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

And we also announced an annual fixed dividend of $0.90 for 2025 or $0.02 $25 per quarter starting with our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings, up 25% from the prior year. 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. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mark.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Great. Thank you so much, Anne. We capped off a highly successful year for BlueOwl with a record quarter of fundraising, reflecting the ongoing diversification of our business and high levels of investor interest in our differentiated products. This brings our total equity raise in 2024 to $27,500,000,000, about 75% higher than 2023. And including debt, we raised over $47,000,000,000, also a record for us.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

On top of our robust fundraising, we deployed substantial amounts of capital across the business, including a record $52,000,000,000 of gross deployment and credit, driving 26% FRE growth for the year. Taking a step back, we have now grown FRE at least 25% each year since we've been public despite highly inflationary periods, geopolitical events, rate volatility, and a significant slowdown in capital markets. To us, this has been an incredible test of the durability of our business and the power of permanent capital. We've had a very active year across the business with some simple themes that defined our direction of travel, innovation, diversification, and scale. And thinking about what we've accomplished this year, I'd like to call out a few highlights that exemplify these themes.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

On innovation, we've been very aligned with the ongoing evolution of the alternatives industry, focused on asset classes such as direct lending and GP stakes that have expanded to meet the financing needs of the private markets. Net lease has followed a similar trajectory, becoming a truly institutional category.

[Operator]

This is the operator. I apologize, but there will be a slight delay in today's call. Please hold, and we will resume momentarily. Thank you for your patience.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

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

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Thank you, Anne. Let's start with the obvious good news. We are much better investors than apparently our conference call company is at managing calls. So the good news will continue as we carry forward. Look, we're very pleased with the strong results we continue to report each quarter, reflecting the stable and predictable nature of Blue All's business in what is yet again an uncertain and volatile market backdrop.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

The past five years have presented a continuous series of challenges across COVID, persistent inflation, geopolitical tensions and now global tariffs. In contrast, Blue Owl has consistently demonstrated strong business performance through periods of upheaval with management fees growing over a 35% annual growth rate since we listed as a public company. This growth has been underpinned by the defensive nature of our permanent capital and FRE centric business and propelled by the strong levels of interest we've seen from investors for our differentiated investment strategies. Our business model is very simple at its core. We keep the vast majority of our AUM we raise.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We continue to raise valuable new capital from an increasingly diversified set of sources across an increasingly broad spectrum of strategies, and our earnings are highly predictable because they're management fee driven. Today, we're facing another shock to the system where the flow of global trade and the price of that trade may be substantially altered going forward. There are many questions regarding inflation, economic growth, consumer demand, potential recession and more for which investors don't have concrete answers and may not for some time. So we're reminded once again of the transitory nature of perceived liquidity and the benefits of permanent capital. We're fortunate to have a business model that is quite defensive during periods like these.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

In fact, we've said this before, we think our products are built precisely to give investors greater certainty and comfort during challenging and volatile markets. Our strategy is focused on downside protection, income generation and inflation protection. These characteristics are less exciting in boom markets but act as structural guardrails for portfolios when markets are dislocated. Similarly, Blue Owl has been purpose built to be steady, stable and predictable through various environments. So let me quickly highlight a few factors that contribute to this stability.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

First, approximately 90 of our management fees come from permanent capital, so our revenues are highly resilient. Our business is also very U. S.-centric. The vast majority of our borrowers or tenants are domestically based and primarily serve domestic customers, which substantially limits any direct impact from tariffs. Al will spend some time on the numbers around this in just a little bit.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

To add to that, we have over $23,000,000,000 of AUM that will begin to pay management fees once capital is deployed, which will drive an incremental $290,000,000 of revenue or 13% growth off our current management fees over the last twelve months. In addition, we successfully completed the merger of OTF and OTF2 in March. Upon a listing, OTF will be the largest technology focused BDC in the public market and will drive another approximately $135,000,000 of incremental annual management fees for BlueOwl. So we have pretty good visibility into revenue growth just from deployment and fee step ups, not counting any incremental fundraising. And we intend to be very front footed about opportunities that arise in this current environment.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So we've observed that during periods of elevated volatility, market share accrues to solutions providers like us, and people are willing to pay more for our valuable capital. We expect the same dynamic to play out this time around if this uncertainty continues. In fact, we have already started to see instances of companies that had looked to issue public debt now exploring direct lending solutions. Similarly, we are seeing elevated inbounds in alternative credit as market participants expressed concerns about the availability of capital in traditional securitization markets. And the last point I want to make, which is something we've said often, but I think it carries even more weight today, is that our business is management fee and FRE driven.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Our investors don't have to figure out whether carry or capital markets fees will be up or down over the next year. That predictability should be worth a premium during ordinary markets and becomes even more valuable today. So to bring this home through our financial results, we have grown our management fees by 31%, our FRE by 23% and our DE by 20% on an LTM basis. Reflected in this growth are the significant investments we have continued to make globally across the private wealth and institutional channels, which have resulted in equity fundraising of nearly $30,000,000,000 over the last twelve months, an increase of over 75% over the prior year. Over that same period, we capitalized on constructive syndicated markets to raise an incremental $19,000,000,000 of debt for our funds and vehicles, primarily in credit and real assets.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Added up, the nearly $50,000,000,000 of equity and debt capital we've raised over the last twelve months is approximately 30% growth of our AUM over a year ago.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

During the first quarter,

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

we raised over $6,500,000,000 with $4,000,000,000 raised in private wealth, primarily across our perpetually distributed products and GP stakes. As we look further into 2025, we're increasingly diversified and global base of investors contributing to evergreen product flows, with nearly $1,000,000,000 of capital closed on April 1. We're also making good progress on the launch of our alternative credit product focused on the wealth market and expect to be in a position to close out the private phase fundraise for this product at some point this summer. On the institutional side, we raised capital across a number of strategies, including digital infrastructure, net lease, direct lending, insurance solutions and alternative credit. Generally, we anticipate that institutional fundraising will step up over the course of 2025 given the expected timing of next vintage launches and ongoing fundraising.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Turning to business performance. In direct lending, gross origination was nearly $13,000,000,000 and net was over $4,500,000,000 for the quarter, more than double our net origination in the prior quarter, reflecting robust add on activity across our portfolio declining level of refinancings. As I alluded to earlier, current market volatility is accruing to the benefit of private lenders, and we're having a fairly robust level of discussions. While it's hard to say what M and A will look like over the short term, we have plenty of capital to put to work and feel well positioned for whatever is ahead. Our direct lending strategy was built for these types of markets, volatility and uncertainty.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We feel very good about the credit quality of our portfolio. We've had a 13 basis point average annual realized loss rate, validating our rigorous underwriting standards. As I mentioned earlier, we have a philosophical preference for larger domestically focused services oriented portfolio companies with high customer retention and reup rates, which we think are more resilient business models. And remember, the portfolio is not a microcosm of The U. S.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Economy. Rather, we think our loan book will prove out to be quite defensive if we are facing a paradigm shift in global trade. In alternative credit, our funds announced a sizable commitment to SoFi, representing their largest loan platform business arrangement to date. We also entered into a significant forward flow agreement with Pagaya as a growing source of funding alongside Pagaya's ABS program. Glow's scale and capital flexibility are proving to be a great asset as we enter into these arrangements, providing essential financing at an opportune time.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Furthermore, as we highlighted during our recent Investor Day, we think this is a highly defensive strategy for investors as the amortizing nature of the assets creates enhanced downside protection with principal return on an accelerated basis relative to even corporate credit strategies. Another layer of protection comes from our ability to turn the flow of financing on and off quickly. Similar to direct lending, we have very little direct exposure to tariffs in this strategy as we are generally U. S. Focused and we see an opportunity to accelerate market share as an alternative to securitization markets.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

To date, we have not seen any adverse changes in consumer credit and feel very good about the resilience of our portfolio. Now this resilience carries over into our GP stake strategy where our funds own stakes in highly diversified group of quality alternative asset managers. Over the past decade, the alternatives industry has grown AUM by roughly 10% annually. On the other hand, the managers in which we own stakes have grown their AUM by approximately 17% on average, 70% higher than industry growth. In keeping with the philosophy of our other businesses, we're providing valuable capital growth to a growth industry, and the scale and certainty of capital we offer is an even shorter supply during periods of market instability.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

During the quarter, we made our first investment out of the latest large cap vintage into a prominent asset manager with whom we've had a long standing relationship. In real assets, we continue to benefit from an inflationary environment and higher rates as companies look to optimize their own balance sheets. This remains the best setup for deployment we've seen in a very long time. Our net lease strategy offers tenants crucial capital flexibility while providing our investors attractive income with highly predictable cash flows, driven by investment grade and creditworthy counterparties, all with a tax advantaged attribute. We continue to see significant demand for this strategy.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We're looking forward to providing updates on the path towards our next vintage drawdown fund in the near future. On the real estate credit strategy, we've been on offense during recent periods of dislocation, finding opportunities to upgrade the portfolio into market weakness for insurance and managed clients. In digital infrastructure, we continue to see this as a once in a generation opportunity to deploy with demand for capital and our differentiated technical expertise far surpassing supply. We held our final close for Fund III in April, reaching its hard cap of $7,000,000,000 nearly double the size of the prior fund. And we remain on track to launch the next flagship vintage in 2026 along with a wealth dedicated product.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Looking across real assets, we see substantial opportunities to harness the power of scale, flexible structuring and diversified pools of capital to construct bespoke differentiated solutions for our counterparties. This was the thesis in bringing these businesses together, and it is absolutely playing out in real time. So bringing the conversation back to where we started. This is the type of environment where our business is highly defensive on an absolute basis and where we should outperform even more on a relative basis. Every time we've seen a market dislocation, Blue All has demonstrated remarkable strength and consistency, and we have continued to march towards our long term strategic goals.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

I expect we will do the very same this time around with the benefits of an even more scaled and diversified business. So with that, let me turn it over to Alan to discuss our financial results.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. We are very pleased with the results we reported this quarter, marking our sixteenth consecutive quarter of management fee and FRE growth. It was another quarter of results right on top of where we expected and right on track with our long term goals. I think it's important to reiterate some of the key points Mark raised in his remarks, which I'll do in a few moments. To start with our financial results, over the last twelve months, management fees increased by 31% and approximately 90% were from permanent capital vehicles.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

FRE was up 23%, DE was up 20%. And as you can see on slide 13, we raised $6,700,000,000 of equity in the first quarter and $29,400,000,000 over the last twelve months, an increase of 76% from the prior year. And inclusive of debt, we raised nearly $50,000,000,000 over the last twelve months. To break down the first quarter fundraising numbers across our strategies and products, in credit, raised $4,000,000,000 2 point 9 billion dollars was raised in direct lending, of which nearly $2,500,000,000 came from our non traded BDCs, OCIC and OTIC. This includes approximately $250,000,000 closed in channels that are not on a monthly closing cadence.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

The remainder was raised across liquid credit, alternative credit, investment grade credit and our GP led secondary strategy. Subsequent to quarter end, we raised an incremental $540,000,000 for our GP led secondary strategy, bringing it to over $1,500,000,000 in total. In GP strategic capital, we raised over $550,000,000 during the quarter, of which roughly $450,000,000 was attributable to our large cap stake strategy, bringing the latest vintage to $7,300,000,000 As we've said in the past, we expect the fundraise here to be back end loaded heading towards our $13,000,000,000 goal. And in Real Assets, we raised $2,200,000,000 primarily from O Rent, digital infrastructure and co investments. Subsequent to quarter end, we held the final close for Digital Infrastructure Fund III, bringing in an incremental $360,000,000 and hitting our $7,000,000,000 hard cap as Mark noted earlier.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

And overall for our wealth dedicated products, flows to OCIC, OTIC and O REN during the quarter were 55% higher than flows into those funds in the first quarter of last year. As we have seen, our March flows for the April 1 close were strong with over $920,000,000 in total fundraise tracking well against March 1 flows, excluding channels that do not hold monthly closes. And our April flows for the May 1 close are tracking well. Turning to our platforms. In credit, our direct lending portfolio gross returns were 3.1% in the first quarter and 13.3% over the last twelve months.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Our direct lending funds are well positioned and constructed to withstand the economic pressures likely to be caused by tariffs or a possible recession. Our direct lending funds are comprised of primarily first lien senior secured loans. We focus on larger borrowers that we believe will be well suited to withstand uncertainty and volatility with an average EBITDA of over $250,000,000 Weighted average LTVs are in the high 30s across direct lending and in the low 30s specifically in our software lending portfolio. This creates a high level of protection for our investors as sponsor equity and more junior debt provide significant cushion. Private equity firms typically take a long term view to protecting their investments during periods of disruption and have the dry powder and resources to support their businesses.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

We consistently work with the largest sponsors with strong expertise in their sectors. As Mark mentioned earlier, our portfolio continues to perform extremely well. We have not seen a deterioration in credit quality, which we know has been an area of focus for investors in recent weeks. To elaborate on this point, we focus on U. S.-based borrowers in noncyclical, defensive and service oriented industries.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Five sectors software, insurance, business services, food and beverage and healthcare services constitute approximately 70% of our direct lending portfolio, which is well diversified with an average position size of approximately 20 basis points. Sitting here today, we estimate that portfolio companies that have a material manufacturing capacity outside The U. S. Represent only a mid single digit percentage of our overall direct lending portfolio. However, most of these companies generally have significant global reach, diverse sourcing capabilities and experienced management teams that have successfully navigated previous tariffs and supply chain disruptions before.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

And as a reminder, our portfolio is comprised of directly originated loans negotiated with tighter covenant packages than public market deals. Between this modest exposure and the defensive characteristics I just highlighted, we feel that our direct lending portfolio is relatively recession resistant and should perform well on an absolute basis and even more on a relative basis. And remember what Mark said earlier, our portfolio is not a microcosm of The U. S. Economy.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

We set a very high bar when underwriting a loan and generally do not make loans to companies with high energy exposure, high commodity exposure, retail fashion, asset heavy businesses, melting ice cube industries. We aim to avoid product and geographic concentration and get to choose among the biggest, highest quality businesses that are among the best in their industry backed by the biggest PE sponsors to make loans to. On average, underlying revenue and EBITDA growth across our portfolios was in the high single digits to low teens with no material increase in signs of stress, such as increased non accruals, stress amendments, PIK conversion requests or watch list names. Turning to alternative credit. Our portfolio gross returns were 6.1% in the first quarter and 15.2% over the last twelve months.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Echoing what Mark mentioned earlier, we are seeing very resilient performance across asset based categories. In GP strategic capital, we are nearing the finish line in deploying our fifth vintage by our flagship GP stake strategy and have made our first investment out of the sixth vintage. Performance across these funds remained strong with a net IRR of 22.5% for Fund III, 37.7% for Fund IV and 15.4% for Fund V. And in real assets, as you heard, we had a record quarter of commitments in net lease, bringing our drawdown funds in that strategy to nearly 90% committed. Even with robust deployment, our net lease pipeline continues to grow with nearly $28,000,000,000 of transaction volume under letter of intent or contract to close.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Trends across deployment and monetization cap rates in net lease have remained quite stable, reflecting the structural advantages of our scale and positioning. During the first quarter, we had a record quarter of commitments totaling $3,800,000,000 bringing commitments over the last twelve months to $8,000,000,000 at a roughly 8% cap rate on average. As a reminder, many of these opportunities are built to suit arrangements, which can take between eighteen to twenty four months to fully deploy. We earn we will earn incremental management fees as this capital is deployed. Concurrently, we monetized over $700,000,000 over the past twelve months, generating a 24% net IRR, demonstrating how we can continue to generate opportunistic returns in a strategy that we believe is indicative of investment grade and core risk.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

With regards to performance, gross returns in net lease were 1.2% for the first quarter and March for the last twelve months, comparing favorably to the broader real estate market over this time period. In real estate credit, we invested $1,300,000,000 in public securities at a nearly 9% yield, increasing our market share in single asset single borrower CMBS and showcasing our team's ability to be opportunistic in dislocated markets. We also had our most active quarter in private loans targeting double digit returns for clients. Turning to Digital Infrastructure. We're thrilled with the running start that we've taken with this business.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

The tenants are incredible credits, and we love the mission criticality of the assets. We're operating with a combination of scale, relationships and technical expertise that we don't think anyone else has, and the demand supply imbalance is massive. We'll have a lot more to say about this business in the coming quarters. I want to pause for a moment to make sure the pattern is obvious to everyone. Our products across Blue Owl have performed very well as they are designed to do during periods of uncertainty.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

These are products that are geared towards this environment and combined with our permanent capital, this makes Blue Owl uniquely positioned versus our peers. So to wrap up here, I'd like to reiterate the contrast between the volatility and uncertainty we are seeing in global markets today and the stability of Owl's business. We are 100% FRE and mostly permanent capital. Every dollar of capital we raise drives three times more FRE than our peers because we have less capital heading out the door, a higher blended fee rate and a high FRE margin. I really think it's difficult to find a better structural setup than Blue Owl for the markets and macro environment that investors face today.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that we've now posted sixteen consecutive quarters of management fee and FRE growth, a period that encompassed runaway inflation, 500 basis points of rate increases, massive supply chain disruptions, a shutdown of the capital markets and accelerating geopolitical instability. Blue Owl each year up into the right consistent growth, consistent predictable cash flows. Blue Owl was built for this market. Our products were built for this market. Mark talked about our products, downside protected, income oriented.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

These characteristics may be less exciting and up into the right markets, but in markets like now, that's when they really stand out. Each time we have been through dislocation, we come through the other side with investors having an even deeper appreciation for how differentiated our products and business model are. And we look forward to proving this out again. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Operator, can we please open the line for questions?

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Absolutely. Our first question today will come from Glenn Schorr, Evercore ISI.

[Glenn Schorr, Senior Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Evercore]

Hello there.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Hello, Glenn.

[Glenn Schorr, Senior Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Evercore]

Hello

[Glenn Schorr, Senior Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Evercore]

there. I I like where you ended that in terms of the differentiation, the mostly permanent capital, and the predictability and downside protection. You you've bought yourself into some very key growth markets and we've seen some of it growth in AUM and FRE. And I'm a fan of all that. When we get down to the earnings per share, it's the growth rates aren't as big.

[Glenn Schorr, Senior Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Evercore]

And we've talked about some of this in the past, but maybe we could talk about how we bridge the gap from what's very stable now and when that diversification starts to kick into better earnings per share growth over the next, say, year or two that we get into that 20 or so growth that you're hoping for? Thanks so much.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Sure. Thanks, Glenn. Appreciate the question. What you're seeing this year as we've talked about on last quarter's call is with the acquisitions rolling through in particular for IPI, we have a small gap between our FRE growth and FRE per share growth. And that's going to narrow as we go through.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

We talked about at Investor Day that we are expecting over the next five years about 20% growth in FRE per share. So I would fully expect as we get into 2026 and 2027, you're going to see that gap narrow very quickly.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Our next question will come from Brian McKenna, Citizens.

[Brian Mckenna, Director - Equity Research at Citizens JMP]

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. So a question on private wealth. It's great to hear that flows have held up quite well even with the pickup in volatility. But two questions here.

[Brian Mckenna, Director - Equity Research at Citizens JMP]

One, have you seen any evolution in the behavior of retail investors and how they allocate to alternatives, specifically during periods of volatility? And then two, given that retail investors are a lot more familiar today with the Blue Owl brand and the types of products you offer, is there the potential for adoption timelines to be accelerated for future products like an alternative credit?

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Yes. Thanks, Brian. Yes, look, private wealth in this environment, and obviously, these are all evolving marketplaces, but what we have to keep in mind is how much just secular growth and opportunity there is in the private wealth channel that even when you get into sort of individual investor questions of does this person X make an investment or not make an investment in a given quarter, there's so many new participants joining. Let me give you just a live example as of yesterday, Take a firm, Edward Jones. Edward Jones manages $2,200,000,000,000 And you know what share of that is in alts?

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Zero. And they are now just launching alts, and we are one of their premier launches as part of that. So here's an example of, I mean, talking about white space, talking about greenfield, whatever you want to call it. So I think a couple of things I would observe. One, the addressable market is gigantic and penetration is very low.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Penetration is rising. We see it. We have multiple new platforms that are rolling out our products. And an example like that, they're big. And they present really substantial opportunities, number one.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Number two, during times of volatility and uncertainty, I expect that we are going to see again, let's say that short term perturbations when people just get scared for a week and they're hiding under their covers. The reality is people then realize the benefits. This is the exact conversation I had with a group of individual FAs yesterday. This is when people realize the benefits of the stability and predictability, particularly of Blue Owl products. So this is not an alt generic statement.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

I mean, clearly, there's a different tone these days toward private equity, for example. But income oriented, inflation protected, downside protected strategies resonate loud. And it's exactly in this environment where those strategies for individual investments, individual investors and their FAs shine. When everything is rosy, everything looks rosy. When things are volatile, all of a sudden, there's a reason to pay attention.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And guess what? Our products performed great during this last quarter. Our products continue to perform great. We continue to deliver great income every month to our investors. So I think we're actually quite optimistic.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Just like in institutional markets, after a period of dislocation, we tend to come out ahead. Again, I'm not trying to guess what happens in a week, in a month, but I am saying this kind of environment I wanna say this with the right words. We don't want the world to look like this, but this is a very good time for us. We win coming out of environments like this.

[Brian Mckenna, Director - Equity Research at Citizens JMP]

Super helpful. Thanks, Mark.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Bill Katz from TD Cowen is up next.

[William (Bill) katz, Senior Equity Analyst at TD Cowen]

Okay. Thank you very much. I'm having some difficulty on my end as well. Just maybe I might have missed a little bit of this. Think during your prepared comments you had mentioned that the you expect the institutional business to accelerate a little bit as the year unfolds.

[William (Bill) katz, Senior Equity Analyst at TD Cowen]

I was wondering if you could unpack and talk about some of the drivers underneath that, whether it be by product or some of the more recent platforms you picked up, I think maybe be curious about IPI and Adalaya respectively. And then just a technical question. On the transaction fees, I was a little disappointed in that it sort of dropped sequentially despite the originations being pretty durable quarter to quarter. I was wondering if you could help unpack what the drivers are of that

[William (Bill) katz, Senior Equity Analyst at TD Cowen]

as we look ahead. Thank you.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Sure. Thanks, Bill. Just on the latter point, I guess I'd call out we've talked about in previous quarters that's going to ebb and flow depending on the nature of what's in the gross origination number. And so that will move up and down a little quarter to quarter. I don't think there's much to read through in that.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And just to note, remember, gross originations actually were lower this quarter than last. Net originations were higher. So there's a couple of different dynamics to unpack in there. I mean, obviously, net originations and capital going to work are a good thing. Gross originations would be the number that would drive potential transaction fees.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

But if I could just, for one moment, look, our transaction fees are less predictable, just like everybody else's. But they're a tiny piece of our business, and we're not minimizing that they were lower. Look, I prefer they'd be higher too. They were lower this quarter than last. I don't know what they'll be this quarter or the next quarter.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

It's clearly the part of our business, in the grand scheme of things, that's least predictable. But that's the part of our business that's least predictable. I mean we're talking about a tiny piece of our business around the edges. Every one of our peers has massive amounts of capital in transaction fees, which is introducing that volatility into a huge and I'm not trying to say that as a pejorative, saying our model is so different. So we're ignoring your point.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Yes, we prefer them to be a little bit higher too. But in the scheme of our business and the trajectory over the next five years, the transaction fees are a sideshow. They will be up. They will be down. But actually, number, if you took a step back, does logically follow the gross origination pattern.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

On the institutional flows, I guess I'll start by saying we expect to have, as we've been expecting as we approach the year, Flagship funds in the market, we have GP stake six as we've talked about that we've told will be back end loaded. We've talked about real estate seven, which we expect to be out in the market and fundraising and doing closes in the second half of the year. We have some other adjacent opportunities, some new products, real estate credit, and some others that we are out fundraising talking to folks about. And so our expectation was 1Q would be a little lower and we would have stronger 2Q, 3Q, 4Q because of the timing of some of our more flagship size funds.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And I'll unpack one other dimension of that. Look, we're winning new LPs. We're winning in new markets. This is obviously look, it's a harder overall fundraising environment. That's just an obvious fact around the world.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

However, we are winning. Of the new of the LPs that invested in this quarter, half were new to us. Half were first time commitments to this firm. I mean, think about that. That's a tremendous opportunity for us.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

That's a tremendous win. We are now deeply penetrating, for example, The Middle East. Middle East, which had, of course, not been a meaningful market for us five years ago, has become a very, very powerful partner for us, particularly driven by real assets. So as you've just noted, like IPI, brings with it whole new geographies and partnerships. So look, we've been investing for years in building the wealth channel and the institutional channel.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And we are harvesting the benefits of those now, and we'll see that harvest, we think, continue to grow through the year. So we like where we sit. Again, we're not trying to be a Pollyanna. In this overall world, there's no doubt that institutional fundraising has its own headwinds collectively for the industry, but I think we like our position.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Next, Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America has the next question. Craig, you there? Craig, your line is open. Please check your mute button.

[Craig Siegenthaler, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Can you guys hear me okay?

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Yes. We can. Hey, Craig.

[Craig Siegenthaler, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Oh, there we go.

[Craig Siegenthaler, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Okay. Alright. So good morning, Mark. Hope everyone's doing well. Our question is on GP stakes.

[Craig Siegenthaler, Managing Director at Bank of America]

So imagine fees and GP stakes look a little light relative to fearing AUM growth. So I was hoping you could explain what drove the decline and more importantly help us with the 2Q run rate.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Sure. Why don't I do the last part there, Craig? So two things I think is what you're seeing in the 1Q numbers. We had some small catch up fees in 4Q, that folks may have run rated last quarter. And we had, if you recall, the GP Stakes Fund IV had a fee step down last quarter.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

It was at the October. So it was two months' worth of a fee step down. And obviously, this quarter, it's a full quarter, so three months. What I'll tell you is not just for GP stakes, but this quarter was a very clean quarter from a management fee perspective. So very good run rate, no real catch up fees in our numbers across our business.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Thanks, Alan.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

We'll take the next question from Steven Chubak, Wolfe Research.

[Steven Chubak, Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC]

Hi, good morning.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Good morning, Steve.

[Steven Chubak, Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC]

I hope you're both doing well. So I wanted to ask just on some of the spread and pricing dynamics that you're seeing in the market. Just given the recent widening in high yield credit spreads, what have you seen in terms of spreads in the private markets, the types of returns you're generating on new origination activity? And how you see competition evolving versus the BSL market? Is there any evidence of bank retrenchment?

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Sure. So look, dislocated environments, we all know, are good for us and good for our business in terms of originations and things like spreads. It's very early, so I can't give you a meaningful statistical answer yet, right? This reset takes some time to roll through a private market versus the public market. But let's start with a couple of facts.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

The syndicated market has essentially shut down. So in terms of competition with the BSL market, that is exactly what happens rather instantaneously. And we've been making this point about the sort of on and off nature of public markets and the durable longer cycle nature of private credit, which, by the way, is really good for the economy, but certainly good for our business too. So I believe there was the longest stretch of time, fifteen days without a single deal being launched, which is the longest period of time in something like decades of that ten years that we've gone, ten years without fifteen days of launching a deal. So I mean, look how abrupt these markets are.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

It's exactly the reason the BSL market it's important we have a BSL market. I really mean that. We don't wish it to be unhealthy. But it's so on again, off again. It's only proving the reason people should partner with private credit.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We will come out of this period of time, I expect, with yet again more market share and more firms committed to using the private market because they see the value. Yes, they pay more. Yes, they have a more stringent document. Yes, they have more invasive due diligence. Those are all the things that go with doing our job well to protect the capital, but we give something.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We give the predictability, the privacy of the partnership and this market proves it. In terms of spreads, I would expect spreads will start to wind Again, we always kind of operate in this band. If you look over many years now, when the BSL market goes away, it's a factor when people there's more dependence on private capital, more value and predictability and partnership, we rise to the higher end of that band. When everything is wide open, we move to the lower end of that band.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And I think we'll now start to migrate back up. I can't prove it yet. It's awfully early. We're starting to see it. We certainly think our capital is more valuable in this environment, and we certainly expect to see spreads start to widen, but it will potentially take a little bit of time for that to roll through.

[Steven Chubak, Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC]

That's great color. Thanks for

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

We will take the next question from Alex Blostein, Goldman Sachs.

[Alex Blostein, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Hey, guys. Good morning. Another question for you around just retail. It is super encouraging to see that retail flows are holding up well for you guys and the industry broadly. Definitely a bit counter perhaps to what people used to thinking about when it comes to retail and volatility.

[Alex Blostein, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

I thought you guys said retail is tracking well. I was hoping you can characterize that just in a little bit more detail how April is shaping up relative to last couple of months. And bigger picture question just around strategy. We've seen a number of the large alternative managers now partner and have a JV with very sizable traditional firms. Curious how you guys are thinking about that and how big of a part of the strategy on a go forward basis you think that needs to be in order to succeed in this channel?

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Thanks, Alex. I'll take the first part. And then on the partnerships, I'll hand that over to Mark. We're tracking well against prior months. So what that means is we're about 20% down from where we saw flows last month.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Last month, if you recall, was kind of what I would call a regular way month. We didn't have we have some distributors now that will do quarterly closes and we see that in March. And so April was a very clean month from a run rate perspective and we're seeing that about 20% down for the May 1 close. So feel very good about that. You certainly couldn't imagine a scenario where it's down much more meaningfully than that.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

But again, because we've got our products are really performing extraordinarily well in these markets and they're very NAV stable type products, income oriented products. So we feel good about where we are today, and we'll see how that continues.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Yes. With regard to partnerships between traditional asset managers and alt firms, look, we're very, very happy to see these seedlings being planted. At the moment, they're seedlings. They're ideas, mostly announcements. If you look in terms of kind of what is it really at the moment, they're mostly they're actually really not all that new.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Kind of liquid loan products with a little bit of private sprinkled in to try to create some incremental return. I don't say that to diminish it, but it's not a very earth shattering development yet. People have not really cracked any meaningful codes. We're absolutely working on some meaningful partnerships. We prefer to have something that really has kind of a tangible output and really is more about delivering true private solutions into these broader channels.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

These liquid solutions are fine with a smattering of private. That's not ultimately a high margin business, and it's not really particularly new. But we're very happy to see the kind of creative work that our peers are doing. And over the long term, I would expect these will be useful partnerships for our industry and give us additional access to a broader set of individual investors. And yes, you can certainly safely assume we've been deeply engaged in those conversations.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And over time, I expect we will have strategies of our own to discuss with you all.

[Alex Blostein, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Very well. Thank you.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Your next question comes from Patrick Davitt, Autonomous Research.

[Patrick Davitt, Partner at Autonomous Research]

Hi. Good morning,

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Good morning, Patrick.

[Patrick Davitt, Partner at Autonomous Research]

Quick follow-up on that last answer. To to be clear, you mean May 1 was 20% lower than April 1?

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

That that's our current expectation. Yeah.

[Patrick Davitt, Partner at Autonomous Research]

Yeah. Okay. Cool. And then, my my higher level question was, you mentioned that the non US leads coming online, and adding, you know, 250,000,000 to, the baseline, in March. Is that $250,000,000 of baseline we should expect each quarter?

[Patrick Davitt, Partner at Autonomous Research]

And then could you update us on the pipeline of other non U. S. Sleeves like that coming online and layering on through the rest of the year? Thank you.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Sure. I'll take that, Patrick. So look, we continue to we're really excited about this. We continue to broaden the existing relationships we have both domestically and globally. We continue to try to think about unique and differentiated ways to grow our wealth distribution platform.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

And this is exactly one of those areas where we can create local feeders for local geographies. They can come into usually on a monthly basis, sometimes on a quarterly basis. It's up to the local distributor to decide whether they turn it on, on any given quarter. But we're optimistic that we can continue to see whether it's the one we have in place, some new ones that we come online over time. But we're excited about what we're doing here, we think it will continue to grow.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And these are and so some of them, like the ones you saw with March, these are recurring quarterly close partnerships. So yes, which is to say, yes, you'll continue to see a final month of each quarter will have a boost in it that comes from the quarterly closure. So as we add the international distribution in this case, that brings a quarterly rhythm as opposed to a monthly rhythm.

[Patrick Davitt, Partner at Autonomous Research]

Great. Thanks.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

We'll go next to Chris Kotowski, Oppenheimer.

[Chris Kotowski, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Yeah, morning. Thanks. Most of mine have been asked, but just looking at Page 26 and the gap between the fee related earnings and the distributable earnings was larger this quarter and looks like it was primarily the tax rate. And I'm thinking there must be a seasonal component to that. And what should we expect kind of for a full year tax rate or expense?

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Sure. Thanks, Chris. So we had our TRA payment in 1Q. We had our that's a normal cadence for us. We paid our TRA payment in 1Q of twenty twenty four as well.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

So what you're going to see consistently from us is we have a very low effective tax rate. I've given guidance for 2025 that, that will be we expect mid to high single digits. And so what you're going to see is a meaningfully higher effective tax rate in 1Q, call it 17% and change, and then it's going to come significantly down and that will be low to mid single digit percent, effective tax rate for 2Q, 3Q and 4Q.

[Chris Kotowski, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay.

[Chris Kotowski, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

And same pattern next year, I assume.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Yeah. Yeah. And we have disclosure in our in our k. When we file our k in February each year, we put what we estimate to be the TRA payments each year for the next number of years. So we try to put that information out there for everyone to see.

[Chris Kotowski, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay. And then finally, did you give an indication of an expected timeline to the final close on the GP stakes flagship fund?

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So we expect it will probably drift into early twenty twenty six total. We'll see. Look, our GP stakes fund, I think you all know this, but let me say it out loud because I think for reasons I'm not clear on, people have not modeled it this way, but we've said it this way. We expect it to be back end loaded just like it was last time, just like it's been before. Look, we're off to a very strong start.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

It is true that people then often like to see some of the deal activity, some of the investment activity. We've actually now done the first investment in that product, making an investment in Veritas, which is something we've had a long partnership with. So it's a great example, a, it's an A plus firm, great firm doing a great job. And b, it demonstrates the power, again, of incumbency and being the go to partner. And so I we have a pretty nice active pipeline.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So as those roll through, I expect that will continue to contribute to people accelerating or gaining traction on finishing up the fund. So but we should assume that it'll probably go into early twenty twenty six in terms of wrapping it up.

[Chris Kotowski, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay. And then you don't recognize the catch up fees upfront but amortize them over the remaining life of the fund, right?

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

That's generally right, Chris.

[Chris Kotowski, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Okay. All righty. Thanks. That's it for me. Thank you.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

And the next question is Crispin Love, Piper Sandler.

[Crispin Love, Director at Piper Sandler Companies]

Thanks. Good morning. Alan, in the past, I believe you've talked about 2025 FRE margins in the 57% to 58% range. Margins were a little softer in the first quarter. So can you talk to your expectations and what type of cadence you'd expect for margin throughout the year and if that 57% to 58% level still stands?

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Sure. Thanks for the question, Crispin. We do expect we continue to expect and we posted this quarter an FRE margin between 5758%. And then we still stick with that guidance. We still fully expect that we'll come in 57% to 58

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

The next question is from Mike Brown, KBW.

[Michael C. Brown, Equity Research Analyst - Asset Managers, Brokers and Exchanges at Wells Fargo]

Hi. This is, Mike Brown from Wells Fargo. You for taking my question. Hey, just a high level question for me. I wanted to ask on the non traded BDC market.

[Michael C. Brown, Equity Research Analyst - Asset Managers, Brokers and Exchanges at Wells Fargo]

So if the Fed cuts come through, as the market expects, it seems like the for the industry, the dividends, likely move lower. What are the potential offsets that, could kind of mitigate that base rate pressure? And then in a scenario of lower dividend yields, do you think investor behavior shifts at all? Like do you think flows hold up? I guess do they hold up?

[Michael C. Brown, Equity Research Analyst - Asset Managers, Brokers and Exchanges at Wells Fargo]

Because I guess you'd still have a high relative yield. So maybe if it's 8% or 9%, they can still flow well? Or just curious how you think about that versus the kind of 10% plus yield that they run at today.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So let me I mean I want to emphasize something just to make a point, and then I'll get right into details of your question. You said, well, if it turns out rates go lower, like now, the market expects I mean, think about the volatility in that statement and expectations. That really is the heart of why our products are so great. And this particular product, the direct lending product for Bluewalla is so great. It's about downside protection, about inflation protections, which by the way, inflation numbers look higher, right, not lower yesterday, and about interest rate flow through.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So what happens in a lower rate environment? Well, sure. Yeah. The base rate goes lower. But of course, what we're really delivering is incremental return.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And in fact, in the environment you're describing and probably the environment we're in right now, a choppier public market, as we just talked about, more value on predictable capital, I would expect spreads come up. So actually, all things equal, the net of that, hard, of course, to say. But you probably actually take incremental spread with a lower rate than a higher rate with lower spread because that's actually incremental value add from the manager. But fund flows, we've been in that environment. Remember, we operated in a 0% rate environment.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Fund flows have been extremely strong through multiple years, low rates, high rates. So no, we don't think that does anything meaningful for flows because really, we're going to deliver in that case an even incrementally sort of better return than the risk free rate, so to speak. So I think we feel very good about that kind of environment for our products. And in fact, probably, last thing I'd say, if we want to deduce that lower rates must correlate with some kind of slowing economy or fear about the economy, then people should move defensive. They should move into this product even more because that's where, most importantly of all, our products are about principle predictability and stability and preservation.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And that's exactly when people at their FAs

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

are going

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

want to pay even more attention to that question.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

And let's just flash back a couple of years. We built our business on the credit side in zero rate environments with super tight spreads. And so that comment Mark made on a relative basis is really important.

[Michael C. Brown, Equity Research Analyst - Asset Managers, Brokers and Exchanges at Wells Fargo]

And I'm sure folks would kind of like the lack of volatility in the non traded product as well, right?

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Without a doubt.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Absolutely. Listen, people that are in our products today are getting their get in monthly payments. Right? And right now, we're typically doing, what, 10%, eleven % yields. I mean, it works, which is why it's working.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

Compelling. Thank you, Mike.

[Ben Budish, Director at Barclays]

Thanks for taking my question.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

We'll take the next question from Benjamin Butish, Barclays.

[Ben Budish, Director at Barclays]

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just

[Ben Budish, Director at Barclays]

wondering if

[Ben Budish, Director at Barclays]

you could talk a little bit about your near term expectations for deployment, thoughts on the pipeline, how should we think about gross versus net? And curious if you could provide any color on any changes you're seeing in terms of loan documentation, LP protections, portability, PIK utilization. It seems like last year when things got more competitive, we were seeing at least more headlines about things like PIK utilization. So what sort of trends are you seeing with borrowers? How is the pipeline kind of shaking up on a

[Ben Budish, Director at Barclays]

gross versus net basis? Thank you.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Sure. I think maybe I'll let me hit deployment in we already talked about what was happening with GP stakes. So let me hit deployment in credit and real assets. I appreciate the questions you raised were more particular to private credit. So there's two intersecting lines or two moving pieces, and I can't tell you the net of it in the short term.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

I think I can give you a pretty good read in the medium term. In the short term, the negative is just lower M and A. That's obvious to all of us, right? There's just less M and A in the world right now given the uncertainties. The other side is market share, right?

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Market share comes to us during these kinds of environments. In fact, there really is no meaningful syndicated market. Someone can sign up for it, but I know what they think they might get. So at the end of the day, those two are going to be moving in opposite directions. The net of it all is a little hard to say, but they are offsetting.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Over the medium term, here is the structural reality. We're going have more people come to our market, more people see that it's worth using, and then the PE firms are going to eventually spend that capital. And we, like everybody else, thought first quarter might have been that unlock. Obviously, that didn't happen. But those trillions of dollars in dry powder and PE hands are going to work eventually.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So if we pick up our market share, which I expect we will through this volatile time, and then those dollars go to work, that's a net benefit for us in terms of putting capital to work. So yes, short term, let's all acknowledge the uncertainty of what's the offset between market share versus just M and A activity, And we'll monitor that, of course, closely. It doesn't really matter to our business model. At the end of the day, we can pay these fixed fees. It's just in fact, our net originations were higher this quarter than last.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So there's a lot of variables, none of which matter much to the performance of our Blue Owl business. But to answer your question on the specifics of the market, we have offsetting variables, TBD, what that exactly means. In terms of and also, on the dimensions you described, let me spend just a minute on, look, the attributes of the loans continue to be really this is the thing we've been trying to emphasize and always will matter to us most. Quality of borrower is paramount. And our quality has continued to be extremely high.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

You mentioned a series of different attributes of loans. And there as you point out, there's a long list of different things to go into a bespoke solution each time. But let me observe this. Our overall loan book continues to perform great. Our non accruals, in fact, the number of companies on non accrual went down this last quarter, not up.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And so we continue to sit in a really healthy place, and the new credits we're doing, we very much like. And last thing I want to emphasize is something about pick because it does tend to come up in the financial world, but also in the press. There's two kinds of pick. We've said this before. There's the pick by design because it's an extremely durable, low LTV cap structure with a huge equity check and a really great business, and it's about giving the company by design ability to invest in its own growth, I.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Software companies. And then there's pick not by design. And you have to. You have to draw the distinction. And let me say it with great and equal clarity.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Pick by design is actually from our point of view, usually an extremely good sign. We do that in our strongest credits. Those tend to be our lowest loan to value biggest businesses. So pick by design in our software product is a good thing. That means we and the sponsor see that as a particularly strong credit with particularly big opportunities ahead of it.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Pick because you had to go from cash pay to pick is a bad thing. There's no other way to describe that. That's not a healthy development. So watch people's portfolios, watch migration from non pick to pick, not helpful. And we have some of those.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We always will. That's part of it. We have 400 companies, and we equally hold ourselves to that standard. But don't use the blunt instrument of picked as a share of a portfolio. That's meaningless.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And point of fact, picked as a share of a portfolio is higher in our software business. And say this the right way, aren't isn't everyone who's invested in software credits today? We've been saying this for years. Thrilled that that's where they are. Take a look at what's happening.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Supply chain? Don't have one. Exposure to China? Don't have any. I mean, about the things that are now a risk for most companies in the world, not a risk for our software businesses.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So we're sitting here with our tech portfolio is exactly where you want to be. And yet, it does have a higher percentage pick by design. So sorry to go deep on that, but I think it's quite important to unpack these variables and avoid sort of the blunt instrument usage. Last thing let me talk about is real estate on deployment. Deployment is excellent in real assets, both in real estate and in IPI.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

These markets are really the best we've seen, and we are seeing very strong deployments. So let me give you an example. Real Estate Fund VI is now 41% called and 90% committed. That fund is basically wrapped up. And objective statistics, it's the best set of statistics in a fund we've ever had in real estate.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Right now, we that fund has an average of a 7.8 cap rate, seventeen year average lease duration with 2.7% average built in rent growth. Think about those attributes for a minute. Those are the best objective statistics we've had in the history of our triple net lease real estate funds. So in our IPI, we've clearly talked about it. I mean, that product, demand so far exceeds the supply of combination of capital and skills.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We are one of the very few people that have both. It's a very complicated business to build. Once you build it, couldn't be a better asset to own. It's these types of attributes, except in that case, in every instance, you talk about companies with trillion dollar market caps and very, very strong investment grade rates, in the case of Microsoft, reigning better than the U. S.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Government.

[Ben Budish, Director at Barclays]

All right. Thank you for the color, Mark.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

And we'll take a question from Ken Worthington, JPMorgan.

[Ken Worthington, Financial Analyst at JP Morgan]

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.

[Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO at Blue Owl Capital]

You're you're pretty muffled.

[Ken Worthington, Financial Analyst at JP Morgan]

Oh, sorry. Let me let me let me try anyway. And if I can, I'll re re queue. Blue Owl has been building and diversifying its business, wealth, real estate, insurance, and others. The expansion has been largely domestically domestically focused.

[Ken Worthington, Financial Analyst at JP Morgan]

Since changes in the value of the dollar and the treasury suggest increased interest outside The U. S, what are your thoughts about global expansion of the franchise? I know you have a lot on your plate, but does it make sense to to expand outside The US, and is this something in your line of vision?

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Well, let's let's let's take that a couple ways. So look. We're very fortunate that we raised capital from all over the world. And in fact, that's an accelerated opportunity for us. So I mentioned before, The Middle East has been a tremendously growing market from our point of view.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

So that's been so our global footprint for capital is large. Our global footprint for deployment in select areas is strong. We in fact, we just announced our first triple net lease real estate Europe deal for our triple net lease Europe product, which, again, brand new product to our array and one that we think is going be very successful. IPI operates globally because IPI is working with global enterprises, and they have data centers all over the world, and we work with them all over the world to do it. The key here is really risk and return.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We love the fact that 90%, and it is 90%, of our firm's capital is deployed in The U. S. Because we're in the downside protection business. We can have a wide range of opinions about current policies and trajectories in The U. S.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And the global economy. But in terms of safety and security and where you put your money, you'd much rather be inside Fortress USA than outside Fortress USA. Everyone, for reasons we understand, are very anxious about what's happening in Asia and the dynamics between China and The U. S. One Percent of our capital is in APAC.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

I appreciate that has maybe been an exciting story for some people over time. It doesn't seem so exciting right now. We're not about excitement. We're about delivering really steady results. So we'll follow the right kind of users of our capital wherever they wish to be as we have.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

We'll raise capital around the world. And where there are markets that are stable and attractive and we can earn incremental return without taking incremental risk or more than proportionate to incremental risk? Absolutely. But we have no grand ambition to just go around the world to go around the world. I think sitting here today, you can see why going around the world just to go around the world may now introduce a tremendous amount of risk that frankly Blue Owl doesn't have.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

And everyone, that is all the time we have for questions I'd like to hand things back to Mr. Mark Lipschultz for any additional or closing remarks.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Thanks, everybody, for the time. We know how busy it is. It's a volatile time. This like almost silly statement, the new certainty is uncertainty. I I think that's true.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

I mean, so as we march through, I guess, the last two things I wanna come back to are this. There's two things about Blue Owl that you should remember in this environment. Our products are built to thrive in times of uncertainty. That's when our investors truly benefit from the durable, predictable strategy to BlueOwl. That puts us in a better position to win.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

Second, BlueOwl as a firm, the Owl stock, which we're here talking about, was built to be predictable and durable through, again, times of volatility and uncertainty, and you saw it again. We had a great quarter. Our quarter and our march toward our strategic goals is, as you can see, we continue to pace along. We do not have carry. We don't have all the volatility other people have, and that's a purpose built model.

[Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Blue Owl Capital]

And I think in this, why I hope it's already coming through, why Blue Owl is just fundamentally a different business model in the world of alts. And candidly, we're quite excited about where we are and where we're going. So anyway, thank you all very much for the time today.

[Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations at Blue Owl Capital]

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. We would like to thank you all for your participation today. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Marc Lipschultz, Co-Chief Executive Officer
• Alan Kirshenbaum, CFO
• Ann Dai, MD & Head of Investor Relations

Analysts

• Glenn Schorr, Senior Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst at Evercore
• Brian Mckenna, Director - Equity Research at Citizens JMP
• William (Bill) katz, Senior Equity Analyst at TD Cowen
• Craig Siegenthaler, Managing Director at Bank of America
• Steven Chubak, Managing Director at Wolfe Research LLC
• Alex Blostein, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
• Patrick Davitt, Partner at Autonomous Research
• Chris Kotowski, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
• Crispin Love, Director at Piper Sandler Companies
• Michael C. Brown, Equity Research Analyst - Asset Managers, Brokers and Exchanges at Wells Fargo
• Ben Budish, Director at Barclays
• Ken Worthington, Financial Analyst at JP Morgan