Brookfield Asset Management Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 6, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Brookfield delivered its highest quarterly earnings growth since going public, with fee related earnings of $698 million (up 26% y/y) and distributable earnings of $654 million (up 20% y/y), supported by a 20% increase in fee-bearing capital to $550 billion.
  • The firm raised $25 billion in Q1 and over $140 billion in the past 12 months across diversified strategies, including a record $16 billion close for its flagship real estate fund and $16 billion for its opportunistic credit strategy.
  • Brookfield deployed $16 billion into global opportunities and divested $22 billion of assets in Q1, generating $9 billion of equity proceeds and demonstrating strong capital recycling in a volatile market.
  • Its private credit platform expanded to over $320 billion AUM, underpinned by the acquisition of Angel Oak, increased Oaktree ownership to ~74%, and a goal to more than double credit assets over five years.
  • The company bolstered its balance sheet by issuing $750 million 10-year senior notes at high-grade ratings, maintaining $1.4 billion in liquidity, and returned capital via a $0.4375 quarterly dividend and opportunistic share repurchases.
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Earnings Conference Call
Brookfield Asset Management Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brookfield Asset Management First Quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Jason Fooks, Managing Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jason Fooks
Jason Fooks
Managing Director of Investor Relations at Brookfield Asset Management

Thank you for joining us today for Brookfield Asset Management's earnings call. On the call today, we have Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, Connor Teskey, our President, and Hadley Peer Marshall, our Chief Financial Officer. Bruce will start the call today with an overview of the quarter and then cover how our scale and strategy position us well to navigate the current market environment and to continue to deliver long-term growth. Connor will follow up and cover how our platform and ecosystem give us a strategic advantage in capital raising and deployment. Finally, Hadley will discuss our financial results, balance sheet strength, and recent strategic initiatives. After our formal comments, we will turn the call over to the operator and take analyst questions. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we ask that you refrain from asking more than two questions at one time.

Jason Fooks
Jason Fooks
Managing Director of Investor Relations at Brookfield Asset Management

If you have additional questions, please rejoin the queue, and we'll be happy to take additional questions at the end if time permits. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives and our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable U.S. and Canadian securities law. These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They're subject to known and unknown risks, and the future events and results may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and their potential impact on our company, please see our filings with securities regulators in the U.S. and Canada in the information available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Bruce Flatt
Bruce Flatt
CEO at Brookfield Asset Management

Thank you, Jason, and to everyone joining us on the call. We had a strong start to the year, marking our highest quarterly earnings growth since we went public. Fee-related earnings reached a record $698 million for the quarter, up 26% year over year, or $0.43 per share. Distributable earnings grew by 20% to $654 million, or $0.40 per share. Fee-bearing capital now stands at approximately $550 billion, up 20% compared to last year. This performance reflects the continued strength and global reach of our business. We raised $25 billion of capital this quarter, bringing total inflows over the past year to more than $140 billion. Importantly, exemplifying the resilience of our business, we closed $6 billion of commitments during the first quarter for our flagship real estate strategy, bringing total capital to $16 billion.

Bruce Flatt
Bruce Flatt
CEO at Brookfield Asset Management

When we round out the strategy with the last retail and regional sleeves, this will be our largest real estate strategy ever. We also had a final close of our opportunistic credit strategy on par with our largest ever for this strategy at $16 billion. We are very active on the deployment and monetization front as well. In total, we deployed $16 billion into opportunities globally, and we sold $22 billion of assets. This generated $9 billion of equity proceeds during the quarter. Together, these results demonstrate the strength and the resilience of our platform, even in a volatile environment. Recently, the broader market faced heightened volatility, and equity markets reacted sharply. Despite this, we remain confident in our long-term strategy as the secular trends underpinning our business continue to accelerate.

Bruce Flatt
Bruce Flatt
CEO at Brookfield Asset Management

Whether it's the growth in demand for AI infrastructure, the rising global need for energy, or the increasing role private credit plays in capital markets, these trends continue to drive capital market flows globally. We have leadership positions around these secular drivers, having built deep expertise, operational capabilities, and global scale. We believe we have never been better positioned to capitalize. The current environment favors scale, expertise, and capital. Periods of uncertainty often lead to attractive opportunities as they can create compelling valuation and entry points for investors with scale and experience. This kind of environment is not too new to us. We've navigated many similar challenges before. At the onset of COVID, we maintained our discipline, stayed focused on our long-term strategy, and invested when many others hesitated.

Bruce Flatt
Bruce Flatt
CEO at Brookfield Asset Management

To make a point, since then, we have raised over $400 billion of capital, nearly doubled our fee-related earnings, and are now better positioned than ever before. Our franchise is more global, more diversified, and more capable. At the center of all of this is our investment and operating teams representing our capabilities in more than 30 countries. This gives us unmatched flexibility to direct capital to the most attractive opportunities globally. We also have a high-quality, durable earnings base to support the business. Our cash flows are 100% comprised of fee-related earnings, of which approximately 95% are derived from capital that is either long-term or perpetual in nature. This provides a stable and predictable foundation for distributable earnings. The ongoing growth of our fee-bearing capital base, supported by strong fundraising, deployment, and monetization, gives us conviction that these earnings will continue to compound over time, irrespective of the environment.

Bruce Flatt
Bruce Flatt
CEO at Brookfield Asset Management

Our investments are focused on essential assets: power, infrastructure, real estate, and critical business services. These businesses operate locally, serve domestic demand, and are often highly contracted or regulated. That makes them less exposed to global shocks and tariffs and more attractive in periods of uncertainty where investors seek consistency. We also benefit from our diversification across asset classes, allowing us to pivot to different strategies and across region. This ensures we can capitalize on dislocation whenever or wherever it may emerge. Taken together, our client relationships, scale, brand, access to capital, and long-term track record enable us to maintain steady growth through volatility. Looking ahead, our priorities are very clear. We will continue to stay disciplined. We'll lean into scale and with our capabilities, and we will continue to find opportunities in market dislocation.

Bruce Flatt
Bruce Flatt
CEO at Brookfield Asset Management

Our experience over many cycles has shown us that by focusing on these priorities in times of uncertainty not only helps us navigate through them but allows us to emerge stronger. We expect to grow through this market cycle as we have in previous ones, just the same. I will now turn it over to Connor and Hadley, who will go deeper into our portfolio, our liquidity position, capital allocation, and the details of our recent deployment and monetization activities. Thank you all for joining us today.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

Thank you, Bruce, and good morning to everyone on the call. As Bruce outlined, the past few months have seen heightened uncertainty, and while public markets have experienced swings, private markets have remained relatively stable. During these periods, investors turn to proven global platforms with strong track records and trusted partnerships. That has always been a core strength of Brookfield Asset Management. While parts of the industry may be more directly affected by today's volatility, our diversification across strategies, sectors, and geographies continues to give us a competitive edge and the ability to extend our lead. These competitive advantages were illustrated by our successful fundraise for our real estate strategy this quarter.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

Despite a more challenging fundraising environment for real estate in recent years, we secured commitments from many of the world's largest and most sophisticated investors, demonstrating their strong conviction in our strategy and platform and providing us with substantial fresh capital to invest at an especially attractive point in the cycle. These results reinforce why we believe our platform, across segments, is uniquely positioned to thrive. Our scale, diversification, and long-term relationships allow us to continue raising and investing capital behind the global secular trends of decarbonization, deglobalization, and digitalization, as well as the growing role of private credit. A key source of that advantage lies in the types of assets we own and operate. They are not only diversified; they are essential. Our portfolio is anchored in essential real assets and critical business services, sectors that have historically demonstrated strong resilience through economic cycles.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

While no business is entirely immune to broader market forces, the nature of our assets provides resiliency to these short-term headwinds. Many benefit from inflation-linked revenues or regulated pricing structures, which allow us to effectively manage rising input costs and preserve cash flows. We saw this play out during the recent inflationary cycle. Cash flows across much of our portfolio not only kept pace with but, in many cases, outperformed inflation. We've also been preparing for macro shifts like deglobalization for several years. This has led to large and attractive investment opportunities to help corporates increase manufacturing of critical goods and services closer to home, as well as invest in the resiliency of their supply chains. Within our existing businesses, in anticipation of a more protectionist policy environment, we proactively restructured supply chains and procurement strategies to further bolster this resilience.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

For instance, in our renewables business, where tariffs have been in place for years, we have adopted a domestic procurement strategy supported by long-term local supplier agreements. These actions offer significant cost certainty and put us in a comparatively stronger position versus many others who did not. Periods of uncertainty have also historically created some of the most compelling opportunities to deploy capital, especially for firms like us with the scale, structure, and conviction to act decisively, providing execution certainty. Colonial Pipeline fits this type of deployment. We were able to use our scale capital to limit competition, provide execution certainty that was especially critical in this environment, and value this world-class midstream asset backed by high-quality cash flows with discipline. We are well positioned to continue deploying capital into this environment. We have nearly $120 billion of uncalled long-term-oriented capital ready to deploy.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

Across many markets today, the headlines do not reflect the underlying fundamentals, and that disconnect is creating compelling opportunities. Our ecosystem gives us real-time access to data, insights, and operating feedback from across our global portfolio, which allows us to see through the noise, identify value, and move decisively. This is especially important in a market where volatility is pressuring public valuations, creating entry points that are only accessible to those with true on-the-ground visibility. We fully intend to capitalize on that positioning. While capital is critical, it is our platform's breadth and reputation that unlock differentiated access to opportunities that others may not see. We are increasingly seeing the most sophisticated governments, corporates, and institutions turning to private capital to pursue strategic initiatives. They are choosing Brookfield because we can deliver not only capital at scale but operating experience, speed, certainty, and a proven ability to execute complex transactions.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

This quarter, we announced a EUR 20 billion AI infrastructure commitment alongside the French government and a strategic partnership with Barclays to help it scale its payments platform. Similar to previous partnerships with Intel, Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, and others, these are further examples of our platform's approach to partnerships, which create differentiated proprietary transactions that we are uniquely positioned to execute. Another area where we see tremendous opportunity is private credit. This is an area where we've been rapidly expanding. With over $320 billion in credit AUM today, we now operate one of the largest private credit businesses globally, leveraging our expertise in real asset, corporate, and opportunistic credit. We're just getting started. Our goal is to more than double the size of our credit business over the next five years.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

Periods of illiquidity make our capital even more valuable as private credit fills funding gaps left by traditional lenders and public markets. The pullback from these sources is part of a longer structural trend. It is creating a significant opportunity for our private credit strategies to play an even more meaningful role in providing liquidity when there is less available, allowing us to generate higher returns for lower risk. This opportunity is particularly available to those with leading market knowledge and underwriting capabilities in these market segments, a position where we are unmatched. Over recent quarters, we've made meaningful strategic advancements to complement our existing direct investment capabilities and broaden our platform to meet this rising demand. Over the past couple of months, we acquired a majority stake in Angel Oak, a leading specialized mortgage origination platform and asset manager with more than $18 billion of assets under management.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

This platform adds deep origination capabilities and significantly expands our presence in the U.S. mortgage market. We also increased our ownership stake in Oaktree by 1.5%, raising our total ownership stake to approximately 74%, underscoring our long-term commitment to our partnership. With fundraising now complete for the latest vintage of our highly successful opportunistic strategy, Oaktree is similarly well positioned to capitalize with significant capital to deploy in this environment. Moments like this are where Oaktree's long-standing disciplined and value-oriented approach is particularly powerful. Throughout every cycle in our history, we have successfully turned volatility into opportunity. We believe this time will be no different. We have the capital, relationships, and track record to move with conviction when others can't and will do so in a disciplined manner and at scale.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

This environment plays to our strengths, and as the environment continues to evolve, our global reach, diversified strategies, and long-term mindset positions us to deliver sustainable, attractive returns for our clients. With that, we will turn the call over to Hadley to cover our financial results.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Thank you, Connor. Today, I'll cover our first quarter performance, fundraising, deployment, and monetization activity. I'll then highlight some of the strategic initiatives we have recently undertaken, including bolstering our balance sheet with an inaugural bond offering backed by our recently obtained high investment-grade ratings, as well as our recent opportunistic repurchase of shares. First, on our financial performance, we had another record quarter of earnings. Fee-related earnings, or FRE, were $698 million or $0.43 per share in the quarter, up 26% from the prior year period, bringing FRE over the last 12 months to $2.6 billion. Distributable earnings, or DE, were $654 million or $0.40 per share in the quarter, up 20% from the prior year period, bringing the last 12 months to $2.5 billion.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Growth in our earnings is largely attributed to our fee-bearing capital base, which currently stands at $549 billion, a 20% increase from the prior year period. This increase is due to two primary sources: fundraising and capital deployment. Over the past 12 months, we raised $142 billion, of which 80% began generating fees in the period. In addition, $18 billion of our fee-bearing capital inflows came from the capital that was deployed over the last 12 months. These inflows were partially offset by $21 billion of capital return to clients through distributions from our private funds and permanent capital vehicles. In a market where many sponsors are struggling to generate distribution to paid-in capital, or DPI, this level of distribution reinforces the strength of our business.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Returning capital is fundamental to the investment cycle, and our ability to do so consistently supports our track record of delivering value through both dividends and monetization. Capital formation remained strong in the first quarter. We raised $25 billion, diversified across our flagship strategies, complementary funds, and partner managers. Some of the highlights include in real estate. We raised $7.1 billion, including $5.9 billion for the fifth vintage of our flagship real estate strategy. As mentioned, this is set to be our largest flagship real estate strategy ever. In renewable power and transition business, we raised $1.5 billion, including $700 million for the second vintage of our global transition strategy, bringing total capital raised for that strategy to over $14 billion. We expect to hold a final close for the strategy in the coming months.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

In credit, we raised $14 billion, including $6.3 billion across our partner managers and $6.7 billion from our insurance accounts. We also completed the final close for the 12th vintage of our flagship Opportunistic Credit Fund, bringing total capital raised for that strategy to $16 billion. Overall, we have never been more diversified in our fundraising, with more than 40 strategies raising capital during the quarter. This is a direct result of significant investments we have made in our people and products over the past couple of years, building out fundraising teams and supporting platforms to invest capital. The best is yet to come from these efforts, and we expect to see continued growth and expansion in our business, both throughout the remainder of 2025 and the years to come.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

As we complete final closings for our real estate and transition flagships in the coming months, we expect complementary strategies to drive an increasing share of fundraising in the second half of the year. We also continue to see strong deployment activity, investing $16 billion during the quarter. As Connor mentioned, we have significant available capital and intend to be active in the market as uncertainty creates opportunities. A few notable large-scale transactions that were either signed or closed in the first quarter include in our renewable power and transition business, we invested over $3 billion to complete the privatization of NeoWind, a leading global renewable energy developer. We also committed $1.2 billion to acquire the U.S. renewables business of National Grid. This transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

In our private equity business, we deployed approximately $1 billion to acquire Chemelecs, a global leader in the design and manufacturing of electric heat trace systems. We also committed $800 million toward the acquisition of Antylia Scientific, a leading manufacturer and distributor of specialty consumable products and testing equipment used in quality control and research applications. The deal will close in the second quarter of 2025. After quarter-end, our infrastructure business signed an agreement to acquire the midstream asset portfolio of Colonial Enterprises for $3.4 billion of equity capital, representing $9 billion of enterprise value. The portfolio includes the Colonial Pipeline, the largest refined products pipeline in the United States, and it is expected to close in the second half of 2025. Now, let me turn to our balance sheet and liquidity.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

When we spun out Brookfield Asset Management two and a half years ago, our model was and remains simple and focused. We are a premier alternative asset manager with a strong asset-light balance sheet. We selectively use our balance sheet for two purposes: one, to pursue strategic acquisitions to expand our capabilities, and two, to provide seed capital for the creation of new complementary investment products that will grow and become meaningful revenue generators over time. Since that time, we've strengthened our platform through new partnerships with three leading managers: Castle Lake, Pine Grove, and most recently, Angel Oak, and by increasing our ownership in Oaktree. Altogether, in these, we invested $1.4 billion. We also have existing options in place that provide a clear path to increase our ownership in all of our partner managers over time.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

These options should add more than $250 million to our fee-related earnings over the next five years. This is a meaningful advantage for our business and allows us to increase our ownership in high-quality businesses we know well, deepening alignment, building on an already strong foundation, and positioning us to drive further growth over time. At the same time, we continue to demonstrate strong alignment with our clients by investing meaningful capital alongside them. Since our spinout, the Brookfield Group, that is all the Brookfield affiliates, including Brookfield Asset Management, have collectively committed $16 billion to our fund, with our Brookfield Asset Management share of $1.3 billion focused primarily on seeding smaller new complementary strategies. Overall, our access to liquidity remains strong. We're a top-tier client for our banks and continue to maintain a diversified mix of funding sources.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

To support our growth initiatives, we completed our inaugural bond offering in April, issuing $750 million of 10-year senior unsecured notes with a coupon of 5.795%. This offering received exceptionally strong demand from the market, more than seven times oversubscribed, and we're able to tighten pricing and upsize materially, reflecting investor confidence in our differentiated business, stable earnings profile, and long-term capital base. In connection with the offering, we received high investment-grade ratings of A from Fitch and A- from S&P, underscoring the strength of our asset-light model and the durability of our long-term earnings. At the end of the quarter, we had $1.4 billion of available liquidity, comprising cash, financial assets, and capacity on our revolving credit facility. This does not count our recent bond issuance, nor the capacity at these ratings of over $4 billion of additional debt capacity.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Our goal is to generate increasing cash flows on a per-share basis and to distribute that cash to you by dividend or share repurchases. I'm pleased to confirm that the board approved our quarterly dividend of $0.4375 per share payable on June 30, 2025, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on May 30, 2025. In addition, we repurchased 2.1 million shares of Brookfield Asset Management during the quarter when our stock traded lower in line with the broader market. Given our strong outlook, these were easy purchases to make. In short, our balance sheet is strong and our access to capital is robust. This supports our continued momentum and leaves us well-positioned in the current market. We remain committed to being a world-class asset manager by investing our capital in high-quality assets that earn attractive returns while emphasizing downside protection.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

This wraps up our remarks for this morning. We would like to thank you for joining the call and will now open it up for questions. Operator.

Operator

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Craig Siegenthaler with Bank of America.

Craig Siegenthaler
Craig Siegenthaler
Managing Director at Bank of America

Good morning, everyone. We wanted to start with fundraising and specifically Real Estate Fund 5. We all know real estate isn't the easiest vertical to fundraise today, but you already raised $13 billion. That is a pretty impressive number just given the backdrop. I'm curious, which geographies' channels were helpful for this raise to date? Did the opportunistic element really sell with clients given very limited new construction and the migration of capital away from this vertical?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

Good morning, Craig. I'll start by just correcting you in a positive way. We've already raised $16 billion for this strategy. It is well on track to be our largest real estate strategy raise ever. It is really capitalizing on, I would say, three things that you mentioned there. One, the fundamentals are incredibly strong right now. The world needs more great real estate, but there is a very significant lack of new supply in major markets and high-quality assets around the world that is creating a very robust supply-demand dynamic in those who can bring capital to the market. The second thing is there is no doubt some legacy capital structures that are not well-suited for the current interest rate environment, and that is going to create very attractive opportunities to buy high-quality assets with imperfect capital structures at significant discounts to replacement costs.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

That is actually what this strategy already has been doing early in its vintage. The last point is very much that different asset classes in different geographies around the world in their real estate cycle will trough at different points in time. The strength of this fundraise was very indicative that investors realized this fund will deploy capital from 12 months ago to two or three years into the future. No doubt, we are going to catch the bottom during that timeframe. That made this a vintage that many of our most sophisticated and large-scale partners did not want to miss. Maybe just to close out, in terms of where we saw significant demand this quarter, very broad-based, but I would highlight strength in the U.S. market.

Craig Siegenthaler
Craig Siegenthaler
Managing Director at Bank of America

Interesting. U.S. market, Connor, I wasn't expecting that one. Let me go for my follow-up into BII, your Private Wealth Infrastructure Fund. It launched like 17 months ago, and you haven't had a down month. On the distribution front, what channels, geographies is it in today? Do you see any sizable platform ads coming in 2025?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

Great. BII continues to show success. I would say just in terms of our growth through retail and high net worth, even since investor day when we profiled this business, we're even more optimistic today about the growth trajectory going forward. In terms of how we've approached retail and high net worth, very similar to what we've done in our institutional business, we very much focused on being globally diversified. We feel that's particularly important for these types of products that do offer semi-liquidity to the investors, that we feel having a diverse investor base is the right way to build the strategy over the long term. Just in terms of the performance, we expect more of that to come. We're leveraging our best-in-class infrastructure platform and building a portfolio of exceptionally high-quality assets that work well in a perpetual vehicle like BII.

Craig Siegenthaler
Craig Siegenthaler
Managing Director at Bank of America

Thanks, Connor.

Operator

Our next question comes from Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Cowen.

Cherilyn Radbourne
Cherilyn Radbourne
Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at TD Cowen

Thanks very much and good morning. I wanted to start by asking a question about your perspective on some of the new product introductions across the industry, which kind of blur the lines between public and private assets. Is that something that you're working on from a product development perspective?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

First and foremost, the headlines and some of the partnerships you see being announced, and in particular, the interactions between more traditional securities managers and alternative managers, we think underscores an incredibly large and important trend, which is that alternatives are increasingly becoming part of a standard investment portfolio for all types of investors. A decade ago, it was only institutional investors who invested in alternatives, then insurance companies. Now we're seeing it across retail, high net worth, and the more common investor. It's no longer just stocks and bonds. It's now stocks, bonds, and alternatives. In terms of those types of partnerships, we, of course, are monitoring that space carefully and having a number of conversations of our own. We will look to build our business appropriately. We view this as a long game, and it is something we would consider in the future.

Cherilyn Radbourne
Cherilyn Radbourne
Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at TD Cowen

Thank you. Secondly, I think the plan had been to launch your second or your next flagship PE fund in 2025. Is that still your expectation? Do you think BAM has enough of a differentiated strategy in PE to attract new and existing clients?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

We are extremely confident about our PE strategy, particularly in the current market. As a reminder, we have a differentiated approach to private equity versus many in the space in that our approach to private equity is focused on driving value using operational enhancement. Our business is far less growth-oriented and far less capital markets-focused than some, I'll say, more stereotypical private equity approaches. We feel that is perfectly suited for the current market. That is not just a sentiment. We are seeing it in our business. Anuj Ranjan, who runs our private equity business, has been on record in saying it has been the most active start our private equity business has ever had, whether it is the transactions with Antylia Scientific or Chemelecs or Spring Education. All of that is showing that our approach to private equity is well-suited to the current market.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

We do continue to expect to launch the next vintage of our flagship private equity fund at some point this year. In terms of the timing of the first close, hey, it may tip this side of the calendar year. It may tip the next side of the calendar year. The momentum in that strategy and the track record is very strong.

Cherilyn Radbourne
Cherilyn Radbourne
Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at TD Cowen

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Alexander Blostein with Goldman Sachs.

Alexander Blostein
Alexander Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Hi, good morning, everybody. Maybe just zooming out a little bit and a question on broader fundraising across the platform. You guys had a very strong start to the year, $25 billion in the first quarter. I think on the last call, we talked about organic capital raising in 2025 being a bit better than it was in 2024, excluding, obviously, the insurance deal, which I think puts you something in the high $80 billion-$90 billion range. Given the uncertain environment, but obviously, momentum in the business is pretty good, maybe help us kind of re-underwrite that. How are you thinking about fundraising through the rest of the year? How much of that, call it high $80 billion, do you think ultimately will be fee-paying? Thanks.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

There is nothing we see in the current market that would cause us to change the forecast that we had the year. Obviously, things like the strength we've seen in real estate, finishing off the flagships in transition, closing with a record number for Oaktree's ops fund. We remain confident in the number that we outlayed at the beginning of the year. Maybe just to overlay that versus the current environment, yes, there is more uncertainty than there was six or eight weeks ago. This is also the environment where being partnered with a large-scale manager like Brookfield allows investors the opportunity to capitalize on some of the investment opportunities that may surface in this environment.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

We do expect the current uncertainty in the environment to only exacerbate the flows of capital to the largest, most established managers with the largest execution capabilities and the greatest track record. Nothing we've seen to start the year would cause us to change our fundraising forecast.

Alexander Blostein
Alexander Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Perfect. That's great to hear. Hadley, one for you on just broader balance sheet management. Obviously, you guys did the debt offering a couple of weeks ago. Maybe help us just sort of frame how you think about the appropriate amount of leverage at the firm that you've been a standalone public company for a little while. Similarly, on the buyback, very encouraging to see you guys step up here given the volatility in the market. Should we be thinking about share repurchases as more of an ongoing part of kind of EPS growth algorithm for the firm going forward?

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Thanks, Alex. Yeah, we were very excited to enter the market. As everyone appreciates, this was our first bond deal, and we did it as an SEC-registered bond. We found a window where we got very attractive demand and pricing attached to that bond. Under our existing ratings, Fitch, which is A, and S&P, which is A minus, we have a lot of capacity, two times DE. That puts us in a position to really allow that to grow over time. That capacity also grows over time because our business is growing. We have ample room from that perspective. As a reminder, the use of proceeds is around our complementary strategies and supporting the growth of the business attached to those product offerings.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Of course, M&A, whether it's within our current partner managers or additional ones that we may partner with to complement our existing capabilities. When we look forward, we do anticipate being a repeat issuer and making sure that we have liquidity to support the growth of the business. We've already built up. We've got $1.4 billion plus the bond offering proceeds and the upsizing at $750 million. That puts us in a good position to also think strategically about share repurchases when we see times where we want to support our stock and we see good value attached to those purchases, which is what we did earlier in the year when we bought back about $50 million.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

It just, again, continues to strengthen our liquidity position because our balance sheet and liquidity is a competitive advantage of ours, and it will really support the growth that we see going forward.

Alexander Blostein
Alexander Blostein
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Robert Kwan with RBC Capital Markets.

Robert Kwan
Robert Kwan
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Great. Thank you. Good morning. Just in the uncertain and volatile environment like we have historically, Brookfield's taken the contrarian approach and confidently put money to work. In your letter comments today, you're saying the environment's playing to your strengths. Just what segments and geographies are you seeing market dislocations, or are you positioning for significant opportunities to arise?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

We expect to be very active. In terms of where we're seeing the opportunities across the portfolio, I would say right now it's very broad-based, but I would highlight maybe two or three themes that we're seeing across our verticals and across asset classes. One is the uncertainty in the public markets is very exacerbated versus the demand we are seeing in private markets. When you make a comment like that, everyone's head immediately goes to take privates. Those types of opportunities may originate over time, but it also really lends itself to carve-outs. We're seeing more and more opportunities to do carve-outs and partnerships going forward.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

The second thing that we would say that we are seeing across all of our verticals is the opportunity to do structured investments, particularly when counterparties may not have access to the public capital markets the way they have in the past. That is working really well for our structured investment strategies, whether it be across infrastructure, whether it be across private equity. The last one that just goes without saying is this is the environment where Oaktree goes to work. This is perfectly suited to their approach, and that has been proven over cycles. We are excited to see what our partners can do there as well.

Robert Kwan
Robert Kwan
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

That's great. Thank you. If I just finish here on fundraising, with the largest real estate flagship closed and the global transition tracking really nicely here, can you just speak to what these types of results say about the fundraising environment, the allocation to all your market share, and the allocation that you're seeing to the various subsectors by your institutional, by the LPs?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

are a lot of headlines, and we try and keep our head down and focus on the long term and tune out the noise. The overarching trend is there is absolutely a greater allocation to alternatives today than ever before, and that's only going to continue going forward. Similarly, that allocation is increasingly being concentrated within the largest managers who have the best track records, the largest capabilities, and can offer the broadest suites of products. While there are short-term headlines that may create some periodic uncertainty, those trends are very robust and very enduring. I think that's what you're seeing in our most recent flagship fundraisers, and we expect it to continue going forward.

Robert Kwan
Robert Kwan
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

That's great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ben Rubin with UBS.

Benjamin Rubin
Benjamin Rubin
Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. For my first one, I have a two-parter on private credit. We're starting to hear some concerns around potential overcrowding or saturation within private credit as an asset class and direct lending more specifically. Is that a theme you're seeing as well across your business, or is your focus on asset-backed lending and financing real assets less impacted from some of this broader competition we're hearing about? Secondarily, could you just expand on what Angel Oak adds to your platform and then how kind of the mortgage origination component fits within your larger push into managed insurance? Thank you.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Yeah. Actually, I can take that one and tie it in nicely with Angel Oak. When you think about our $300 billion of assets under management within our credit business, it is heavily focused on opportunistic and real assets, including real estate, infrastructure, and ABF. That puts us in a position to really be able to capitalize on the value add that we can bring to the market, especially in this environment, as Connor was mentioning. The dislocation makes our capital and that specific type of capital even more valuable. We are seeing a strong pipeline of opportunities. The deployment has been quite strong, and we are also very focused on continuing to build out our strategies attached to credit, which takes us to Angel Oak.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Angel Oak actually fits perfectly into the type of credit that we focus on and is actually well-positioned to benefit especially our clients associated with insurance. The non-qualified side of the mortgage space is quite attractive, and we are excited to have them once we close as part of the overall partner manager group as we continue to expand our capabilities.

Benjamin Rubin
Benjamin Rubin
Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Great. Thanks. Another question here for you, Hadley. In Q1, your FRE margins expanded 300 basis points to 57%, although the catch-up fees from your real estate flagship certainly helped. I know a lot of the investment spend behind your insurance platform is now behind you, but how should we think about the potential expense growth or trajectory or spending for the remainder of this year? Thank you.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Yeah. I mean, you do see the operating leverage with that 300 basis point improvement year over year. That operating leverage of the growth that we've been focused on continues to be a benefit to our business, and that will continue to play out as well. We are still doing some building, especially as we further expand our credit capabilities and our fundraising channels. That is important and an area that we think is quite valuable investing in. We will continue to benefit in that operating leverage to hit our long-term stride of around 60%.

Benjamin Rubin
Benjamin Rubin
Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Great. Thank you for taking my questions.

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Cyprys with Morgan Stanley.

Michael Cyprys
Michael Cyprys
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Given the significant growth that we've seen across your credit platform with large insurance customers, just curious how you're thinking about the opportunity set for building out a capital markets business alongside, as we've seen some others across the industry, monetize, origination flow, credit, and broader connectivity with insurance. Just curious how you're thinking about this potential fee-generating opportunity for Brookfield and what it would take to build this out.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

We absolutely are thinking about it. It is now part of our business plan. This is the first year that we focused on building that into our business. We do think it can be a modest driver of incremental fee revenue going forward. The one point I would highlight is none of that was included in our five-year plan that we presented at Investor Day. It is something that we are now focused on. We do think it can increase into something meaningful into the low hundreds of millions over the next four or five years, but it's not something that we previously included in our forecast.

Michael Cyprys
Michael Cyprys
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thank you. Just a follow-up question on capital allocation. I think the dividend payout ratio was a little over 100% in the quarter. Just curious how you're thinking about the dividend on a multi-year basis. Is the intention to grow that in line with earnings growth, or are you thinking about targeting a certain payout over time? Could you maybe just speak to the buybacks in the quarter as well and how we should think about that going forward too? Thank you.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

In terms of the dividend, we expect to pay out north of 90% of our distributed earnings. Yes, we are a little bit above that in Q1, but I think the read-through there is it should give you an indication of the visibility and confidence we have in the earnings growth for the rest of the year. We have been building our business. We have had some nice step changes with some of the flagships coming on. You saw that in Q3. You saw that in Q4. You see it again in Q1. We expect that momentum to continue into Q2 and obviously compound through the end of the year. In terms of the buybacks, we will be opportunistic. As Hadley mentioned, we have an extremely robust balance sheet, and therefore, when we see value in our shares, we are not going to hesitate.

Michael Cyprys
Michael Cyprys
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Mario Saric with Scotiabank.

Mario Saric
Mario Saric
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank

Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. The first one's a bit more of a thematic one, focused on the U.S. The tariff volatility that we've seen has raised some questions about the leading global role that is played by the U.S. It doesn't seem to have been impacted or have impacted your LP commitments to Bezerra Buy, as you noted. High level, can you talk about any notable trends in how LPs are thinking about future U.S. commitments in a post-Liberation Day world? Secondarily, do recent developments at all change your desired global allocation mix going forward?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

In terms of fundraising and allocations from investors, we like to think we have one of, if not the most diversified LP base around the world. While it would be reckless to diminish the impact of tariffs and what they've done to markets, we really don't see it changing our fundraising trajectory. Any changes in allocations are going to be de minimis and on the margin. In terms of just our assets and what we see in terms of allocating capital, we think this actually plays to our strength. This is going to lead to a focus on energy security, a focus on data security, a focus on onshoring and deglobalization. This requires huge amounts of capital.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

As one of the largest managers and custodians of that type of capital around the world, we actually think that this environment, maybe not week to week, but over months and quarters, is going to create an even bigger opportunity for our franchise.

Mario Saric
Mario Saric
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank

Okay. My second question may be for Hadley. As new complementary funds are launched, BAM itself may increasingly become the Brookfield co-investment in these funds. Is there a reasonable range of annual co-invest capital that we should think about as it pertains to Brookfield or BAM specifically over the next, say, three to five years?

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Yeah. When we think about our complementary strategies, we've made sure that Brookfield Asset Management can support more of the equity complementary strategies. The credit complementary strategies are typically supported by our IMA with Brookfield Wealth Solutions. It really is a subset of the overall complementary strategies from that perspective. Just one data point to keep in mind. In terms of where we look forward, as you know, we've got about 40 strategies in market now. That's going to grow up to, call it, 80 strategies over the next five years. We continue to see the expansion and the capital needs attached to that. If I had to put a number, it's a handful of $100 million. It's like $500 million or less attached to that.

Mario Saric
Mario Saric
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank

Perfect. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ken Worthington with J.P. Morgan.

Kenneth Worthington
Kenneth Worthington
Stock Analyst at J.P. Morgan

Hi. Still good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to start by asking where the flagship funds stand in terms of percentage of capital invested and committed, and really interested in three, Infra 5, Transition 2, and Cap Partner 6.

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

Sure. Infra 5 is on exactly 50%. BGTF 2 is at $5.2 billion of $17 billion, so call it about 33%. Brookfield Capital Partners, I believe that one's at about the 60% range.

Kenneth Worthington
Kenneth Worthington
Stock Analyst at J.P. Morgan

Okay. Excellent. Thank you. The Wealth Solutions-based management fee of $68 million has been growing really nicely, with IMAs really driving the entirety of the increase over the past three quarters. Assets in private credit SMAs continue to rise, but the fees from investments have been very stable at $13 million a quarter. Is this just a matter of Wealth Solution funds being committed but not yet deployed in private credit, or is there something else here? Where do you expect solutions allocation to private credit to go as it reaches equilibrium? It keeps rising. Where does that get to?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

You're absolutely right around the dynamic there. When you look at the breakdown, I think the number of actually deployed capital is somewhere in the 3% range, maybe 3-4%. Maybe to put it in perspective, about 10% of the capital has been committed to those private strategies. It just is in the process of being deployed. The other thing that needs to be recognized is, while we continue to deploy that capital, we're also constantly writing new annuities and bringing new cash in that typically flows into liquids before being redeployed into a private strategy. You're on a bit of a treadmill there, but the commitments are certainly higher and growing, and that's being pushed through the system. We continue to expect the equilibrium to be somewhere in the 25%-one third range over time.

Kenneth Worthington
Kenneth Worthington
Stock Analyst at J.P. Morgan

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank.

Brian Bedell
Brian Bedell
Director at Deutsche Bank

Great. Thanks. Thanks also. Good morning still. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just, Connor, one for you on deployment pace. As we think about this backdrop that seems increasingly appealing for your deployment across a number of verticals, how do you think about the cycle times of deploying through these large funds that you've raised recently compared with cycle times in prior vintages? The objective of the question is, when would you get to the next vintage? If I can put another angle on this question, how would your answer change if we were to say we were going to have a very distressed environment over the next few quarters versus not such a distressed environment?

Connor Teskey
Connor Teskey
President at Brookfield Asset Management

Certainly. Typically for our flagships, we look to deploy them over a three to maybe three-and-a-half-year period. That is a run rate in a normalized market kind of averaged across our various flagship strategies. In a more opportunistic and more distressed market, we absolutely would expect that deployment timeline to shorten, where we would put more capital to work at the low point in the cycle. That is where we do feel that our Brookfield ecosystem, our access to opportunities, our access to information can allow us to be active when maybe others are looking to hold back a little bit more. In terms of what we are seeing in the current market, we would expect to be at our traditional run rate or inside of it, certainly longer than average in this environment.

Brian Bedell
Brian Bedell
Director at Deutsche Bank

Yep. That's great. Just a quick follow-up for Hadley. I think you mentioned increasing the ownership stakes in some of the partners. I think you mentioned that if you were to do that over time into the full ownership stake, it would be about—I think you said contribute about $250 million to FRE, if I'm not mistaken. The question there would be, does that include the Oaktree rate-raising Oaktree, or is it just the other partners?

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

No, and you got the number right because it is $250 million over a five-year period, and that includes all of our partner managers, including Oaktree.

Hadley Peer Marshall
Hadley Peer Marshall
CFO at Brookfield Asset Management

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Jason Fooks for closing remarks.

Jason Fooks
Jason Fooks
Managing Director of Investor Relations at Brookfield Asset Management

Okay. Great. If you should have any additional questions on today's release, please feel free to contact me directly. Thank you, everyone, for joining us.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Jason Fooks
      Jason Fooks
      Managing Director of Investor Relations
    • Hadley Peer Marshall
      Hadley Peer Marshall
      CFO
    • Connor Teskey
      Connor Teskey
      President
    • Bruce Flatt
      Bruce Flatt
      CEO
Analysts
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