NYSE:BN Brookfield Q2 2025 Earnings Report $47.05 +0.54 (+1.16%) Closing price 03:58 PM EasternExtended Trading$46.75 -0.30 (-0.64%) As of 07:41 PM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Massive. Learn more. ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast Brookfield EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.59Consensus EPS $0.59Beat/MissMissed by -$0.01One Year Ago EPSN/ABrookfield Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$1.44 billionExpected Revenue$1.44 billionBeat/MissMet ExpectationsYoY Revenue GrowthN/ABrookfield Announcement DetailsQuarterQ2 2025Date8/7/2025TimeBefore Market OpensConference Call DateThursday, August 7, 2025Conference Call Time10:00AM ETUpcoming EarningsBrookfield's Q1 2026 earnings is estimated for Thursday, May 14, 2026, based on past reporting schedules, with a conference call scheduled at 10:00 AM ET. Check back for transcripts, audio, and key financial metrics as they become available.Q1 2026 Earnings ReportConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress ReleaseInterim ReportEarnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by Brookfield Q2 2025 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrAugust 7, 2025 ShareLink copied to clipboard.Key Takeaways Positive Sentiment: Distributable earnings before realizations rose 13% year-over-year to $1.3 billion (US$0.80 per share) in Q2, reflecting strong operational momentum. Positive Sentiment: Completed £35 billion of asset sales in the quarter (£55 billion YTD), with most transactions at or above carrying values, unlocking significant capital for investors. Positive Sentiment: Announced the launch of a dedicated AI infrastructure strategy, developing integrated “AI factories” to meet surging compute and power demand. Positive Sentiment: Agreed to acquire Just Group for US$3.2 billion, strengthening its UK pension risk transfer platform and expanding insurance assets by ~US$40 billion. Negative Sentiment: North American residential real estate (land and housing) saw moderation in lot and home sales this quarter, reducing segment cash distributions. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallBrookfield Q2 202500:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xThere are 7 speakers on the call. Speaker 200:00:00Hello and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. 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 will need to press *11 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Speaker 200:00:30Thank you, Operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, and Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation. Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter. After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the Operator and take analyst questions. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we ask you to refrain from asking more than two questions. I would like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. security laws. Speaker 200:01:22These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and 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 the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S., and the information available on our website. In addition, when we speak about our wealth solutions business or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce. Speaker 200:02:03Thank you and welcome everyone on the call. We delivered strong second quarter results. Distributable earnings before realizations increased 13% year over year to $1.3 billion. That was $0.80 per share for the quarter and $5.3 billion, or $3.36 per share for the last 12 months. Performance was supported by continued momentum across our core businesses and a significant pickup in transaction activity. Strong underlying operating fundamentals are driving demand and cash flow growth in both our asset management and operating businesses. Our wealth solutions business continues to grow its asset base, and last week we announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a leading provider of pension risk transfer solutions in the UK. This acquisition builds on the foundation we established in the UK earlier this year and will allow us to accelerate our growth in the country. Speaker 200:03:08As already one of the largest infrastructure, renewable, and property investors in the UK, this acquisition matches well with our capabilities and positions us to assist policyholders earn strong returns. Turning briefly to the macro environment, conditions continue to become increasingly constructive. During the quarter, as most of you will know, global equities hit all-time highs, credit spreads tightened dramatically, and interest rates remain largely unchanged. With growing expectations, we may see cuts on the short end of the curve in the next while. This relative stability has been supportive of increased monetizations, which reflects both the quality of the businesses we own and assets we have. So far this year, we've completed $55 billion of asset sales, including $35 billion in the quarter, each generating excellent returns and returning meaningful capital to investors. Speaker 200:04:11We also saw continued strength in the financing markets, where we opportunistically completed $94 billion of financing across the franchise, enabling our capital structure, enhancing our capital structure, and deploying significant capital within the business. Against this increasingly constructive backdrop, the key themes that ground our capital deployment: digitalization, de-globalization, and decarbonization are accelerating. With a record $177 billion of deployable capital, we are well positioned to be at the forefront of these opportunities, including the next evolution of the build-out of the global economy. As an example, we are launching our AI infrastructure strategy. At the core of this strategy is the development of AI factories, which are large-scale integrated sites that combine power, data centers, and the equipment to provide compute capacity to the industry's leaders, as well as governments and corporates seeking compute capacity. Speaker 200:05:17This effort draws on the strength of our global operating teams and real estate, power, and infrastructure, each today a global leader in their category. At the same time, global electricity demand is accelerating at a very dramatic pace, driven by power demand for the AI revolution and the broader electrification of the energy grid. This, coupled with AI infrastructure, presents a tremendous investment opportunity, particularly for our renewables and our infrastructure platforms. As the backbone of the global economy transforms, so does our approach to investing our capital. Today, we have $180 billion of our own capital on our balance sheet, predominantly invested in real assets beside or to assist our clients, where we have deep investing and operating expertise. Speaker 200:06:14Our long-term plan is to further enhance the efficiency of our capital structure, thereby enhancing the returns we can earn on our equity without changing the risk profile of the business. This is being done by continuing to refocus overall Brookfield as an investment-led insurance organization, using our large-scale capital base to back low-risk, long-duration insurance. On the asset side of the balance sheet, importantly, we remain focused on the exact same asset classes where we have proven best-in-class investment skills for decades and which are ideally suited for wealth and insurance. This shift is a natural extension of our platform to continue to drive long-term shareholder value. To date, we have had two primary sources of capital, the first being our balance sheet and the second being institutional capital in our asset management business. Speaker 200:07:18In this next evolution, beside those two amounts, we're focusing our balance sheet to back our growing insurance operations, meaning that our capital will increasingly come from individual investors via our insurance float. Our intention is to continue funding our insurance operations from the Brookfield Corporation balance sheet to ensure that our policyholders and regulators know that we have our capital at risk to assist them. When we established our insurance business, we envisioned this as one arm of Brookfield. After five years of meaningful growth and with a large number of opportunities ahead, this business is becoming an increasingly foundational part of our long-term vision for Brookfield. There will be more to come, so stay tuned. As we plan for the future, it's important also to reflect on what has been the foundation of our growth and success from the past. Speaker 200:08:24Simply stated, it is our ability to consistently adapt and evolve with the shifts in the global economy while staying focused on generating investment returns over the long term. This started 30 years ago with real estate, moved to pipelines and electricity transmission lines, and is now led by renewable power, data centers, fiber lines, telecom towers, and more recently, AI infrastructure and battery storage, which are just developing. Each step has been about anticipating where the world is going and positioning ourselves and our investors at the center of each transformation. Our view is that AI is next, and coming after that is AI-led advances in manufacturing. The world is always evolving and it is exciting to be involved. I will end my comments by saying that we look forward to seeing you at our Investor Day on September 10 at Brookfield Place in New York. Speaker 200:09:33Additional details are on our website. As always, thank you for your continued support and interest in Brookfield. Over to Nick. Speaker 600:09:44Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. Financial results were strong for the quarter. Distributable earnings, or DE, before realizations were $1.3 billion, or $0.80 per share, representing an increase of 13% per share over the prior year quarter. Over the last 12 months, DE before realizations was $5.3 billion, or $3.36 per share. Total DE, including realizations, was $1.4 billion, or $0.88 per share for the quarter, and $5.9 billion, or $3.71 per share over the last 12 months, with total net income of $2.9 billion over the same period. Starting with our operating performance, our asset management business generated distributable earnings of $650 million, or $0.41 per share in the quarter, and $2.7 billion, or $1.72 per share over the last 12 months. Speaker 600:10:42Strong fundraising across our flagship funds and complementary strategies led to inflows during the quarter of $22 billion, including over $5 billion from our retail and wealth solutions clients. Fee-bearing capital grew to $563 billion, resulting in fee-related earnings of $676 million, an increase of 10% and 16% respectively over the prior year quarter. With final closes anticipated for our fifth vintage flagship opportunistic real estate strategy and our second vintage global transition strategy, we expect fundraising momentum to continue into the second half of 2025, which should support further earnings growth. Our wealth solutions business delivered another quarter of strong results, benefiting from robust investment performance and disciplined capital deployment. Distributable operating earnings were $391 million, or $0.25 per share in the quarter, and $1.6 billion, or $1.02 per share over the last 12 months. Speaker 600:11:44During the quarter, we originated over $4 billion of retail and institutional annuities, bringing our total insurance assets to $135 billion. On the investment side, we deployed $3.5 billion into Brookfield-managed strategies across our portfolio at an average net yield of 8%. Our investment portfolio generated an average yield of 5.8%, allowing us to achieve strong spread earnings, which were 1.8% higher than our average cost of funds. On both an LTM and annualized basis, we continue to deliver a return on equity that's broadly in line with our long-term target of 15% plus. As Bruce mentioned, we announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a UK leader in buying pensions from companies who wish to get off the risks. This marks an important next step in scaling our global platform and expanding our presence in one of the world's fastest-growing retirement markets. Speaker 600:12:40Per the announcement, we plan to acquire the company for $3.2 billion, and we plan to fund this with roughly two thirds from an acquisition credit facility and the balance from cash on hand at BWS. While we anticipate net investment income will take some time to ramp up following the close, we expect the transaction to deliver a return on equity in line with our long-term target for the overall business of 15% plus. With this acquisition, our insurance assets are expected to grow by approximately $40 billion, significantly accelerating the growth of our business and advancing a short-term path towards $200 billion of insurance assets. Our operating businesses continue to deliver stable and growing cash flows, generating distributable earnings of $350 million, or $0.22 per share in the quarter, and $1.7 billion, or $1.07 per share over the last 12 months. Speaker 600:13:33These results were supported by strong underlying fundamentals and resilient operating earnings. As an example, we signed a landmark agreement with Google to deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity across the U.S., a first-of-its-kind partnership and a testament to our unique capabilities and demonstrates our relationships with the largest buyers of power in the world. In our real estate business, market fundamentals across the platform continue to strengthen. While this quarter's performance was impacted by softer conditions in our North American residential business, where land and housing sales have moderated, most of our real estate businesses performed well, and we saw strong same-store NOI growth across our core portfolio. Demand for high-quality office and retail space remains the first choice for tenants with active requirements. Speaker 600:14:24We signed nearly 4 million square feet of office and retail leases during the quarter, reflecting both strong tenant demand and limited availability across our premium space. Our core office and retail assets continue to perform exceptionally well, with occupancy at 94% and 97% respectively. As the global supply of trophy office space tightens, we're seeing leasing interest begin to spill over into other high-quality, well-located assets across our portfolio, and we are seeing this trend play out in real time. For example, in downtown Toronto, one of our long-term tenants in a trophy office building approached us with expansion plans. With our trophy office space full for a requirement of that size, we leveraged our broader platform to meet their needs by offering space in a nearby premium building, where they ultimately signed a 17-year lease. Speaker 600:15:14At the same time, we're already in late-stage discussions to backfill the space we vacated at rents approximately 10% higher than prior levels. Rents in premium space are well above their highest on a net effective base ever. We expect this evolving shift in tenant demand to support performance across our broader office portfolio in the coming quarters. Moving to monetizations, market sentiment is improving and is increasingly supportive for transactions for high-quality assets. As Bruce mentioned, we've sold $55 billion of assets across the business so far this year, including over $35 billion since the last quarter alone. This includes $15 billion of real estate sales, nearly $13 billion of infrastructure investments, and $7 billion within energy. Some highlights include in real estate, we exited a leading student housing platform in Southern Europe for €1.2 billion, sold our triple net lease platform in the U.S. for $2.2 billion. Speaker 600:16:14We also completed the successful IPO of Leela Palaces in India, valuing the portfolio at $1.8 billion and marking the largest hospitality IPO in India's history. We executed the $3.9 billion sale of a senior living platform in Australia, the largest direct real estate transaction in the country's history. In infrastructure, we sold our remaining interest in the U.S. gas pipeline for $1.4 billion of proceeds and a stake in PD Ports, one of the UK's largest port operations, for approximately $1.3 billion of proceeds. In energy, we sold $7 billion in assets, generating an aggregate 17% IRR, underscoring the strength of our strategy and execution, while also illustrating the global demand for high-quality renewable power assets remains strong. Substantially, all sales were completed at or above our carrying values, monetizing significant value for our clients at attractive returns. Speaker 600:17:13As a result, we realized $129 million of carried interest into income. More importantly, with these asset sales, we've moved a number of our funds closer to carried interest realization. Across our assets, which are not our super-prime super-premium assets, we continue to make progress on our monetization pipeline, completing over 10 transactions this year. One highlight was the sale of an office building in Washington, DC, at an 11% premium to recent market comps. This generated a 5.5 times multiple on invested capital. That is over five times equity of what we invested. As markets remain constructive, we expect this momentum in monetizations to continue through the remainder of 2025 and beyond, as we continue to see strong demand for high-quality cash-generative assets we own. Speaker 600:18:05Shifting to capital allocation, during the quarter, we reinvested excess cash flow back into the business and returned $432 million to shareholders through regular dividends and share buybacks. Notably, we repurchased over $300 million of shares in the open market in the quarter at an average price of $49.03, adding $0.21 of value to each remaining share. We continue to maintain strong access to the capital markets, executing $94 billion of financing so far this year, further bolstering our capital structure and liquidity. We ended the quarter with conservative capitalization and high levels of liquidity, including record deployable capital of $177 billion. Bringing it all together, our financial results were strong, and we expect continued growth in our results over the remainder of the year. Speaker 600:18:55I am pleased to confirm that our Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.09 per share, payable at the end of September to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 12, 2025. The Board of Directors also approved a three-for-two stock split of the outstanding Class A limited voting shares, implemented by way of a stock dividend, which will be payable on October 9, 2025, to shareholders of record at the close of business on October 3, 2025. Thank you for your time, and I will hand the call back to the Operator for questions. Speaker 200:19:30Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Bart Jarski with RBC Capital Markets. You may proceed. Speaker 200:19:50Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. In the letter to shareholders, you talked about the growth that you're seeing in the PNC over time and potentially scaling that business to $30 to $50 billion of equity. Just unpack that a little bit and how you're thinking about getting there, what time frame, and any inorganic or organic plans. Thanks. Speaker 600:20:13Hi, Bart, and welcome to the call. Listen, when we started this business, our focus was and still is to focus on low-risk liabilities, and that's meant the predominant focus so far has been on the annuity business, the PRT market, and that's where we've scaled significantly. We also identified PNC as a potential opportunity for us if we could find product lines where we felt we could bring a competitive advantage, where the Brookfield experience and insight could allow us to scale something. If it operated well, we could run a less than 100% combined ratio, effectively giving us access to attractive float to be invested into the things that we do at Brookfield, and it could be very profitable. We've taken our time to assess that. We continue to assess it. Speaker 600:20:59As we do and as we identify those markets where we think we could scale while managing risk and operating something differentiated, we will do that and allocate capital to scale. That will be done organically to begin with, and that's where we focus with Argo and some PNC within American National. We are refocusing those businesses on the lines that we think have long-term potential. As we proceed, there could be inorganic opportunities, but for now, the focus is organic. Speaker 600:21:27Great, thanks. Just to follow up on the pricing competitive advantage that you talked about within PNC, help us understand some of those dynamics in terms of what you see in these assets and your ability to price better than the incumbents. Thanks. Speaker 600:21:42I think that just comes down to risk tolerance, which comes down to your experience with an asset class. That's leveraging our operating capabilities around the assets where we are not just an investor, but we've been an operator in those assets for a very long time. That allows you to price risk better, we believe, whilst not actually increasing the risk profile of the business because we just have a deeper understanding of operations. That's what we'll be leveraging as we look to grow. Speaker 600:22:11Great, thank you. Speaker 200:22:14Thank you. Our next question comes from Kenneth Worthington with JP Morgan. You may proceed. Speaker 200:22:21Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to dig into carry and real estate dispositions really centered around this theme of market conditions or getting better. Is the environment better enough to start to pull forward carry that might have logically been expected for 2027 and 2026 into the second half of this year, maybe even early 2026, if the market condition path sort of continues on its current trajectory? From a real estate perspective, fleshing out, Nick, your comments, are the conditions better enough to pull forward the timing of dispositions on that T&D portfolio as well? Thank you. Speaker 600:23:07Thanks, Ken. I'll start with the timing of carry. We are making excellent progress on the monetizations. As you said, it's $55 billion year to date, and it's diversified across asset class and geography, which is very encouraging. The breadth and depth of interest from buyers has been very strong. As it relates to carried interest, it obviously takes time. The market is strong. The focus today is on well-run assets with good platforms with good growth potential. That's what we've been bringing to market. To bring them to market, to execute sales, to complete the sales takes time. I think what we are doing is executing probably in line with the plan that we had expected at the start of the year. Obviously, the capital markets and general conditions are being conducive to executing that plan. It has not changed significantly our expected timing on carry. Speaker 600:23:59We would still expect this year to be sort of a bridge year broadly in line with last year and then see a significant step up into next year. That will just really be dependent on the actual timing of the transactions and the processes. Right now, it points to us being broadly in line with what we would have laid out before. On real estate, what I'd say on real estate, my observation is we've talked extensively over the last few years, and we've been fairly consistent in saying that for real estate transaction activity pickup, we need two key foundations to be in place. One, we need to see the strong operating fundamentals and therefore the sentiment turn more positive. Secondly, we need to see constructive capital markets to support transaction activity. I'd say that both of those boxes feel like they are checked now. Speaker 600:24:48The operating fundamentals for high-quality real estate across the board are very strong. Specifically, as you're asking on balance sheet for office and retails, we talked about that occupancy is high. Supply-demand fundamentals are heavily in our favor. That is why we're seeing consistent record rents signed across the portfolio and across the globe. I think with those two boxes checked, we're now starting to see transaction activity pick up. Within the T&D portfolio, we said we sold over 13 assets so far this year. We have a lot of assets there that's contributing to equity and will continue to execute. It takes time to execute those sales, but we have more assets coming to market. We have some actively in the market right now, and we will just continue to execute the plan. Speaker 600:25:31Okay, great. Just a little one on the Just acquisition. I think you said two thirds of the financing was coming from a facility. Can you sort of describe what that facility is, and how does that facility or the funding from that facility impact the economics for you and the accretion, if at all? Speaker 600:25:51Ken, I would just make a general comment, and this would apply to broadly most questions on Just that you may have on the call, that this is a public-to-private transaction and it's subject to pretty strict UK takeover rules. We are very limited in what we will and can say about the transaction at this stage. If you read the information contained in the public 2.7 announcement, that will give you extra detail. There are extra documents filed on a microsite that we can point you to, but we're limited in what we can say at this time about the transaction. Speaker 600:26:24Yeah, I should have known better. Thank you so much. Speaker 600:26:26Thanks, Ken. Speaker 200:26:29Thank you. Our next question comes from Mario Saric with Scotiabank. You may proceed. Speaker 200:26:35Hi, good morning. Just one for me. Maybe coming back to the disclosed evolution of focusing the balance sheet on growing the insurance operations. With that in mind, are there any kind of longer-term desired or implications for the corporate structure that exists, say, that perhaps you didn't envision five years ago when this initiative started, including perhaps the desired ownership levels and other listed vehicles? Speaker 600:27:02Not as it pertains to those, Mario. Listen, I think, you know, Bruce said it in his remarks that when we started this company, we thought it would be a very attractive opportunity to deploy capital. It would have synergies with broader Brookfield, but it would be a discrete investment. I think what we're seeing is the opportunity and the synergies are more significant, and therefore it's become more integrated into overall Brookfield. I think when we started this, we always had the intention to fund it on balance sheet. What we're seeing in the business has just reaffirmed that expectation. This business will stay heavily integrated into Brookfield. That would be the approach. I think the important three things to note as we scale the business is, one, it will be a tremendous engine for growth for BAM, who manages the capital. Speaker 600:27:48Two, as pension markets open up, this will be very powerful for broader Brookfield. Three, we just think it could be, it is, or it will be a more efficient capital structure and will allow us to enhance our returns on capital. I think that's the key messages. Probably the last thing I would add, and just to be very clear, like our single skill in Brookfield is investing people's capital, institutions, sovereigns, individuals, and making good risk-adjusted returns. None of that is changing. This is just potentially a more efficient way to accelerate the scale and the returns of our business. Speaker 600:28:24Okay, that's it for me. Thank you. Speaker 200:28:28Thank you. Our next question comes from Sherilyn Radborn with TD Cowen. You may proceed. Speaker 200:28:35Thanks very much and good morning. With respect to the dedicated AI infrastructure strategy that you're preparing to launch, can you give us some color on whether you expect to have cornerstone investors to support that launch the way that you did with the inaugural transition strategy? Can you elaborate on how you will mitigate exposure to technological obsolescence risk inside the box? Speaker 600:29:05Yeah, Sherilyn, hi, it's Nick. First of all, yes, I think that is something that we are working on when we launch these new strategies. It can be very appealing to some of our largest shareholders around the world. This is obviously an asset class they're very focused on. We are engaged with a number of our largest clients. If things play out, it would be similar to how we launched the transition fund. On your second question, that is sort of how that's through our engagement with the off-takers or who will be providing these services too. We will be structuring these investments in a way where we can limit our downside risk and exposure and effectively providing capital to fund the build-out of the backbone of that infrastructure. It will come down to the structure and the terms of the capital we provide. Speaker 600:29:52It will be done to meet the criteria of the risk return profile of this capital, which will be similar to other funds that we've raised. Speaker 600:30:01Great. Just as a quick follow-up with respect to carried interest, can you remind us which funds are currently recognizing carried interest and which are approaching that milestone? Speaker 600:30:14Yeah, so the carried contribution this year has come from some Oaktree funds. We've been finishing off the carry in the first global vintage of our funds, which would have been the first infrastructure fund, the first real estate fund, which is actually now tied up. It's finished, it's complete, it's delivered an excellent return of north of 20%. That fund is now done with the final two transactions this quarter. It would have been our fourth private equity fund, which is also largely done. Those would have been the contributors to date. The next funds, which will be significant contributors as we execute on currently signed and planned sales, will be the next global infrastructure fund, so BIF2, and then working into BESREP2, BESREP3, and then the Oaktree opportunity funds coming shortly after that into 10 and 11. Speaker 600:31:11That's all for me. Thank you. Speaker 600:31:13Thanks, Sherilyn. Speaker 200:31:15Thank you. Our next question comes from James Going with National Bank. You may proceed. Speaker 200:31:23Thanks. Good morning. Just in the wealth solutions business, just wanted to get a little bit more color. Looks like spread at 1.8% came in a little lighter than the last couple of quarters by my calculations. Am I reading that right? Maybe you can just sort of talk through some of the drivers of that slight step down. Speaker 600:31:47Sure. Also, welcome to the call. Thanks for joining. We were roughly at 1.8% last quarter, so it's broadly consistent with last quarter. I think when you look at the rounding, it's down slightly compared to last quarter. I'd say there's nothing really instructive in that. We are still seeing excellent deployment opportunities, and it's probably more just about the timing of the inflows versus the speed to deployment. When we look at the opportunity set for deployment, we're really seeing an excellent opportunity set and don't see any risk to the downside on that spread as we sit here today. Speaker 600:32:24Great. On the real estate operating business, two questions here. First, cash distributions coming in a little lighter than previous quarters. What could be driving that? With the improved operating environment for real estate, do you have a sense as to the timeline when operating FFO or NOI would begin to close the gap to those cash distributions? Speaker 600:32:54Sure. So just on your first question, the cash distribution this quarter, the reduction is really just the product of the residential land and housing business, where last year we had one-time income from lot sales that were not repeated this year. We have seen a little bit of a slowdown in home sales. I'd say the long-term outlook for the business remains strong and intact, really driven by the supply-demand fundamentals in housing. That reduction this quarter in the DE was really driven by the land and housing business. On your question about the operating FFO for the business and the outlook, I think the underlying fundamentals for the business are very strong. We had, obviously, the impact from RESI. I would tell you that the FFO this quarter, also, if you look at it year over year, is impacted by the fact that we have sold assets. Speaker 600:33:49That has an impact to income. We have the absence of some one-time events that were there last year. These impacts were offset by lower rates, tightening credit spreads, and the effects of the deleveraging we've undertaken in the business. I think that deleveraging, better capital markets, tighter spreads, supported by the core NOI continuing to grow in the business, is going to drive FFO growth over the next months and years. As we sign these new rents, like just this week, we're poised to sign a rent in a building in New York at close to $300 a square foot. That's $300 a square foot for a new lease we're poised to sign in New York this week. Speaker 600:34:30As those leases start to work their way through earnings, as we burn off the rent freeze and they start to work their way through earnings, we have a tremendous tailwind for FFO coming from these assets. I think you have strong FFO coming from those assets. While the FFO may take time to pick up, these leases are fully reflected into the valuations of the assets now as people do a long-term DCF on these assets. I think you have that positive driver. On top of that, the increased pace of monetizations is going to bring significant capital and cash flow back to the business. If you think about the three transactions announced out of BESREP and our interest in those assets, that's going to be $500 to $600 million of cash flow for the real estate business from three transactions alone. Speaker 600:35:16I think the outlook for the liquidity, capital, and FFO for the real estate business is very positive. Speaker 600:35:26Thank you very much. Speaker 200:35:29Thank you. Our next question comes from Surab Movaedi with BMO Capital Markets. You may proceed.Read morePowered by Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress ReleaseInterim report Brookfield Earnings HeadlinesACKY Holds 54% in Three Companies, Creating Concentration Risk Most Investors MissMay 5 at 9:20 AM | 247wallst.comBrookfield, Nuclear Company to form joint venture for nuclear powerMay 4, 2026 | reuters.comCollect $1,170 a month from silverI've Rarely Seen This With Silver This combination - 20% dividends + 68% share appreciation - never happens with silver. But it is now possible thanks to a new ETF that delivers the best of worlds.May 8 at 1:00 AM | Investors Alley (Ad)Brookfield Property Partners Declares Quarterly Dividends on Listed Preferred UnitsApril 30, 2026 | globenewswire.comBrookfield (TSX:BN) Valuation Check As Long Term Returns Contrast With Recent Share WeaknessApril 29, 2026 | finance.yahoo.comWhy Is Everyone Talking About Brookfield Corporation Stock?April 26, 2026 | fool.comSee More Brookfield Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Brookfield? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Brookfield and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About BrookfieldBrookfield (NYSE:BN) (NYSE:BN) is a global alternative asset manager that specializes in real assets. The company invests in and operates businesses across real estate, infrastructure, renewable power and energy, private equity and credit. Its activities span both ownership and active management of physical assets as well as the operation of investment funds and vehicles that provide institutional and retail investors access to long‑lived, cash‑generating assets. Brookfield’s services include asset management, direct investing, property development and the operation of infrastructure and energy businesses. It sponsors and manages a range of public and private funds and listed partnerships that hold office, retail and logistics properties, utilities, transportation and communications infrastructure, renewable power generation and industrial businesses. The firm’s investment model typically emphasizes long-term ownership, hands‑on operational improvements and capital deployment across market cycles. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Brookfield operates globally with assets and investments across the Americas, Europe, Asia and other regions. The company has grown through a combination of acquisitions, fund formations and the creation of listed entities focused on specific real‑asset sectors. Brookfield is led by an experienced senior management team, including CEO Bruce Flatt, and positions itself as a long‑term investor with a focus on generating stable returns from real assets and supporting the transition to more sustainable infrastructure and energy systems.View Brookfield ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Latest Articles Rocket Lab Posts Record Q1 Revenue, Raises Q2 GuidanceHims & Hers Earnings Preview: The Novo Nordisk Shift Puts GLP-1 Strategy in FocusAppLovin Pops After Earnings With Growth Catalysts in SightDutch Bros Q1 Earnings: The Newest Starbucks Rival Faces Its First Big Reality CheckThe AI Fear Around Datadog Stock May Have Been Completely WrongAmprius Technologies Ups the Voltage on Forward OutlookWhy Lam Research Still Looks Like a Buy After a 300% Rally Upcoming Earnings Constellation Energy (5/11/2026)Barrick Mining (5/11/2026)Petroleo Brasileiro S.A.- Petrobras (5/11/2026)Simon Property Group (5/11/2026)SEA (5/12/2026)Cisco Systems (5/13/2026)Alibaba Group (5/13/2026)Manulife Financial (5/13/2026)Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (5/13/2026)Takeda Pharmaceutical (5/13/2026) Get 30 Days of MarketBeat All Access for Free Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools. 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There are 7 speakers on the call. Speaker 200:00:00Hello and welcome to the Brookfield Corporation Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. 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 will need to press *11 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Katie Battaglia, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Speaker 200:00:30Thank you, Operator, and good morning. Welcome to Brookfield Corporation's Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call. On the call today are Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, and Nick Goodman, President of Brookfield Corporation. Bruce will start off by giving a business update, followed by Nick, who will discuss our financial and operating results for the quarter. After our formal comments, we'll turn the call over to the Operator and take analyst questions. In order to accommodate all those who want to ask questions, we ask you to refrain from asking more than two questions. I would like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives in our financial and operating performance, we may make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. security laws. Speaker 200:01:22These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They are subject to known and unknown risks, and 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 the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S., and the information available on our website. In addition, when we speak about our wealth solutions business or Brookfield Wealth Solutions, we are referring to Brookfield's investments in this business that supported the acquisition of its underlying operating subsidiaries. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce. Speaker 200:02:03Thank you and welcome everyone on the call. We delivered strong second quarter results. Distributable earnings before realizations increased 13% year over year to $1.3 billion. That was $0.80 per share for the quarter and $5.3 billion, or $3.36 per share for the last 12 months. Performance was supported by continued momentum across our core businesses and a significant pickup in transaction activity. Strong underlying operating fundamentals are driving demand and cash flow growth in both our asset management and operating businesses. Our wealth solutions business continues to grow its asset base, and last week we announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a leading provider of pension risk transfer solutions in the UK. This acquisition builds on the foundation we established in the UK earlier this year and will allow us to accelerate our growth in the country. Speaker 200:03:08As already one of the largest infrastructure, renewable, and property investors in the UK, this acquisition matches well with our capabilities and positions us to assist policyholders earn strong returns. Turning briefly to the macro environment, conditions continue to become increasingly constructive. During the quarter, as most of you will know, global equities hit all-time highs, credit spreads tightened dramatically, and interest rates remain largely unchanged. With growing expectations, we may see cuts on the short end of the curve in the next while. This relative stability has been supportive of increased monetizations, which reflects both the quality of the businesses we own and assets we have. So far this year, we've completed $55 billion of asset sales, including $35 billion in the quarter, each generating excellent returns and returning meaningful capital to investors. Speaker 200:04:11We also saw continued strength in the financing markets, where we opportunistically completed $94 billion of financing across the franchise, enabling our capital structure, enhancing our capital structure, and deploying significant capital within the business. Against this increasingly constructive backdrop, the key themes that ground our capital deployment: digitalization, de-globalization, and decarbonization are accelerating. With a record $177 billion of deployable capital, we are well positioned to be at the forefront of these opportunities, including the next evolution of the build-out of the global economy. As an example, we are launching our AI infrastructure strategy. At the core of this strategy is the development of AI factories, which are large-scale integrated sites that combine power, data centers, and the equipment to provide compute capacity to the industry's leaders, as well as governments and corporates seeking compute capacity. Speaker 200:05:17This effort draws on the strength of our global operating teams and real estate, power, and infrastructure, each today a global leader in their category. At the same time, global electricity demand is accelerating at a very dramatic pace, driven by power demand for the AI revolution and the broader electrification of the energy grid. This, coupled with AI infrastructure, presents a tremendous investment opportunity, particularly for our renewables and our infrastructure platforms. As the backbone of the global economy transforms, so does our approach to investing our capital. Today, we have $180 billion of our own capital on our balance sheet, predominantly invested in real assets beside or to assist our clients, where we have deep investing and operating expertise. Speaker 200:06:14Our long-term plan is to further enhance the efficiency of our capital structure, thereby enhancing the returns we can earn on our equity without changing the risk profile of the business. This is being done by continuing to refocus overall Brookfield as an investment-led insurance organization, using our large-scale capital base to back low-risk, long-duration insurance. On the asset side of the balance sheet, importantly, we remain focused on the exact same asset classes where we have proven best-in-class investment skills for decades and which are ideally suited for wealth and insurance. This shift is a natural extension of our platform to continue to drive long-term shareholder value. To date, we have had two primary sources of capital, the first being our balance sheet and the second being institutional capital in our asset management business. Speaker 200:07:18In this next evolution, beside those two amounts, we're focusing our balance sheet to back our growing insurance operations, meaning that our capital will increasingly come from individual investors via our insurance float. Our intention is to continue funding our insurance operations from the Brookfield Corporation balance sheet to ensure that our policyholders and regulators know that we have our capital at risk to assist them. When we established our insurance business, we envisioned this as one arm of Brookfield. After five years of meaningful growth and with a large number of opportunities ahead, this business is becoming an increasingly foundational part of our long-term vision for Brookfield. There will be more to come, so stay tuned. As we plan for the future, it's important also to reflect on what has been the foundation of our growth and success from the past. Speaker 200:08:24Simply stated, it is our ability to consistently adapt and evolve with the shifts in the global economy while staying focused on generating investment returns over the long term. This started 30 years ago with real estate, moved to pipelines and electricity transmission lines, and is now led by renewable power, data centers, fiber lines, telecom towers, and more recently, AI infrastructure and battery storage, which are just developing. Each step has been about anticipating where the world is going and positioning ourselves and our investors at the center of each transformation. Our view is that AI is next, and coming after that is AI-led advances in manufacturing. The world is always evolving and it is exciting to be involved. I will end my comments by saying that we look forward to seeing you at our Investor Day on September 10 at Brookfield Place in New York. Speaker 200:09:33Additional details are on our website. As always, thank you for your continued support and interest in Brookfield. Over to Nick. Speaker 600:09:44Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. Financial results were strong for the quarter. Distributable earnings, or DE, before realizations were $1.3 billion, or $0.80 per share, representing an increase of 13% per share over the prior year quarter. Over the last 12 months, DE before realizations was $5.3 billion, or $3.36 per share. Total DE, including realizations, was $1.4 billion, or $0.88 per share for the quarter, and $5.9 billion, or $3.71 per share over the last 12 months, with total net income of $2.9 billion over the same period. Starting with our operating performance, our asset management business generated distributable earnings of $650 million, or $0.41 per share in the quarter, and $2.7 billion, or $1.72 per share over the last 12 months. Speaker 600:10:42Strong fundraising across our flagship funds and complementary strategies led to inflows during the quarter of $22 billion, including over $5 billion from our retail and wealth solutions clients. Fee-bearing capital grew to $563 billion, resulting in fee-related earnings of $676 million, an increase of 10% and 16% respectively over the prior year quarter. With final closes anticipated for our fifth vintage flagship opportunistic real estate strategy and our second vintage global transition strategy, we expect fundraising momentum to continue into the second half of 2025, which should support further earnings growth. Our wealth solutions business delivered another quarter of strong results, benefiting from robust investment performance and disciplined capital deployment. Distributable operating earnings were $391 million, or $0.25 per share in the quarter, and $1.6 billion, or $1.02 per share over the last 12 months. Speaker 600:11:44During the quarter, we originated over $4 billion of retail and institutional annuities, bringing our total insurance assets to $135 billion. On the investment side, we deployed $3.5 billion into Brookfield-managed strategies across our portfolio at an average net yield of 8%. Our investment portfolio generated an average yield of 5.8%, allowing us to achieve strong spread earnings, which were 1.8% higher than our average cost of funds. On both an LTM and annualized basis, we continue to deliver a return on equity that's broadly in line with our long-term target of 15% plus. As Bruce mentioned, we announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a UK leader in buying pensions from companies who wish to get off the risks. This marks an important next step in scaling our global platform and expanding our presence in one of the world's fastest-growing retirement markets. Speaker 600:12:40Per the announcement, we plan to acquire the company for $3.2 billion, and we plan to fund this with roughly two thirds from an acquisition credit facility and the balance from cash on hand at BWS. While we anticipate net investment income will take some time to ramp up following the close, we expect the transaction to deliver a return on equity in line with our long-term target for the overall business of 15% plus. With this acquisition, our insurance assets are expected to grow by approximately $40 billion, significantly accelerating the growth of our business and advancing a short-term path towards $200 billion of insurance assets. Our operating businesses continue to deliver stable and growing cash flows, generating distributable earnings of $350 million, or $0.22 per share in the quarter, and $1.7 billion, or $1.07 per share over the last 12 months. Speaker 600:13:33These results were supported by strong underlying fundamentals and resilient operating earnings. As an example, we signed a landmark agreement with Google to deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity across the U.S., a first-of-its-kind partnership and a testament to our unique capabilities and demonstrates our relationships with the largest buyers of power in the world. In our real estate business, market fundamentals across the platform continue to strengthen. While this quarter's performance was impacted by softer conditions in our North American residential business, where land and housing sales have moderated, most of our real estate businesses performed well, and we saw strong same-store NOI growth across our core portfolio. Demand for high-quality office and retail space remains the first choice for tenants with active requirements. Speaker 600:14:24We signed nearly 4 million square feet of office and retail leases during the quarter, reflecting both strong tenant demand and limited availability across our premium space. Our core office and retail assets continue to perform exceptionally well, with occupancy at 94% and 97% respectively. As the global supply of trophy office space tightens, we're seeing leasing interest begin to spill over into other high-quality, well-located assets across our portfolio, and we are seeing this trend play out in real time. For example, in downtown Toronto, one of our long-term tenants in a trophy office building approached us with expansion plans. With our trophy office space full for a requirement of that size, we leveraged our broader platform to meet their needs by offering space in a nearby premium building, where they ultimately signed a 17-year lease. Speaker 600:15:14At the same time, we're already in late-stage discussions to backfill the space we vacated at rents approximately 10% higher than prior levels. Rents in premium space are well above their highest on a net effective base ever. We expect this evolving shift in tenant demand to support performance across our broader office portfolio in the coming quarters. Moving to monetizations, market sentiment is improving and is increasingly supportive for transactions for high-quality assets. As Bruce mentioned, we've sold $55 billion of assets across the business so far this year, including over $35 billion since the last quarter alone. This includes $15 billion of real estate sales, nearly $13 billion of infrastructure investments, and $7 billion within energy. Some highlights include in real estate, we exited a leading student housing platform in Southern Europe for €1.2 billion, sold our triple net lease platform in the U.S. for $2.2 billion. Speaker 600:16:14We also completed the successful IPO of Leela Palaces in India, valuing the portfolio at $1.8 billion and marking the largest hospitality IPO in India's history. We executed the $3.9 billion sale of a senior living platform in Australia, the largest direct real estate transaction in the country's history. In infrastructure, we sold our remaining interest in the U.S. gas pipeline for $1.4 billion of proceeds and a stake in PD Ports, one of the UK's largest port operations, for approximately $1.3 billion of proceeds. In energy, we sold $7 billion in assets, generating an aggregate 17% IRR, underscoring the strength of our strategy and execution, while also illustrating the global demand for high-quality renewable power assets remains strong. Substantially, all sales were completed at or above our carrying values, monetizing significant value for our clients at attractive returns. Speaker 600:17:13As a result, we realized $129 million of carried interest into income. More importantly, with these asset sales, we've moved a number of our funds closer to carried interest realization. Across our assets, which are not our super-prime super-premium assets, we continue to make progress on our monetization pipeline, completing over 10 transactions this year. One highlight was the sale of an office building in Washington, DC, at an 11% premium to recent market comps. This generated a 5.5 times multiple on invested capital. That is over five times equity of what we invested. As markets remain constructive, we expect this momentum in monetizations to continue through the remainder of 2025 and beyond, as we continue to see strong demand for high-quality cash-generative assets we own. Speaker 600:18:05Shifting to capital allocation, during the quarter, we reinvested excess cash flow back into the business and returned $432 million to shareholders through regular dividends and share buybacks. Notably, we repurchased over $300 million of shares in the open market in the quarter at an average price of $49.03, adding $0.21 of value to each remaining share. We continue to maintain strong access to the capital markets, executing $94 billion of financing so far this year, further bolstering our capital structure and liquidity. We ended the quarter with conservative capitalization and high levels of liquidity, including record deployable capital of $177 billion. Bringing it all together, our financial results were strong, and we expect continued growth in our results over the remainder of the year. Speaker 600:18:55I am pleased to confirm that our Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.09 per share, payable at the end of September to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 12, 2025. The Board of Directors also approved a three-for-two stock split of the outstanding Class A limited voting shares, implemented by way of a stock dividend, which will be payable on October 9, 2025, to shareholders of record at the close of business on October 3, 2025. Thank you for your time, and I will hand the call back to the Operator for questions. Speaker 200:19:30Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Bart Jarski with RBC Capital Markets. You may proceed. Speaker 200:19:50Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. In the letter to shareholders, you talked about the growth that you're seeing in the PNC over time and potentially scaling that business to $30 to $50 billion of equity. Just unpack that a little bit and how you're thinking about getting there, what time frame, and any inorganic or organic plans. Thanks. Speaker 600:20:13Hi, Bart, and welcome to the call. Listen, when we started this business, our focus was and still is to focus on low-risk liabilities, and that's meant the predominant focus so far has been on the annuity business, the PRT market, and that's where we've scaled significantly. We also identified PNC as a potential opportunity for us if we could find product lines where we felt we could bring a competitive advantage, where the Brookfield experience and insight could allow us to scale something. If it operated well, we could run a less than 100% combined ratio, effectively giving us access to attractive float to be invested into the things that we do at Brookfield, and it could be very profitable. We've taken our time to assess that. We continue to assess it. Speaker 600:20:59As we do and as we identify those markets where we think we could scale while managing risk and operating something differentiated, we will do that and allocate capital to scale. That will be done organically to begin with, and that's where we focus with Argo and some PNC within American National. We are refocusing those businesses on the lines that we think have long-term potential. As we proceed, there could be inorganic opportunities, but for now, the focus is organic. Speaker 600:21:27Great, thanks. Just to follow up on the pricing competitive advantage that you talked about within PNC, help us understand some of those dynamics in terms of what you see in these assets and your ability to price better than the incumbents. Thanks. Speaker 600:21:42I think that just comes down to risk tolerance, which comes down to your experience with an asset class. That's leveraging our operating capabilities around the assets where we are not just an investor, but we've been an operator in those assets for a very long time. That allows you to price risk better, we believe, whilst not actually increasing the risk profile of the business because we just have a deeper understanding of operations. That's what we'll be leveraging as we look to grow. Speaker 600:22:11Great, thank you. Speaker 200:22:14Thank you. Our next question comes from Kenneth Worthington with JP Morgan. You may proceed. Speaker 200:22:21Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to dig into carry and real estate dispositions really centered around this theme of market conditions or getting better. Is the environment better enough to start to pull forward carry that might have logically been expected for 2027 and 2026 into the second half of this year, maybe even early 2026, if the market condition path sort of continues on its current trajectory? From a real estate perspective, fleshing out, Nick, your comments, are the conditions better enough to pull forward the timing of dispositions on that T&D portfolio as well? Thank you. Speaker 600:23:07Thanks, Ken. I'll start with the timing of carry. We are making excellent progress on the monetizations. As you said, it's $55 billion year to date, and it's diversified across asset class and geography, which is very encouraging. The breadth and depth of interest from buyers has been very strong. As it relates to carried interest, it obviously takes time. The market is strong. The focus today is on well-run assets with good platforms with good growth potential. That's what we've been bringing to market. To bring them to market, to execute sales, to complete the sales takes time. I think what we are doing is executing probably in line with the plan that we had expected at the start of the year. Obviously, the capital markets and general conditions are being conducive to executing that plan. It has not changed significantly our expected timing on carry. Speaker 600:23:59We would still expect this year to be sort of a bridge year broadly in line with last year and then see a significant step up into next year. That will just really be dependent on the actual timing of the transactions and the processes. Right now, it points to us being broadly in line with what we would have laid out before. On real estate, what I'd say on real estate, my observation is we've talked extensively over the last few years, and we've been fairly consistent in saying that for real estate transaction activity pickup, we need two key foundations to be in place. One, we need to see the strong operating fundamentals and therefore the sentiment turn more positive. Secondly, we need to see constructive capital markets to support transaction activity. I'd say that both of those boxes feel like they are checked now. Speaker 600:24:48The operating fundamentals for high-quality real estate across the board are very strong. Specifically, as you're asking on balance sheet for office and retails, we talked about that occupancy is high. Supply-demand fundamentals are heavily in our favor. That is why we're seeing consistent record rents signed across the portfolio and across the globe. I think with those two boxes checked, we're now starting to see transaction activity pick up. Within the T&D portfolio, we said we sold over 13 assets so far this year. We have a lot of assets there that's contributing to equity and will continue to execute. It takes time to execute those sales, but we have more assets coming to market. We have some actively in the market right now, and we will just continue to execute the plan. Speaker 600:25:31Okay, great. Just a little one on the Just acquisition. I think you said two thirds of the financing was coming from a facility. Can you sort of describe what that facility is, and how does that facility or the funding from that facility impact the economics for you and the accretion, if at all? Speaker 600:25:51Ken, I would just make a general comment, and this would apply to broadly most questions on Just that you may have on the call, that this is a public-to-private transaction and it's subject to pretty strict UK takeover rules. We are very limited in what we will and can say about the transaction at this stage. If you read the information contained in the public 2.7 announcement, that will give you extra detail. There are extra documents filed on a microsite that we can point you to, but we're limited in what we can say at this time about the transaction. Speaker 600:26:24Yeah, I should have known better. Thank you so much. Speaker 600:26:26Thanks, Ken. Speaker 200:26:29Thank you. Our next question comes from Mario Saric with Scotiabank. You may proceed. Speaker 200:26:35Hi, good morning. Just one for me. Maybe coming back to the disclosed evolution of focusing the balance sheet on growing the insurance operations. With that in mind, are there any kind of longer-term desired or implications for the corporate structure that exists, say, that perhaps you didn't envision five years ago when this initiative started, including perhaps the desired ownership levels and other listed vehicles? Speaker 600:27:02Not as it pertains to those, Mario. Listen, I think, you know, Bruce said it in his remarks that when we started this company, we thought it would be a very attractive opportunity to deploy capital. It would have synergies with broader Brookfield, but it would be a discrete investment. I think what we're seeing is the opportunity and the synergies are more significant, and therefore it's become more integrated into overall Brookfield. I think when we started this, we always had the intention to fund it on balance sheet. What we're seeing in the business has just reaffirmed that expectation. This business will stay heavily integrated into Brookfield. That would be the approach. I think the important three things to note as we scale the business is, one, it will be a tremendous engine for growth for BAM, who manages the capital. Speaker 600:27:48Two, as pension markets open up, this will be very powerful for broader Brookfield. Three, we just think it could be, it is, or it will be a more efficient capital structure and will allow us to enhance our returns on capital. I think that's the key messages. Probably the last thing I would add, and just to be very clear, like our single skill in Brookfield is investing people's capital, institutions, sovereigns, individuals, and making good risk-adjusted returns. None of that is changing. This is just potentially a more efficient way to accelerate the scale and the returns of our business. Speaker 600:28:24Okay, that's it for me. Thank you. Speaker 200:28:28Thank you. Our next question comes from Sherilyn Radborn with TD Cowen. You may proceed. Speaker 200:28:35Thanks very much and good morning. With respect to the dedicated AI infrastructure strategy that you're preparing to launch, can you give us some color on whether you expect to have cornerstone investors to support that launch the way that you did with the inaugural transition strategy? Can you elaborate on how you will mitigate exposure to technological obsolescence risk inside the box? Speaker 600:29:05Yeah, Sherilyn, hi, it's Nick. First of all, yes, I think that is something that we are working on when we launch these new strategies. It can be very appealing to some of our largest shareholders around the world. This is obviously an asset class they're very focused on. We are engaged with a number of our largest clients. If things play out, it would be similar to how we launched the transition fund. On your second question, that is sort of how that's through our engagement with the off-takers or who will be providing these services too. We will be structuring these investments in a way where we can limit our downside risk and exposure and effectively providing capital to fund the build-out of the backbone of that infrastructure. It will come down to the structure and the terms of the capital we provide. Speaker 600:29:52It will be done to meet the criteria of the risk return profile of this capital, which will be similar to other funds that we've raised. Speaker 600:30:01Great. Just as a quick follow-up with respect to carried interest, can you remind us which funds are currently recognizing carried interest and which are approaching that milestone? Speaker 600:30:14Yeah, so the carried contribution this year has come from some Oaktree funds. We've been finishing off the carry in the first global vintage of our funds, which would have been the first infrastructure fund, the first real estate fund, which is actually now tied up. It's finished, it's complete, it's delivered an excellent return of north of 20%. That fund is now done with the final two transactions this quarter. It would have been our fourth private equity fund, which is also largely done. Those would have been the contributors to date. The next funds, which will be significant contributors as we execute on currently signed and planned sales, will be the next global infrastructure fund, so BIF2, and then working into BESREP2, BESREP3, and then the Oaktree opportunity funds coming shortly after that into 10 and 11. Speaker 600:31:11That's all for me. Thank you. Speaker 600:31:13Thanks, Sherilyn. Speaker 200:31:15Thank you. Our next question comes from James Going with National Bank. You may proceed. Speaker 200:31:23Thanks. Good morning. Just in the wealth solutions business, just wanted to get a little bit more color. Looks like spread at 1.8% came in a little lighter than the last couple of quarters by my calculations. Am I reading that right? Maybe you can just sort of talk through some of the drivers of that slight step down. Speaker 600:31:47Sure. Also, welcome to the call. Thanks for joining. We were roughly at 1.8% last quarter, so it's broadly consistent with last quarter. I think when you look at the rounding, it's down slightly compared to last quarter. I'd say there's nothing really instructive in that. We are still seeing excellent deployment opportunities, and it's probably more just about the timing of the inflows versus the speed to deployment. When we look at the opportunity set for deployment, we're really seeing an excellent opportunity set and don't see any risk to the downside on that spread as we sit here today. Speaker 600:32:24Great. On the real estate operating business, two questions here. First, cash distributions coming in a little lighter than previous quarters. What could be driving that? With the improved operating environment for real estate, do you have a sense as to the timeline when operating FFO or NOI would begin to close the gap to those cash distributions? Speaker 600:32:54Sure. So just on your first question, the cash distribution this quarter, the reduction is really just the product of the residential land and housing business, where last year we had one-time income from lot sales that were not repeated this year. We have seen a little bit of a slowdown in home sales. I'd say the long-term outlook for the business remains strong and intact, really driven by the supply-demand fundamentals in housing. That reduction this quarter in the DE was really driven by the land and housing business. On your question about the operating FFO for the business and the outlook, I think the underlying fundamentals for the business are very strong. We had, obviously, the impact from RESI. I would tell you that the FFO this quarter, also, if you look at it year over year, is impacted by the fact that we have sold assets. Speaker 600:33:49That has an impact to income. We have the absence of some one-time events that were there last year. These impacts were offset by lower rates, tightening credit spreads, and the effects of the deleveraging we've undertaken in the business. I think that deleveraging, better capital markets, tighter spreads, supported by the core NOI continuing to grow in the business, is going to drive FFO growth over the next months and years. As we sign these new rents, like just this week, we're poised to sign a rent in a building in New York at close to $300 a square foot. That's $300 a square foot for a new lease we're poised to sign in New York this week. Speaker 600:34:30As those leases start to work their way through earnings, as we burn off the rent freeze and they start to work their way through earnings, we have a tremendous tailwind for FFO coming from these assets. I think you have strong FFO coming from those assets. While the FFO may take time to pick up, these leases are fully reflected into the valuations of the assets now as people do a long-term DCF on these assets. I think you have that positive driver. On top of that, the increased pace of monetizations is going to bring significant capital and cash flow back to the business. If you think about the three transactions announced out of BESREP and our interest in those assets, that's going to be $500 to $600 million of cash flow for the real estate business from three transactions alone. Speaker 600:35:16I think the outlook for the liquidity, capital, and FFO for the real estate business is very positive. Speaker 600:35:26Thank you very much. Speaker 200:35:29Thank you. Our next question comes from Surab Movaedi with BMO Capital Markets. You may proceed.Read morePowered by