Blackstone Reaches $1 Trillion in Assets Under Management

livemint.com:

Private-equity giant Blackstone became the first among its peers to reach $1 trillion in assets under management. The New York firm, which set a goal in 2018 of crossing the $1 trillion mark by 2026, got there early thanks to a concerted push into lower-risk, lower-return strategies, such as insurance, infrastructure, credit and certain types of real estate. The areas have big growth potential and feature pools of money that don’t need to be replenished constantly.

Blackstone said its assets climbed to $1 trillion in the second quarter from $991.3 billion at the end of the first quarter and $940.8 billion a year earlier. Inflows were $30.1 billion in the quarter, with insurance and credit, including real-estate credit, pushing it over the threshold. The firm’s net income rose to $601.3 million, or 79 cents a share, compared with a loss of $29.4 million, or 4 cents a share, a year earlier.

Valuations rose across the portfolios of nearly all of Blackstone’s major strategies during the quarter, with only its higher-risk, higher-return real-estate holdings coming in flat. Distributable earnings, which represent cash that could be handed back to shareholders, fell to $1.21 billion, or 93 cents a share, from $1.99 billion, or $1.49 a share, in the second quarter of last year. Driving the decline was a weaker environment for asset sales and initial public offerings, particularly compared with the second quarter of 2022, when Blackstone sold the Cosmopolitan hotel and casino in Las Vegas and recapitalized its large European logistics business.