Blue Owl Capital Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Blue Owl Capital's first quarter 2025 earnings call. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. I'd like to advise all parties that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Erin Dyer, head of investor relations for Blue Owl. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator, and good morning to everyone.

Joining me today are Mark Lipschultz, our co-chief executive officer, and Alan Kirshenbaum, our chief financial officer. I'd like to remind our listeners that remarks made during the call may contain forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of future performance or results, and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that are outside the company's control. Actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time, and Blue Owl Capital's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is deemed no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. We'd also like to remind everyone that we'll refer to non-GAAP measures on the call, which are reconciled to GAAP figures in our earnings presentation, available on the Shareholders section of our website at blueowl.com. Please note that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any Blue Owl fund. This morning, we issued our financial results for the first quarter of 2025, reporting fee-related earnings, or FRE, of $0.22 per share and distributable earnings, or DE, of $0.17 per share. We declared a dividend of $0.225 per share for the first quarter, payable on May 28 to holders of record as of May 14, up 25% from the prior year. During the call today, we'll be referring to the earnings presentation, which he posted to our website this morning, so please have that on hand to follow along. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Anne. Let's start with the obvious good news. We are much better investors than apparently our conference call company is at managing calls. So the good news will continue as we carry forward. Look, we're very pleased with the strong results we continue to report each quarter. reflected the stable and predictable nature of Blue Owl's business in what is yet again an uncertain and volatile market backdrop. The past five years have presented a continuous series of challenges across COVID, persistent inflation, geopolitical tensions, and now global tariffs. In contrast, Blue Owl has consistently demonstrated strong business performance through periods of upheaval, with management fees growing over a 35% annual growth rate since we lifted as a public company. This growth has been underpinned by the defensive nature of our permanent capital and FRE-centric business and propelled by the strong levels of interest we've seen for investors for our differentiated investment strategies. Our business model is very simple at its core. We keep the vast majority of our AUM we raise. We continue to raise valuable new capital from an increasingly diversified set of sources across an increasingly broad spectrum of strategies, and our earnings are highly predictable because they're management fee-driven. Today, we're facing another shock to the system where the flow of global trade and the price of that trade may be substantially altered going forward. There are many questions regarding inflation, economic growth, consumer demand, potential recession, and more for which investors don't have concrete answers and may not at some times. So, we're reminded once again of the transitory nature of perceived liquidity and the benefits of permanent capital. We're fortunate to have a business model that is quite defensive during periods like these. In fact, we've said this before, we think our products are built precisely to give investors greater certainty and comfort during challenging and volatile markets. Our strategies focus on downside protection, income generation, and inflation protection. These characteristics are less exciting in boom markets, but act as structural guardrails for portfolios when markets are dislocated. Similarly, Blue Owl has been purpose-built to be steady, stable, and predictable through various environments. So let me quickly highlight a few factors that contribute to this stability. First, approximately 90% of our management fees come from permanent capital, so our revenues are highly resilient. Our business is also very U.S.-centric. The vast majority of our borrowers or tenants are domestically-based and primarily serve domestic customers, which substantially limits any direct impact from tariffs. And we'll spend some time on the numbers around this in just a little bit. To add to that, we have over $23 billion of AUM that will begin to pay management fees once capital is deployed, which will drive an incremental $290 million of revenue or 13% growth off our current management fees over the last 12 months. In addition, we successfully completed the merger of OTF and OTF2 in March. Upon a listing, OTF will be the largest technology-focused BDC in the public market and will drive another approximately $135 million of incremental annual management fees for Blue Owl. So, we have pretty good visibility as the revenue grows just from deployment and fee step-ups, not counting any incremental fundraising. And we intend to be very front-footed about opportunities that arise in this current environment. So we've observed the current periods of elevated volatility. Market share accrues to solutions providers like us, and people are willing to pay more for our valuable capital. We expect the same dynamics to play out this time around if this uncertainty continues. In fact, we have already started to see instances of companies that have listed to public debt now swarming direct lending solutions. Similarly, we are seeing elevated imbalance in alternative credit as market participants express concerns about the availability of capital in traditional securitization markets. And the last point I want to make, which is something we've said often, but I think carries even more weight today, is that our business is management fee and FRE driven. Our investors don't have to figure out whether carry or capital market fees will be up or down over the next year. That predictability should be worth a premium during ordinary markets and becomes even more valuable today. So to bring this home through our financial results, we have grown our management fees by 31%, our FRE by 23%, and our DE by 20% on an LPM basis. Reflected in this growth are the significant investments we have continued to make globally across the private wealth and institutional channels, which have resulted in equity fundraising of nearly $30 billion over the last 12 months, an increase of over 75% over the prior year. Over that same period, we capitalized on constructive syndicated markets to raise an incremental $19 billion of debt for our funds and vehicles, primarily in credit and real assets. Add it up, the nearly $50 billion of equity and debt capital we've raised over the last 12 months is approximately 30% growth off our AUM a year ago. During the first quarter, we raised over $6.5 billion, with $4 billion raised in private and private wealth, primarily across our perpetually distributed products and GPCs. As we look further into 2025, we're seeing an increasingly diversified and global base of investors contributing to evergreen product flows, with nearly $1 billion in capital closed on April 1st. We're also making good progress on the launch of our alternative credit product, focused on the wealth market, and expect to be in a position to close out the private phase fundraisers for this product at some point this summer. On the institutional side, we raise capital across a number of strategies, including digital infrastructure, net lease, direct lending, insurance solutions, and alternative credit. Generally, we anticipate that institutional fundraising will step up over the course of 2025, given the expected timing of next vintage launches and ongoing fundraising. Turning to business performance, in direct lending, growth origination was nearly $13 billion and net was over $4.5 billion for the quarter, more than double our net origination in the prior quarter, reflecting robust add-on activity across our portfolio and a declining level of refinances. As I alluded to earlier, current market volatility is accruing to the benefit of private lenders, and we're having a fairly robust level of discussions. Well, it's hard to say what I've been able to look like over the short term. We have plenty of capital to put to work and feel well positioned for whatever is ahead. Our direct lending strategy was built for these types of markets, volatility and uncertainty. We feel very good about the credit quality of our portfolio. We've had a 13 basis point average annual realized loss rate, validating our rigorous underwriting standards. I mentioned earlier, we have a philosophical preference for larger, domestically focused, services-oriented portfolio companies with high customer retention and re-up rates, which we think are more resilient business models. And remember, the portfolio is not a microcosm of the U.S. economy. Rather, we think our loan book will prove out to be quite defensive if we are facing a paradigm shift in global trade. In alternative credit, our funds announced a sizable commitment to SoFi, representing their largest loan platform business arrangement to date. We also entered into a significant forward flow agreement with Pagaya as a growing source of funding alongside Pagaya's ADS program. Below-scale and capital flexibility have proven to be a great asset as we enter into these arrangements, providing essential financing and an opportune time. Furthermore, as we highlighted during our recent investor day, we think this is a highly defensive strategy for investors as the amortizing nature of the asset creates enhanced downside protection with principal return on an accelerated basis relative to even corporate credit strategies. Another layer of protection comes from our ability to turn the flow of financing on and off quickly. Similar to direct lending, we have very little direct exposure to tariffs in this strategy, as we are generally U.S.-focused, and we see an opportunity to accelerate market share as an alternative to securitization markets. To date, we have not seen any adverse changes in consumer credit and feel very good about the resilience of our portfolio. Now, this resilience carries over into our GDP state strategy, where our funds own states and highly diversified groups of quality alternative asset managers. Over the past decade, the alternative industry has grown AUM by roughly 10% annually. On the other hand, the managers in which we own stakes have grown their AUM by approximately 17% on average, 70% higher than industry growth. In keeping with the philosophy of our other businesses, we're providing valuable capital growth to a growth industry, and the scale and certainty of capital we offer is an even shorter supply during periods of market instability. During the quarter, we made our first investment out of the latest large-cap vintage into a prominent asset manager with whom we've had a long stand-in relationship. In real assets, we continue to benefit from an inflationary environment and higher rates as companies look to optimize their own balance sheets. This remains the best setup for deployment we've seen in a very long time. Our next strategy offers tenants crucial capital flexibility while providing our investors attractive income with highly predictable cash flows, driven by investment-grade and credit-worthy counterparties, all with a tax advantage activity. We continue to see significant demand for this strategy, and we're looking forward to providing updates on the path towards our next vintage drawdown fund in the near future. On the real estate credit strategy, we've been on offense during recent periods of dislocation, finding opportunities to upgrade the portfolio into market weakness for insurance and managed clients. Digital infrastructure, we continue to see this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deploy with demand for capital and our differentiated technical expertise far surpassing supply. We held our final close of Fund 3 in April, reaching a hard cap of $7 billion, nearly double the size of the prior fund. and we remain on track to launch the next flagship vintage in 2026, along with a well-dedicated truck. Looking across real assets, we see substantial opportunities to harness the power of scale, flexible structuring, and diversified pools of capital to construct bespoke, differentiated solutions for our counterparts. This is the thesis in bringing these businesses together, and it is absolutely playing out in real time. So, bringing the conversation back to where we started. This is the type of environment where our business is highly defensive on an absolute basis and where we should outperform even more on a relative basis. Every time we see a market dislocation, Blal has demonstrated remarkable strength and consistency, and we have continued to march towards our long-term strategic goals. I expect we will do the very same this time around with the benefit of an even more scaled and diversified business. So, with that, let me turn it over to Alan to discuss our financial results.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. We are very pleased with the results we reported this quarter, marking our 16th consecutive quarter of management fee and FRE growth. It was another quarter of results right on top of where we expected and right on track with our long-term goals. I think it's important to reiterate some of the key points Mark raised in his remarks, which I'll do in a few moments. To start with our financial results, over the last 12 months, management fees increased by 31%, and approximately 90% were from permanent capital vehicles. FRE was up 23%. DE was up 20%. And as you can see on slide 13, we raised $6.7 billion of equity in the first quarter and $29.4 billion over the last 12 months, an increase of 76% from the prior year. And inclusive of debt, we raised nearly $50 billion over the last 12 months. To break down the first quarter fundraising numbers across our strategies and products, in credit, we raised $4 billion. $2.9 billion was raised in direct lending, of which nearly $2.5 billion came from our non-traded BDCs, OCIC and OTIC. This includes approximately $250 million closed in channels that are not on a monthly closing cadence. The remainder was raised across liquid credit, alternative credit, investment grade credit, and our GP-led secondary strategy. Subsequent to quarter ends, we raised an incremental $540 million for our GP-led secondary strategy, bringing us over $1.5 billion in total. In GP strategic capital, we raised over $550 million during the quarter, of which roughly $450 million was attributable to our large cap stake strategy. bringing the latest vintage to $7.3 billion. As we've said in the past, we expect the fundraiser to be back-end loaded, heading towards our $13 billion goal. And in real assets, we raised $2.2 billion primarily from O-Rent, digital infrastructure, and co-investments. Subsequent to quarter ends, we held the final close for digital infrastructure fund three, bringing in an incremental $360 million dollars and hitting our $7 billion hard cap, as Mark noted earlier. And overall, for our wealth-dedicated products, flows to OCIC, OTIC, and O-Rent during the quarter were 55% higher than flows into those funds in the first quarter of last year. As we have seen, our March flows for the April 1st close were strong, with over $920 million in total fund raise, tracking well against March 1st flows, excluding channels that do not hold monthly closes. and our April flows for the May 1st close are tracking well. Turning to our platforms, in credit, our direct lending portfolio growth returns were 3.1% in the first quarter and 13.3% over the last 12 months. Our direct lending funds are well-positioned and constructed to withstand the economic pressures likely to be caused by Paris or a possible recession. Our direct lending funds are comprised of primarily first lien senior secured loans. We focus on larger borrowers that we believe will be well-suited to withstand uncertainty and volatility with an average EBITDA of over $250 million. Weighted average LTVs are in the high 30s across direct lending and in the low 30s specifically in our software lending portfolio. This creates a high level of protection for our investors as sponsor equity and more junior debt provide significant cushion. Private equity firms typically take a long-term view to protecting their investments during periods of disruption and have the dry powder and resources to support their businesses. We consistently work with the largest sponsors with strong expertise in their sectors. As Mark mentioned earlier, our portfolio continues to perform extremely well. We have not seen a deterioration in credit quality, which we know has been an area of focus for investors in recent weeks. To elaborate on this point, we focus on U.S.-based borrowers in non-cyclical, defensive, and service-oriented industries. Five sectors, software, insurance, business services, food and beverage, and healthcare services, constitute approximately 70% of our direct lending portfolio, which is well diversified with an average position size for approximately 20 basis points. Sitting here today, we estimate that portfolio companies that have a material manufacturing capacity outside the U.S. represent only a mid-single-digit percentage of our overall direct lending portfolio. However, most of these companies generally have significant global reach, diverse sourcing capabilities, and experienced management teams that have successfully navigated previous tariffs and supply chain disruptions before. And as a reminder, our portfolio is comprised of directly originated loans negotiated with tighter covenant packages than public market deals. Between this modest exposure and the defensive characteristics I just highlighted, we feel that our direct lending portfolio is relatively recession-resistant and should perform well on an absolute basis and even more on a relative basis. And remember what Mark said earlier. Our portfolio is not a microcosm of the U.S. economy. We set a very high bar when underwriting a loan and generally do not make loans to companies with high energy exposure, high commodity exposure, retail fashion, acid-heavy businesses, melting ice cube industries. We aim to avoid product and geographic concentration and get to choose among the biggest, highest quality businesses that are among the best in their industry, backed by the biggest PE sponsors, to make loans to. On average, underlying revenue and EBITDA growth across our portfolios was in the high single digits to low teams with no material increase in signs of stress, such as increased amount of rules, stress amendments, hit conversion requests, or watch list names. Turning to alternative credit, our portfolio growth returns were 6.1% in the first quarter and 15.2% over the last 12 months. Echoing what Mark mentioned earlier, we are seeing very resilient performance across asset-based categories. In GP strategic capital, we are nearing the finish line in deploying our fifth vintage of our flagship GP state strategy, and have made our first investment out of the sixth vintage. Performance across these funds remains strong, with a net IRR of 22.5% for Fund 3, 37.7% for Fund 4, and 15.4% for Fund 5. And in real assets, as you heard, we had a record quarter of commitments in net lease, bringing our drawdown funds and net strategy to nearly 90% committed. Even with robust deployment, our net lease pipeline continues to grow, with nearly $28 billion of transaction volume under letter of intent or contract to close. Trends across deployment and monetization cap rates in net lease have remained quite stable, reflecting the structural advantages of our scale and positioning. During the first quarter, we had a record quarter of commitments, totaling $3.8 billion, bringing commitments over the last 12 months to $8 billion at a roughly 8% cap rate on average. As a reminder, many of these opportunities are bill-to-suit arrangements, which can take between 18 to 24 months to fully deploy. We will earn incremental management fees as this capital is deployed. Concurrently, we monetized over $700 million over the past 12 months, generating a 24% net IRR, demonstrating how we can continue to generate opportunistic returns in a strategy that we believe is indicative of investment grade and core risk. With regards to performance, gross returns in net lease were 1.2% for the first quarter and 3.1% for the last 12 months, comparing favorably to the broader real estate market over this time period. In real estate credit, we invested $1.3 billion in public securities at a nearly 9% yield, increasing our market share in single asset, single borrower, CMDS, and showcasing our team's ability to be opportunistic in dislocated markets. We also had our most active quarter in private loans, targeting double-digit returns for clients. Turning to digital infrastructure, we're thrilled with the running start that we've taken with this business. The tenants are incredible credits, and we love the mission criticality of the assets. We're operating with a combination of scale, relationships, and technical expertise that we don't think anyone else has, and the demand-supply imbalance is massive. We'll have a lot more to say about this business in the coming quarters. I want to pause for a moment to make sure the pattern is obvious to everyone. Our products across Blue Owl have performed very well, as they are designed to do, during periods of uncertainty. These are products that are geared towards this environment, and combined with our permanent capital, this makes Blue Owl uniquely positioned versus our peers. So to wrap up here, I'd like to reiterate the contrast between the volatility and uncertainty we are seeing in global markets today and the stability of Owl's business. We are 100% FRE and mostly permanent capital. Every dollar of capital we raise drives three times more FRE than our peers because we have less capital heading out the door, a higher blended fee rate, and a high FRE margin. I really think it's difficult to find a better structural setup than Blue Owl for the markets and macro environments that investors face today. I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that we've now posted 16 consecutive quarters of management fee and FRE growth, a period that encompassed runaway inflation, 500 basis points of rate increases, massive supply chain disruptions, a shutdown of the capital markets, and accelerating geopolitical instability. Blue owl, each year, up and to the right, consistent growth. Consistent, predictable cash flows. Blue Owl was built for this market. Our products were built for this market. Mark talked about our products. Downside-protected, income-oriented. These characteristics may be less exciting and up into the right markets, but in markets like now, that's when they really stand out. Each time we have been through this location, we come through the other side with investors having an even deeper appreciation for how differentiated our product and business model are. And we look forward to proving this out again. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Operator, can we please open the line for questions?

Absolutely. And everyone, if you would like to ask a question today, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and please read through for additional questions. Our first question today will come from Glenn Shore, Evercore ISS.

Hello there. Hello, Warren.

Hello there. I like where you ended that in terms of the differentiation, the mostly permanent capital and the predictability and downside protection. You've bought yourself into some very key growth markets, and we see some of it, the growth in AUM and FRE. I'm a fan of all that. When you get down to the earnings per share, the growth rates aren't as big. And we've talked about some of this in the past, but maybe we could talk about how we bridge the gap from what's very stable now and when that diversification starts to kick into better earnings per share growth over the next, say, year or two that we get into that 20% or so growth that you're hoping for. Thanks so much.

Sure. Thanks, Glenn. Appreciate the question. What you're seeing this year, as we've talked about on last quarter's call, is with the acquisitions rolling through, in particular for IPI, we have a small gap between our FRE growth and FRE per share growth. And that's going to narrow as we go through. We talked about at Investor Day that we are expecting over the next five years about 20% growth in FRE per share.

So I would fully expect as we get into 26 and 27, you're going to see that gap narrow very quickly.

Our next question will come from Brian McKenna, Citizens.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. So a question on private wealth. You know, it's great to hear that flows has held up quite well, even with the pickup in volatility. But two questions here. One, have you seen any evolution in the behavior of retail investors and how they allocate to alternatives, specifically during periods of volatility? And then two, given that retail investors are a lot more familiar today with the Blue Owl brand and the types of products you offer, is there the potential for adoption timelines to be accelerated for future products like an alternative credit?

Yeah, thanks, Brian. Yeah, with private wealth in this environment, and obviously these are all evolving marketplaces, but we have to keep in mind how much just secular growth and opportunity there is in the private wealth channel, that even when you get into sort of individual investor questions of does this person make an investment or not make an investment in a given quarter, There's so many new participants joining. Let me give you just a live example as of yesterday. Take the firm Edward Jones. Edward Jones vends at $2.2 trillion. And you know what share of that is in alts? Zero. And they are now just launching alts And we are one of their premier launches as part of that. So here's an example of, I mean, talk about White Space, talk about Greenfield, whatever you want to call it. So I think a couple of things I would observe. One, the addressable market is gigantic and penetration is very low. Penetration is rising. We see it. We have multiple new platforms that are rolling out our products. And, you know, an example like that, they're big. And they present really substantial opportunities, number one. Number two, during times of volatility and uncertainty, I expect... that we are going to see, again, let's talk about short-term perturbations when people just get scared for a week and they're hiding under the covers. The reality is people then realize the benefits. This is the exact conversation I had with a group of individual FAs yesterday. This is when people realize the benefits of the stability and predictability, particularly of law of thought. So this is not an all generic statement. I mean, clearly there's a different tone these days for private equity, for example. But income-oriented, inflation-protected, downside-protected strategies resonate loud. And it's exactly in this environment where those strategies for individual investors and their FAs shine. When everything is rosy, everything looks rosy. When things are volatile, all of a sudden there's a reason to pay attention. And guess what? Our products performed great during this last quarter. Our products continue to perform great. We continue to deliver great income every month to our investors. So I think we're quite optimistic, just like in institutional markets, frankly. After a period of dislocation, we tend to come out ahead. Again, I'm not trying to guess what happens in a week, in a month. But I'm saying this kind of environment, I'm not saying this is the right word. We don't want the world to look like this. But this is a very good time for us. We win coming out of environments like this.

Super helpful.

Thanks, Mark. Bill Katz from TD Cowan is up next.

Okay, thank you very much. I'm having some difficulty on my end as well. I might have missed a little bit of this. I think during the prepared comments you had mentioned that you expect the institutional business to accelerate a little bit as the year unfolds. I was wondering if you could unpack and talk about some of the drivers underneath that, whether it be by product or some of the more recent platforms you've picked up. I think I may be curious about IPI and Adelaide, respectively. And then just a technical question. On the transaction fees, I was a little disappointed in that. It sort of dropped sequentially despite the originations being pretty durable quarter to quarter. I was wondering if you could help unpack what the drivers are of that as we look ahead. Thank you.

Sure.

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

And just to note, remember, gross originations actually were lower this quarter than last. Net originations were higher. So there's a couple different dynamics to unpack in there. I mean, obviously, net originations and capital going to work are a good thing. Gross originations would be the number that would drive potential transaction fees. But, you know, if I could just for one moment, you know, our transaction fees are – Less predictable, just like everybody else's. But they're a tiny piece of our business, and we're not minimizing that they were lower. I prefer they be higher, too. They were lower this quarter than last. I don't know what they'll be this quarter, next quarter. It's clearly the part of our business, in the grand scheme of things, that's least predictable. But that's the part of our business that's least predictable. I mean, we're talking about a tiny piece of our business around the edges. Every one of our peers have massive amounts of capital in transaction fees, which is introducing that volatility into a huge amount. I'm not trying to say that as a pejorative. Our model is so different. So we're not ignoring your point. Yeah, we prefer them to be a little bit higher, too. But in the scheme of our business and the trajectory over the next five years, The transaction fees are a side fill. They will be up. They will be down. But actually, the number, if you took a step back, does logically follow the gross origination time.

On the institutional flows, I guess I'll start by saying we expect to have, as we've been expecting as we approach the year, Flagship funds in the market, we have CP State 6, as we've talked about, that we've told will be back-end loaded. We've talked about Real Estate 7, which we expect to be out in the market and fundraising and doing closes in the second half of the year. We have some other adjacent opportunities, some new products, real estate credit. and some others that we are out fundraising talking to folks about. And so our expectation was 1Q would be a little lower, and we would have stronger 2Q, 3Q, 4Q because of the timing of some of our more flagship-sized funds.

And I'll impact one of the dimensions of that. Look, we're winning new LPs. We're winning in new markets. This is obviously looking at the harder overall fundraising environment. That's just an obvious fact around the world. However, we are winning. Of the new, of the LPs that invested in this quarter, half were new to us. Half were first-time commitments to this firm. I mean, think about that. That's a tremendous opportunity for us. That's a tremendous win. We are now deeply penetrating, for example, the Middle East. Middle East, which has, of course, not been a meaningful market for us five years ago, has become a very, very powerful partner for us, particularly driven by real assets. So, as you just noted, like IPI, brings with it whole new geographies and partnerships. So, look, we've been investing for years in building the wealth channel and the institutional channel. And we are harvesting the benefits of those now, and we'll see that harvest, we think, continue to grow rapidly. through the year. So we like where we sit. Again, we're not trying to be a Pollyanna. In this overall world, there's no doubt that institutional fundraising has its own headwinds collectively for the industry.

But I think we like our position. Next, Craig Stevenzala from Bank of America has the next question.

Good morning, Mark. Hope everyone's doing well. Our question is on GC stakes. So, imagine season GC stakes look a little light relative to theory A run growth. So, I was hoping you could explain what drove the decline, and more importantly, help us with the S2T run rate.

Sure. Why don't I do the last part there, Craig? So two things I think is what you're seeing in the 1Q numbers. We had some small catch-up fees in 4Q that folks may have run-rated last quarter. And we had, if you recall, the DC Stakes Fund 4 had a fee step-down last quarter. It was at the end of October. So it was two months' worth of a fee step-down. And obviously this quarter, it's a full quarter, so three months. What I'll tell you is not good for GP states, but this quarter is a very clean quarter from a management state perspective, so very good run rate, no real catch-up fees in our numbers across our business.

Thanks, Jeff. We'll take the next question from Stephen Shuback, Wolf Research. Hi, good morning. Good morning, Stephen.

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

So, look, dislocated environments, you know, we all know are good for us and good for our business in terms of originations and things like spreads. It's very early, so I can't give you a meaningful statistical answer yet, right? This is reset. It takes some time to roll through a private market versus a public market. But let's start with a couple of facts. the syndicated market essentially shut down. So in terms of competition with the BSL market, that is exactly what happened rather instantaneously. And we've been making this point about the sort of on and off nature of public markets and the durable, longer cycle nature of private credit, which, by the way, is really good for the economy, but certainly good for our business, too. So I believe there was... the longest stretch of time, 15 days without a single deal being launched, which is the longest period of time in something like decades, 10 years, that we've gone, 10 years without 15 days of launching a deal. So, I mean, look how abrupt these markets are. It's exactly the reason the BSL market, it's important we have a BSL market. I really mean that. We don't wish it to be unhealthy. But it's so on again, off again. It's only proven the reason people should partner with private credit. We will come out of this period of time, I expect, with yet again more market share and more firms committed to using the private market because they see the value. Yes, they pay more. Yes, they have a more stringent document. Yes, they have more invasive due diligence. Those are all the things that go with doing our job well to protect the capital. But we give something. We give the predictability, the privacy, and the partnership, and this market proves it. In terms of spread, I would expect spread will start to wind back out. Again, we always kind of operate in this band, if you look over many years now. When the VFL market goes away, it's a factor. When people are more dependent on private capital, more value and predictability and partnership, we rise to the higher end of that band. When everything is wide open, we move to the lower end of that band, and I think we'll now start to migrate back up. I can't prove it yet. It's awfully early. We're starting to see it. We certainly think our capital is more valuable in this environment, and we certainly expect to see spreads start to widen, but it'll potentially take a little bit of time for that to roll through.

That's a great question.

Thank you for taking my question. We have a question from Alex Blosky, Goldman Sachs.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Another question for you around just retail. It is super encouraging to see that retail flows are holding up well for you guys and the industry broadly. Definitely the counter, perhaps, to what people are used to thinking about when it comes to retail and volatility. I thought you guys said retail is tracking well. I was hoping you can characterize that just in a little bit more detail, how April is shaping up relative to the last couple of months. And bigger picture questions, it's around strategy. We've seen a number of the large alternative managers now partner and have a GV with very sizable traditional firms. Curious how you guys are thinking about that and how big of a, you know, part of the strategy on a go-forward basis you think that needs to be in order to succeed in this channel.

Thanks, Alex. I'll take the first part, and then on the partnerships, I'll hand that over to Mark. Okay. We're tracking well against prior months. So what that means is we're about 20% down from where we saw flows last month. Last month, if you recall, was kind of what I would call a regular way month. We didn't have, you know, we have some distributors now that will do quarterly closes, and we see that in March. And so April was a very clean month from a run rate perspective, and we're seeing that about 20% down for the May 1st close. So I feel very good about that. You know, you certainly couldn't imagine a scenario where it's down much more meaningfully than that. But, you know, again, because we've got, you know, our products are really performing extraordinarily well in these markets, and they're very NAV-stable type products, income-oriented products. So we feel good about where we are today, and we'll see how that continues.

With regards to partnerships between traditional asset managers and alts firms, Look, we're very, very happy to see these seedlings being planted. You know, at the moment, they're seedlings. They're ideas, mostly announcements. You know, if you look in terms of At the moment, they're actually really not all that new. They're a kind of liquid loan product with a little bit of private sprinkled in to try to create some incremental return. I don't say that to diminish it, but it's not a very earth-shattering development yet. People have not really cracked any meaningful codes. We're absolutely working on some meaningful partnerships. We prefer to have something, you know, that really has kind of a tangible output and really is more about delivering true private solutions into these broader channels. You know, these liquid solutions are fine with a smattering of private. That's not ultimately a high-margin business, and it's not really particularly new. But we're very happy to see the kind of creative work that's our peers are doing and over the long term I would expect these will be useful partnerships for our industry and give us additional access to a broader set of individual investors and yes you can certainly safely assume we've been deeply engaged in those conversations and over time I expect we will have strategies of our own to discuss with you all very well thank you

Your next question comes from Patrick Daggett of Hominis Research.

Hi, good morning, guys. Quick follow-up on that last answer. To be clear, you mean May 1st was 20% lower than April 1st? That's our current expectation, yeah.

Okay, cool. And then my higher-level question was, you mentioned the non-U.S. leads coming online. and adding, you know, $250 million to the baseline in March. Is that $250 million a baseline we should expect each quarter? And then could you like study some of the pipeline of other non-U.S. leads like that coming online and layering on through the rest of the year? Thank you.

Sure. I'll take that, Patrick. So, look, we continue to – we're really excited about this.

We continue to broaden the existing relationships we have, both domestically and globally. We continue to try to think about unique and differentiated ways to grow our wealth distribution platform. And this is exactly one of those areas where we can create local feeders for local geographies They can come in usually on a monthly basis, sometimes on a quarterly basis. It's up to the local distributors to decide whether they turn it on on any given quarter. But we're optimistic that we can continue to see whether it's the one we have in place, some new ones that we come on line over time. But we're excited about what we're doing here, and we think it will continue to grow.

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

Great. Thanks. We'll go next to Chris Kakowski-Oppenheimer.

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

Sure. Thanks, Chris. We had our TRA payment in one queue. We had our, you know, that's a normal cadence for us. We've had our TRA payment in one queue of 2024 as well. So what you're going to see consistently from us is we have a very low effective tax rate. I've given guidance for 2025 that that will be, we expect, mid to high single digits. And so what you're going to see is a meaningfully higher effective tax rate in 1Q, call it, you know, 17 and change percent, and then it's going to come significantly down, and that will be, you know, low to mid single-digit percent effective tax rate for 223Q and 4Q. Okay.

And same pattern next year, I assume.

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

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

So we expect it will probably drift into early 2026 total. You know, we'll see. Look, our GDP statement, I think you all know this, so let me say it out loud. I think the reason I'm not here on people have not modeled it this way, but we've said it this way. We expect it to be back and loaded just like it was last time, just like it's been. Before, look, we're off to a very strong start. It is true that people then also like to see some of the deal activity, some of the investment activity. We've actually now done the first investment in that product, making an investment in Verica, which is something we've had a long partnership with. So it's a great example A. It's an A-plus firm. great for them doing a great job. And D, it demonstrates the power, again, of incumbency and being the go-to partner. And so we have a three-night active pipeline. So as those roll through, I expect that will continue to contribute to people accelerating or gaining traction on finishing up the fund. But we should assume that it will probably go into early 2020 in terms of wrapping it up.

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

That's definitely right, Chris. Okay. All righty. Thanks. That's it for me. Thank you.

And the next question is Kristen Love, Fiber Stanley.

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

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

We still fully expect that we'll come in 57 to 58. The next question is from Mike Brown, KBW. Oh, hi. This is Mike Brown from Wells Fargo. Hi.

It's just a high-level question for me. I wanted to ask on the non-traded BDC market. So if the Fed cuts come through, As the market expects, it seems like for the industry, the dividends likely move lower. What are the potential offsets that could kind of mitigate that base rate pressure? And then in a scenario of lower dividend yields, do you think investor behavior shifts at all? Do you think flows hold up? I guess, do they hold up? I guess you still have a high relative yield, so maybe if it 8% or 9% they can still flow well, or just curious how you think about that versus the kind of 10% plus yield that they run at today?

So let me, I want to emphasize something just to make a point, and then I'll get right into the details of your question. You said, well, if it turns out rates go lower, you know, like now the market expects, I mean, think about the volatility in that statement and expectations. That really is the heart of why our products are so great. And this particular product, my new product for Bilala is so great. It's about downside protection, about inflation protection. By the way, inflation numbers were higher, right, not lower yesterday. Okay. and about interest rate, you know, flow through. So, you know, what happens in a lower rate environment? Well, sure, yes, the base rate goes lower. But, of course, what we're really delivering is incremental return. And, in fact, you know, in the environment you're describing, and probably the environment we're in right now, a choppier public market, as we just talked about, more value on predictable capital, I would expect spreads to come up. So actually all things equal, the net of that, hard of course to say, but you probably have to take incremental spread with a lower rate than a higher rate with lower spread because that's actually incremental value add from the manager. But fund flows, and we've been in that environment. Remember, we operated in a zero percent rate environment. Fund flows have been extremely strong through multiple years, low rate, high rate. So no, we don't think that does anything meaningful for flow, because really we're going to deliver in that case you know, an even incrementally sort of better return than the risk-free rate, so to speak. So I think we feel very good about that kind of environment for our product. In fact, probably, last thing I'd say, if we want to deduce that lower rates must correlate with some kind of slowing economy or fear about the economy, then people should move to that. So they should move into this product even more because that's where, most importantly of all, Our products are about principal predictability and stability and preservation, and that's exactly what people are saying, and they want to pay even more attention to that question.

And let's just clock back a couple of years. We built our business on the credit side in zero-rate environments with super-tight spreads.

And so that comment Mark made on a relative basis is really important. And I'm sure folks would kind of like the lack of

volatility in the non-traded product as well, right? Without a doubt.

Absolutely. You know, listen, people that are our products today are getting their, you know, getting monthly famous, right? And right now we're typically doing, what, 10%, 11% yield. I mean, it works, which is why it's working. Compelling.

Thank you, Mike. Thank you.

We'll take the next question from Benjamin Budish, Barclays,

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your near-term expectations for deployment, thoughts on the pipeline, you know, how do you think about gross versus net, and I'm curious if you could provide any color on, you know, any changes you're seeing in terms of loan documentation, LP protections, portability, tech utilizations. It seems like last year when things got more competitive, we were seeing at least more headlines about things like PIC utilization. So what sort of trends are you seeing with borrowers and housing pipelines kind of shaking up on a gross per cent basis?

Thank you. Sure. I think I'll maybe – let me hit deployment in – we already talked about what was happening with CC State. So let me hit deployment in credit and real assets. I appreciate the questions you raised were more particular to private credit. So, there's two intersecting lines. There are two moving pieces, and I can't tell you the net of it in the short term. I think I can give you a pretty good read in the medium term. In the short term, the negative is just lower M&A. That's obvious to all of us, right? There's just less M&A in the world right now, given the uncertainty. The other side is market share, right? Market share comes to us during these kinds of environments. In fact, there really is no meaningful syndicated market. Someone can sign up for it, but I don't know what they think they might get. So at the end of the day, those two are going to be moving in opposite directions. The net of it all is a little hard to say, but they are offsetting. Over the medium term, here is the structural reality. We're going to have more people come to our market, more people see that it's worth using, and then the TV firms are going to eventually spend that capital. And we, like everybody else, thought first quarter might have been that unlock. Obviously, that didn't happen. But those trillions of dollars in dry powder and PE hands are going to work eventually. So we pick up our market share, which I expect we will through this volatile time, and then those dollars go to work. That's a net benefit for us in terms of putting capital to work. So, yes, short-term, let's all acknowledge the uncertainty of what's the offset between market share versus capital. You know, this M&A activity. We'll monitor that, of course, closely. It doesn't really matter to our business model. At the end of the day, we can pay these fixed fees. In fact, our net originations are higher this quarter than last. So there's a lot of variables, none of which matter much to the performance of our Blue Owl business. But to answer your question on the specifics of the market, you know, we have all setting variables, TBD, what that exactly means. In terms of, and also in terms of the dimensions you've described, let me spend just a minute on, look, the attributes of the loan continue to be really, this is the thing we've been trying to emphasize, always will matter to us most. quality of borrower is paramount, and our quality has continued to be extremely high. You mentioned a series of different attributes, you know, of loans, and there is, well, there's a long list of different things to go into a bespoke solution each time, but let me observe this. Our overall loan book continues to perform great. Our non-accruals, in fact, the number of companies on non-accrual went down this last quarter, not up. And so we continue to sit in a really healthy place, and the new credits we're doing, we very much like. And the last thing I want to emphasize is something about PIC, because it does tend to come up in the financial world, but also in the prep. There's two kinds of PIC. We've said this before. There's the pick by design because it's an extremely durable, low LTV cap structure with a huge equity check and a really great business. And it's about giving the company by design the ability to invest in its own growth. That's how you start for a company. And then there's pick not by design. And you have to. You have to draw the distinction. And let me say it with great and equal clarity. Pick by design is actually, from our point of view, usually an extremely good time. We do that in our strongest credit. Those tend to be our lowest loan-to-value biggest businesses. So pick by design in our software product is a good thing. That means we and the sponsor see that as a particularly strong credit with particularly big opportunities ahead of it. Pick because you have to go from cap to pick is a bad thing. There's no other way to describe that. That's not a healthy development. So watch people's portfolios. Watch migration from non-PIC to PIC. Not helpful. We have some of those. We always will. That's part of it. 400 companies. And we equally owe ourselves to that standard. But don't use the one instrument of PIC as a share of a portfolio. That's meaningless. In point of fact, PIC as a share of a portfolio is higher in a software business and... say this the right way, isn't everyone who's invested in software credits today, we've been saying this for years, thrilled that that's where they are. Take a look at what's happening. Supply chain? Don't have one. Explosive design. Don't have it. I mean, think about the things that are now a risk for most companies in the world, not a risk for our software businesses. So we're sitting here with our tech portfolio is exactly where you want to be. And yet, it does have a higher percentage pick by design. So sorry to go deep on that, but I think it's quite important to unpack these variables and avoid the blunt instrument usage. Last thing I want to talk about is real estate on deployment. Deployment is excellent in real assets, both in real estate and in IPI. These markets are really the best we've seen, and we're seeing very strong deployment. So let me give you an example. Real Estate Fund 6 is now 41% called and 90% committed. That fund is basically wrapped up. And objective statistics, it's the best set of statistics in a fund ever had in real estate. Right now, that fund has an average of a 7.8 cap rate, 17-year average lease duration, with 2.7% average built-in rent growth. Think about those attributes for a minute. Those are the best objective statistics we've had in the history of our triple net lease real estate fund. So, yeah, we've clearly talked about it. The demand so far seems to supply a combination of capital and skills. We are one of the very few people that have both. It's a very complicated business to build. Once you build it, it could be a better asset to own. It's these types of attributes, except in that case, in every instance, you tell all companies with trillion-dollar market caps and very, very strong investment-grade rates, in the case of Microsoft, the rating is better than the U.S.

government. All right. Thank you for the call, Mark.

I'm going to take a question from Ken Worthington, J.P. Morgan.

Hi. Good morning. I was just getting a question. Ken?

Yeah. You're pretty muffled.

Oh, sorry. Let me try again if I can. I'll read you. Blue Owl has been building a diversifying business, wealth, real estate, insurance, and others. The expansion has been largely domestically focused. Since changes in the value of power in the Treasury suggest increased interest outside of the U.S., what are your thoughts about global expansion of the franchise? I know you have a lot at play, but does it make sense to expand outside the U.S., and is this something in your line of vision?

Well, let's take that a couple ways.

So, look, we're very fortunate that we raise capital from all over the world, and in fact, that's an accelerated opportunity for us. So I mentioned before, the Middle East has been a tremendously growing market from our point of view. So our global footprint for capital is large. Our global footprint for deployment in select areas is strong. In fact, we just announced our first triple net lease real estate Europe deal for our triple net lease Europe product, which again, brand new product to our array and one that we think is going to be very successful. IPI operates globally because IPI is working with global enterprises, and they have data centers all over the world, and we work with them all over the world to do it. The key here is really risk and return. We love the fact that 90%, and it is 90%, of our firm's capital is deployed in the U.S. because we're in the downside protection business. You know, we can have a wide range of opinions about current policies and trajectories in the U.S. and the global economy. But in terms of safety and security and where you put your money, you'd much rather be inside Fortress USA than outside Fortress USA. Everyone, for reasons we understand, are very anxious about what's happening in Asia and the dynamics between China and the U.S. One percent of our capital is in APAC. I appreciate that. It's maybe been an exciting story for some people over time. It doesn't seem so exciting right now. We're not about excitement. We're about delivering really steady results. So we'll follow the right kind of users of our capital wherever they wish to be as we have. We'll raise capital around the world. And where there are markets that are stable and attractive and we can earn incremental return without taking incremental risk or more than proportionate incremental risk, Absolutely. But we have no grand ambition to just go around the world to go around the world. I think sitting here today, you can see why going around the world just to go around the world may now introduce a tremendous amount of risk that frankly we all don't have.

And everyone, that is all the time we have for questions today. I'd like to hand things back to Mr. Mark, which will send me additional or closing remarks.

Thanks, everybody, for the time. You know how busy it is. It's a volatile time. You know, there's like almost silly statements, a new certainty is uncertainty. I think that's true. I mean, so as we march through, I guess the last few things I want to come back to are this. There's two things about Blue Owl that you should remember in this environment. Our products are built to thrive in times of uncertainty. That's when our investors truly benefit from the durable, predictable strategy. The Blue Owl, that puts us in a better position to win. Second, Blue Owl is a firm. The Owl stock, which we're here talking about, was built to be predictable and durable through, again, times of volatility and uncertainty, and you saw it again. We had a great quarter. Our quarter and our march toward our strategic goals is, as you can see, we continue to pace along. We do not have carry. We don't have all the volatility other people have. And that's a purpose-built model. And I think in this market, and I hope it's already coming through, why Blue Owl is just fundamentally a different business model in the world of us. And, candidly, we're quite excited about where we are and where we're going. So, anyway, thank you all very much for the time today.

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