Blackstone (NYSE:BX) shares rose in early Thursday trading after reporting fourth-quarter earnings, topping consensus profit expectations.
The company reported Q4 EPS of $1.11, $0.12 better than the analyst estimate of $0.99. Revenue for the quarter came in at $1.29 billion versus the consensus estimate of $2.57 billion. Blackstone's distributable earnings increased by 4% year-on-year.
Shares of the company are currently up around 2% premarket at just below $123 per share.
Inflows were $52.7 billion in the quarter, bringing full-year inflows to $148.5 billion, while total assets under management rose by 7% to $1.04 trillion compared to the same quarter last year.
“Blackstone reported strong fourth-quarter results, as we exited a volatile year for global markets," said Stephen Schwarzman, BX's chairman and CEO. "The quarter reflected strong momentum across the business, including a meaningful acceleration in fund-raising and investment activity. We are exceptionally well positioned for the road ahead with nearly $200 billion of dry powder capital to invest.”
Reacting to the report, analysts at Wolfe Research, who have a Peer Perform rating on the stock, explained: BX reported 4Q FRE per share of $0.86 (vs. WR / cons. $0.90) and DE per share of $1.11, which beat our est. of $1.08 and cons. of $0.96."
"Despite the FRE miss, fundraising/realizations/deployment all came in above our est., with higher FPAUM 'jump-off' point also positive. While
another quarter of FRE declines (YoY) may give investors pause, especially given a relatively full valuation (23x 2025 cons. DE), we believe favorable positioning, YTD underperformance (-8%, vs. Alt. peers +1%), and better KPIs should drive gains in today’s session."
Meanwhile, Evercore ISI, which has an Outperform rating and a $125 price target on BX, stated: "While we kinda like the true-up, our gut is investors may still worry about further drags on growth from the real estate asset class (that might be a demand comment more than performance as rates are already lower...)."
"We think people will focus on Blackstone’s ability to raise a ton of money across a lot of different strategies despite a pretty uncertain backdrop, activity levels are picking up with the move in rates and equity markets (see the lift in deployment), BX still has almost $200bn of dry powder, and that performance ex-real estate is looking pretty good," they added.