BlackRock, Inc. (BLK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Bank of America's 34th Annual Financial Services Conference. This is Craig Siegenthaler, North American Head of Diversified Financials at BofA. And it's my pleasure to introduce Martin Small. Martin is the CFO of BlackRock and serves as the Global Head of Corporate Strategy. He's also a member of BlackRock's Global Executive Committee. Martin, first, thank you for joining us here in Miami.

Thanks, Craig. Great to be here with everybody. Hope everyone is having an excellent day.

All right. So a quick background on BlackRock. I know you all know it, biggest asset manager in the world, over $14 trillion of AUM. More importantly, it's a leader, a first mover and scaled in all the major secular growth businesses, ETFs, technology and data, retirement solutions and private markets.

With that, let's get started on that record 12% base fee organic growth that you ended 2025 with. So seasonality and cycle may have helped a little bit, but for the full year, it was 9%, so a really strong number, well above market expectations 12 months ago. What were the key drivers of that acceleration over the past couple of years? And do you think it's sustainable?

We've seen really excellent momentum in organic base fee growth at BlackRock. It's been geared around the firm's long-term strategy of serving every corner of an investor's portfolio and marrying public and private markets, marrying asset management and technology. And you're right, Craig, it's 6 consecutive quarters north of our 5-plus percent target. It's every quarter in 2025, north of 6%. It's 9% for the year, 10% in Q3, 12% in Q4. So we've seen organic growth really, really ticking up. As you said, I think there are some chunky enterprise wins that happened. So we had the Citi SMA portfolio solutions win that we had in the fourth quarter. We've had some big outsourcings. But even if you wanted to sort of remove some of those and say, what's just sustainable normalized organic base fee growth, we feel really comfortable that we're kind of clicking along at 6%, 7%, and we think we can sustain that in terms of the mix of the businesses that we have across ETFs, both active ETFs, traditional ETFs, digital assets, private markets, systematic equities. We've really seen a lot of breadth in the organic growth. So when we think about the top 5 contributors we've had, they've been both businesses that we've built or acquired in the last 2 years, and they've been kind of foundational platforms that we've operated for a decade. I think there's 2 really important vectors for sustainable organic base fee growth for us. And both of them are entrenched in just making sure we're constantly organized around these structural growth engines, the movement from brokerage to advisory, the opening up of retail investments and 401(k) to private markets. We're really well positioned in those structural growth areas. So I think those structural growers are the foundation of sustained organic base fee growth. And second, I think that the market is basically consolidating managers over time. Clients are looking to do more business with fewer providers. They're looking to extract more value from the platforms that they do business with. And so the stock of the industry's assets is a source of organic growth for the scaled players. I think if you look at flows in the industry for the last several years, the top 5 asset managers are consolidating something on order of 80% of the flows. But there's still an extraordinary amount of fragmentation in this industry, both by assets and by revenue. If you were to compare the asset management industry to, say, credit cards or sales and trading or airlines, you'd find our industry is not at all concentrated. So the opportunity to consolidate share out of the industry stock and to consolidate revenue share, we think, is enormously attractive for BlackRock and how we're positioned.

Great. Martin, let's hit on your strategic priorities for 2026. So you've been very active on the M&A front, 3 sizable deals, private credit, infrastructure, alternative data. So I'm sure integrating them is probably kind of top of the list. But what are you working on this year? What are your major goals for 2026?

BlackRock is pioneering what we think of as the future of asset management, which is bringing together asset management and financial technology across public markets and private markets. and delivering that in the whole portfolio context. The acquisitions that we've done in the last 2 years are at the top of our list to integrate and realize the planned synergies. That's Global Infrastructure Partners, which is an infrastructure leader, and that's HPS Partners, which is a leader in private and alternative credit, maximizing the synergies of that and being a scaled provider across public and private. That's at the top of our list to get right in terms of helping clients build integrated public and private portfolios. Private markets and alternatives at BlackRock today is $676 billion. We're a top 5 player, present in all the fastest-growing categories, and we think our ability to grow organically there is very, very strong. At our Investor Day in 2025, we talked about the 4 or 5 $500 million revenue businesses that we're building. That's private markets to insurance, that's private markets to wealth, that's active ETFs, that's digital assets. Those are evergreen builds that we're continuing to work and are continuing to deliver in their growth. But maybe I'll highlight a couple of strategic priorities that I think are top of mind for the management team in '25 and '26. The first is fundraising. So at our Capital Markets Day, we talked about $400 billion of growth fundraising out to 2030. We think we're on a good trajectory for that over the next couple of years. That's both kind of mining our institutional relationships, mining the wealth channels, also working with our insurance and wealth clients in order to grow there. The second would be iShares. I find it pretty incredible that this industry continues to grow in exchange-traded funds at double-digits organic growth. We had $530 billion of organic asset growth in iShares last year, finished #1 across the world. But we're still opening up new use cases for ETFs in fixed income, in active ETFs, in nonlinear ETFs that incorporate options in terms of covered call writing or puts and calls that are structured note replacements. And I think of kind of the growth of ETFs around the world, in Europe, we have the leading ETF market platform. It's setting new records. It set a record in '25. It's had a record January. And so the growth of exchange-traded funds outside of the United States, we think, is a very meaningful opportunity. They've built a big business in Europe without a national best bid, best offer system without a single capital markets regulator, the way we have in the United States. And so I think as those trends take hold in Europe, the opportunity to grow exchange-traded funds outside of the United States is a real strategic advantage for BlackRock. I think the third is technology and data. Our Aladdin business finished 2025 at 16% ACV. We continue to target mid-teens ACV for our growth through the cycle, and it's an important part of reaching our 2030 objectives of $36 billion of revenue and doubling our operating income. And the last thing I'd highlight is just wealth everywhere. The opportunity in wealth, we think, for us is incredible. That is the movement from brokerage to advisory continues in the U.S. market. We continue to see an expansion of the independent RIA. We continue to see big scaled wealth platforms at the full-service wealth managers, grow their model portfolios. We continue to see all channels across the wealth market, both in the U.S. and in Europe and incorporate more private markets. We think those are huge opportunities for BlackRock, where we can both be a great product provider, but also a provider of technology, custom models, SMAs, after-tax strategies, think of things like Aperio Long/Short, options overriding with SpiderRock. We have the largest wholesaling teams in the industry across the U.S. and Europe, and we think the opportunities in wealth are absolutely terrific.

Martin, let's stick with wealth for a second. You really upgraded your offering last year with both GIP and infrastructure in HBS and private credit. So maybe dig a little deeper into that one. And where do you think we are in terms of this migration long term for retail investors globally going into alternatives?

So think of our strategy in wealth as being around 2 major things. The first of which is products, the second which is portfolios. And we have a significant amount of product, obviously, across the public markets and mutual funds, ETFs, SMAs. And we've been growing our roster of evergreen products in wealth and retail for alternatives. As I've mentioned, we're growing in H-Series led by the flagship HLN, the nontraded BDC, capital solutions, triple net lease, multi-strategy credit, private equity. We'll have all the building blocks effectively for wealth investors to build great public and private portfolios. So having all the building blocks is a part of the strategy. Where I think BlackRock has historically had disproportionate amounts of success relative to the industry is in bringing those things together in whole portfolio strategies. We've done that in models. We've done that in SMAs that put together ETFs and SMAs, but effectively building public-private model portfolios, we think, is the destination that ultimately puts a lot of scale in financial adviser practices and integrates that experience for advisers in such a way that allows them to focus on the things that add the most value for their clients, financial planning, tax planning, intergenerational wealth transfer. And so our effectively being able to deliver institutional-grade OCIO-like services to wealth managers through whole portfolios. It's built on the products, but the products are just the building blocks of the strategy, which is ultimately to really deliver whole portfolio services that bundle asset allocation the product building and then all of the reporting and technology that goes along with it. We think we can do that here in the United States, and we can do it in Europe. We launched in January, our alts completion portfolio with Partners Group as in all private markets, a set of models with balanced income and growth. Those are completion models that have a single sub dock that rebalance without financial advisers having to go do all that work. We think that is a really terrific opportunity. We've put up public and private portfolios on places like GeoWealth to be fully integrated. And then we have a whole custom model solutions business that can do that as well.

All right. Well, let's talk about crypto for a moment. Very quickly, you build a very large ETF business. You have a tokenized money market fund with BUIDL. And also you've integrated into Aladdin. So kind of really turn that around. I know crypto can be choppy, but what are your aspirations for that business?

So we ultimately see digital wallets as a new distribution channel. And many of the characteristics of digital wallets today feel to me like what retail brokerage looked like in 1991, which is people opening digital online accounts, starting with some amount of recreational stock trading, but ultimately amassing wealth and economic value that become managed accounts, that become professionally managed offerings. And if I look at the business today of most of the big retail brokerages, they started with active traders and ultimately really built wholesale managed account businesses that drove a lot of growth and shareholder value. We see digital wallets shaping up to be the same way. When I talk about digital wallets, what I mean is there's 820 million crypto wallets. There's 820 million crypto wallets in the world that own Bitcoin and other coins. There's about $2.5 trillion of value. It's volatile. It's been $3.5 trillion to $4 trillion. It's been $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion, but there's a serious amount of economic value there that we will -- that we believe over time will be in search of long-term investment products. There's 820 million crypto wallets. There's 4.5 billion digital wallets. So think of your Venmo, PayPal, Alibaba Pay, Apple Pay. All those are places where individuals are keeping economic value that ultimately are going to be in need -- we believe are going to be in need of long-term investment products and the same services that you would see in retail brokerage and wealth. $2.5 trillion of crypto, $300 billion of stablecoin, another $37 billion of tokenized assets, meaning tokenized stocks, bonds, loans, other assets. What we want to build at BlackRock is a digital wallet native asset management capability. So all the same services we offer today in a model portfolio in the cash world and traditional capital markets, Craig, we want to be able to offer in a digital wallet. I want to be able to sign an investment management agreement. I want to be able to deliver a proposal. I want it to be able to invoice. I want to be able to research products to trade, to rebalance, to tax loss harvest, all of those portfolios. Tokenized iShares, I think, is our best spear tip to enter into the world of digital wallets and provide access to long-term investment products. I just have a foundational belief along with my partners at BlackRock that there will be a growth in crypto assets and stablecoin. And eventually, someone will say, I should probably derisk half of this into long-term investment products like U.S. equities and the ag. And that, we think, is a tremendous opportunity that is unattached to the short-term volatility of crypto. This is a new distribution channel. There's already 4.5 billion people. There's already 4.5 billion people with digital wallets. Half the world has a digital wallet. So this is a channel that we think we have to get access to in order to continue to lead the market.

Or maybe even tokenized IAU might do pretty well right now.

I think we'll see some of that. Yes, sir.

But one more question on crypto. And you hit on this a little bit just then, but both you and Larry Fink, your CEO, talked about tokenizing your ETF suite to address that new growing channel. Where are you in sort of that? And is that still something you want to do today?

So I think it's worth observing. I've had the real privilege and honor of spending time with some of the new leadership at the SEC, Chairman Atkins, Jamie Selway, Brian Daley and I am. I give this team very, very high marks on their engagement with the industry. I'm a member of the Investment Company Institute Board. They have been there engaging, wanting to open up innovation. They've made a lot of time. They've made a lot of time to come talk about how we build into a tokenized ecosystem, how distributed ledger technology can actually be an enabling agent to make markets better, how distributed ledger technology can actually free up collateral through near instantaneous settlement that can be channeled into the real economy. I think actually Mark Ueda, Commissioner Ueda had a speech on that today. So this commission, I give very, very high marks on engaging with the industry. We've spent time with the commission on what an operating model looks like for tokenized iShares, how creation and redemption would work, how the arbitrage mechanism would work. And there were 40, 50 people from the staff in this working session with great questions. These are the guardians of the crown jewel of the United States, which is our capital markets. These are the guardians of the National Best Bid Best Offer system of the National Securities Investment Market Improvement Act. Like these are the people, and they are thoroughly engaged in how to do this. I can't tell you if it happens in 90 days or in 12 months, what I'm saying is there are real people working on this, and there is more progress in the last 3 months on this than I've seen in the last 5 years. in this space. I would say the same about 401(k) and private markets into D.C. But this commission is really engaged, and I think we're going to make progress in getting tokenized investment products into digital wallets, which I think will be good for clients in the long term.

Just a follow-up on that. We've had a mutual fund since 1924.

Technically since the 1800s.

Yes. And the ETF and even the SMA, they -- there's a lot of improvements off the mutual fund vehicle with that. But with the tokenization wrapper, there's a few more, like 365, 24/7 trading, self-custody, maybe the expense ratio is a little lower because less counterparties. Is that the major selling point? Or is the fact that there's this growing ecosystem that asset management really isn't participating in today that BlackRock wants to address? Or is it everything?

I would overwhelmingly weight the growing ecosystem than anything else. And I think I'd flag kind of 2 -- think of the sources of where this growth is coming from, right? I think, number one, there are the true believers in cryptocurrency, right, who believe that cryptocurrency could be a long-term disruptor of fiat currencies and may be ultimately a better protector of value over time. There are those that are unbanked, right? There's a significant portion of digital wallets in crypto for people who just can't get bank accounts or just aren't served by traditional banking system. They've ultimately been able to create economic value and should have access to long-term investment products. There are speculators and investors and traders who are active in cryptocurrency who ultimately want a vibrant ecosystem to be able to invest, trade, make markets in all the things that they make markets in, in the traditional capital markets to do so with digital wallets. I think BlackRock has been at its best in making markets interoperable. So today, we're the leading manager of fixed income ETFs. When I sat at these types of conferences 10 years ago or 15 years ago, people talked about how you can never bring together over-the-counter markets in bond trading and put them on an exchange. Today, it's absolutely remarkable in how seamless that has been. It's provided more liquidity to the bond market. It's provided more pricing transparency to the bond market. Everyone has figured out how to create more value for clients doing that. The idea of portfolio trading and fixed income didn't exist really before the fixed income ETF. I see all the same possibilities of bridging the traditional capital markets with the digital markets and distributed ledgers that will create lots of value and lots of opportunities. All the market makers who have made markets in the traditional capital markets will have to come to digital wallets in order to make markets. Tokenized exchange-traded funds won't work unless we have market makers and authorized participants who can do business in the digital wallet and on digital exchanges. So it's a big part of work, but I think that's where the overwhelming amount of growth will come from, I think, is from bringing a whole generation of new investors who live in digital wallets that historically haven't had access through the traditional capital markets.

Great. Martin, let's change up the topic and go to quant. So your systematic active equity business really showed some strong flow improvement last year. And you're seeing across the industry from my seat, better hedged on returns, better quant hedge returns. Some of it is tax aware related. What is driving the improving demand that you're seeing in BlackRock?

So I'd offer the more macro thought first. I think there was high degrees of conviction that used to live in kind of our client base, used to live with consultants and asset allocators that somehow alpha could only really be achieved by small niche players that once you achieve large scale, somehow that would become impossible because you were too lumbering or slow or you weren't commercially nimble enough. And I think what the ensuing decade has proven actually is that in Alpha, scale is a key engine. And that's true in the private markets. That's also true in the public markets. And so when you look at where the big drivers of alpha are coming from, it's coming from big scaled players that have ample technology resources, can drive alpha streams through multiple different types of investment vehicles through multiple different type of markets. They can be more portable. And it's harder for smaller players actually to drive alpha. It's harder for them to drive alpha through pricing. It's harder for them to drive alpha through trading. And so I think that's a real change in the industry structure, and it really came through in 2025, which is that scaled players have an advantage when it comes to being able to drive alpha. We certainly saw that at BlackRock in our systematic business. We have $50 billion of inflows into systematic strategies. I'd flag 2 things. These strategies are so different than traditional security selection. These strategies are using and deploying signals across thousands and thousands of securities. And if you were to open up the portfolio and just eyeball the list of 1,000 line items, and it wouldn't be immediately apparent to you what was going on without understanding what the signals are that are driving those overweights, underweights, longs and shorts. And so just the idea of how you create alpha today involves macro themes that I think are really different than simply trying to pick overweights and underweights against an index. The second thing is you have to be able to distribute these alpha strains more broadly. So if I look at what's happening in our systematic business, it's not one flagship product. that is driving all of the flows in alpha, it's spread across a multitude of sources. And by the way, it's spread across a multitude of sources that are kind of lower touch in kind of the teens basis point business and across things that are higher touch that are driving the north of 100 basis point business. But in our systematic business, we had at least 5 to 6 different products across kind of active ETFs, Liquid 40 Act hedge funds, traditional institutional hedge funds as well as mutual funds that all drove systematic flows. So being able to scale those alpha streams into kind of different alpha targets into different wrappers and vehicles into different parts of the world, I think, is a really key part of being able to grow in active management. And I think that's really what we are able to do at BlackRock, and we're very bullish about the growth of the systematic equities business. One other thing I'd flag is like this is an engine of scale and portability for us at BlackRock. It's also an engine of operating leverage. So we launched a domestic asset management business in Saudi Arabia some years ago. What we started with was systematic strategies. That's because that chassis of being able to deliver alpha signals into different markets is highly portable around the world. We launched a joint venture in India with Jio Financial and Reliance. We started with systematic strategies there because they're highly portable and are able to be transported around the world to different wrappers. So it's also an engine, I think, of really efficient growth at BlackRock that creates a lot of leverage for how we grow active management around the world.

Great. Two questions ago, you talked about this fixed income ETF bogeyman, which never sort of developed. Now let's take it a step further. You just did the Frequent acquisition, which is all data. Now with that long-term data, you can create indexes. And with those indexes, you potentially could create private equity ETFs. So where are you in that build-out with kind of 2 steps: one is, you need the indexes. And two, you need then the ability to put that inside of an ETF.

Right. So we closed the Preqin acquisition in March of 2025. And the strategy with Preqin is basically fourfold. The first of which is we'll continue to offer and it continues to be an attractive growth engine, Preqin Pro, which is the traditional subscription-based data business. That data business is the gold copy when it comes to LPs and GPs, connecting on fund terms, fund performance, track records, who are the investors in private markets. that data set has a lot of enduring value to the industry in it. It's very, very hard to assemble. Many of the elements and attributes in it aren't even available anymore. You can't just go put a foyer or request out for something that's no longer in existence to come get it. So that data set itself continues to grow, improve and offer a lot of long-term value to our clients. The second is with the Preqin data and the Aladdin environment, our aim is to create more risk models in and around the Preqin data to help measure, define do performance attribution. And if you think of what some of the index companies have done of creating this positive flywheel effect between their index businesses and their analytics businesses, we're aiming to do that with the Preqin data as well, which is to drive a real intersection between the language of private markets and the risk models that measure them, ultimately using the Preqin data. The third part of our strategy is to make that data factory more efficient. And interestingly enough, this is the intersection of things like generative AI and process automation in order to make the data factory more efficient. I would say Preqin was run really, really well, but we've run a big scaled data processing and information processing business at BlackRock for 30 years. We think basic deployment of things we use in our data factory for Aladdin against Preqin can make Preqin even more efficient and put a lot more leverage in the business. And the last leg of the strategy is the one that you're getting at, which is ultimately to create investable indexes is to take the data that we have in Preqin to standardize to standardize it by cohort. So it might be private equity funds of a certain vintage. It might be private equity funds or private credit funds or real estate funds covering a certain segment of the market to be able to standardize the inclusion, units of measurement, pricing and ultimately publish those indices and then create tradable products over them. The number one question I get there, Craig, often is, well, if you can't physically replicate all of the underlying funds that you put in that index, how could you ever make an ETF? Which is often like a head scratcher for me because most of what trades in the financial world is cash settled. It's not physically replicated. So if I think about the S&P Mini contract, it's not really settled in stocks, it's settled in cash. But take something like the K-hiller Home Price futures contract, it's not settled in houses. Economic surprise indices are not settled in surprises. Like interest rate indexes are not settled in interest rates. They're settled in cash. And so being able to create prices, time series and cohorts that ultimately can have 2-way markets on them, if you can make futures, if you can make swaps, if you can have a contractual exchange of cash flows, that can be put in an exchange-traded fund. Remember that the first exchange-traded funds and digital assets in Bitcoin were in futures. They were not in physical Bitcoin, whatever physical Bitcoin is. They were not in physical Bitcoin. They were actually in futures. So I think if we can get to a place where we have futures contracts, even if they have lighter 2-way volume, like they just need some volume. If we can get futures contracts on private markets indices, we can make iShares.

So let's talk about the op margin. At the last Investor Day, you talked about a greater than 45% target. Last year, on an adjusted basis, you basically got there. On a reported basis, it was lower because of performance fees, which come with a different carry ratio in there. How do you think about that long term? And then if we have a bear market or you have a lot of performance fees, I guess that year might be a little tough. And also, what happens when you get a little bit above 45%? Is that -- are we at a ceiling at that moment?

So we finished the year in the fourth quarter with our operating margin as adjusted. And that operating margin, that's a real operating margin. It's fully burdened for all of our stock-based compensation and everything at 45%. Our margin on recurring fee-related earnings was 45.5%. So we continue to drive industry-leading margins. This business has the industry-leading margins. And I think if you were to really dig through traditional managers and the alternative managers, if you were to really dig through their real SEC financial statements and Ks and Qs, you'd find BlackRock's every bit as profitable, if not more profitable, I think, than the peer group. So we continue to drive industry-leading margins there. When I think about the margin dynamic, we have run BlackRock at margins north of 45% before. We've run them close to 47% back in 2021. So we've run the business there before. We've been able to put a lot of scale and operating leverage. We did that at a time in 2021 when we really didn't have a big scale private markets franchise, and we were able to propel the business there. I think today, with the engines we have in GIP and HPS, both of which were north of 50% FRE margins when they came into the company, I think we can continue to propel kind of -- we can continue to propel 2 things. One is FRE growth at margins north of 50%. We can do that through the acquired businesses as well as highly scaled businesses we have like active ETFs, ETFs, digital assets, systematic equities, all of which I would say operate at north of our average margin, not below our average margin, they can be real drivers of FRE margin expansion. And then ultimately, I do think that with strong markets and with higher fee rates and strong organic growth, we can pull the operating -- the fully burdened operating margin of the company up as well. And as I said, we've run the company at 47%. So I don't see 45% or 46% as a ceiling. What I do see as a natural governor on this is we will continue to invest in the business. We're going to continue to invest in the business. When I talk to our long-term shareholders, our long-term shareholders would say, we would prefer to see a point of organic growth over a point of margin. They're both important. They're both important. We're very focused on driving profitable growth on dropping more earnings into the profile of the company, but we will continue to invest in the company. And at times when there are market pullbacks, those are the times when it's important to keep investing. I think it's when your competitors sometimes take their foot off the gas in investing, and we'll keep do that. So we're always going to be balancing optimizing long-term organic growth in the most efficient way possible with driving more margin expansion through technology, automation, footprinting, higher value, higher fee rate strategies. Those are ultimately the pushes and pulls. And as you said, on the performance-related side, historically, I think the performance-related revenues at BlackRock had kind of a very defined margin as we've pulled in or a defined comp-to-revenue ratio, if you'd like to flip it around, as we've brought in these highly scaled private markets franchises, they have more market-based compensation practices and the comp-to-revenue ratio, the PRE margin, if you will, will reflect what you see out in the marketplace. But I still think we can hit our north of 50% FRE margin, and we can grow the fully burdened margin north of 45% out to 2030.

Great. Martin, at this moment, let me just look at the audience, see if anyone has a question. Please raise your hand, and we'll get your microphone. It looks like we have one over here.

So I guess after a very active period of M&A, I guess, including the 3 large deals that you've been speaking about, it sounds like you're now more focused on smaller tuck-ins over the near term. I guess like however should we completely rule out prospects of another larger deal?

Thanks for the question. So first, I'd say, important to note that we don't need M&A. We don't need more M&A to hit our north of 5% organic base fee growth target. We did 9% over the trailing 12 months. We did 10% in Q3. So the strategy is working in terms of driving more sustained and higher organic base fee growth. We're very focused on integrating the transactions that we've done in the last 2 years and driving those planned synergies. That said, we're open to transactions that would be accretive towards our 2030 plan in private markets, in technology and distribution. A good template for that was the Elmtree acquisition in the net lease space that we announced last year in terms of adding capabilities that we ultimately think can really help grow the private markets franchises. M&A is notoriously hard to schedule. So like you can never say never about things like that. But what I'd say is we're focused on integrating and realizing the planned synergies. We'll always be very selective and tactical. Any acquisitions that we do are going to be focused on growth. They're going to be focused on optimizing organic growth, not on expense control. So the M&A approach to the company, I think, is completely consistent with historical practices. And so far, we're really, I think, very pleased with the progress we've made on the GIP, HPS and Preqin acquisitions. So we're going to continue to be very focused on realizing those planned synergies.

Maybe just a follow-up on that. No asset management in the world is as diverse as BlackRock and has a few white spaces as BlackRock. What are your white spaces setting? And do you maybe not want to tackle some of them due to secular growth challenges?

So I think we're always -- the acquisitions that we're best at, like the organic builds and the acquisitions we're best at tend to be around capabilities expansions, right, around product expansions. I think that's really what we're best at driving. And I think there's some white spaces, both in terms of build, buy, partner. So one, I'd say secondaries, all things secondaries is an opportunity to expand our offering. We have a great team. We have a good track record. We've been building in that space there. But I'd say that market continues to be a growth market and a real opportunity. So there may be things there to do there across buy, build, partner. I think all capabilities of expansion around investment-grade, high-grade asset-based finance, whether that's kind of teams or firms, those are real opportunities for us. And then we look at, I think, a number of kind of data completion -- sort of data completion opportunities to Preqin that could be interesting. Those are, I think, are the big white spaces that we've got going across the list now.

Great. Well, with that, we are out of time. So Mark, on behalf of all of us at Bank of America, thank you very much. Great to see you.