Blackstone Inc. ($BX)

All right. Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fireside chat here, keynote fireside. I am Mike Cyprys, equity analyst covering brokers, asset managers and exchanges for Morgan Stanley Research. And we're excited to have with us John Gray, Blackstone's President and Chief Operating Officer for our keynote here this morning. As many of you know, Blackstone is one of the world's leading investment firms with over $1.3 trillion of assets under management. John, thanks so much for joining us and back at our conference.

Mike, I am excited to be here. .

Great. Well, why don't we open with the macro. I'd love to get your thoughts there. The first half of the year has seen a lot of volatility and uncertainty from AI disruption, concerns to private credit fears, all a lot of the complex in the Middle East continues here. So what's Slackstone's house view on the state of the economy? .

The economy has been much more resilient than people expected. And this really goes back over time. If you went back to 2020, we obviously had COVID. We subsequently the following year had the Russian Ukraine invasion. We had the Silicon Valley Bank shock which was more relevant to the folks in this room than the broader economy. We had Liberation Day last year. This year, the Iran war. And each time the global economy, particularly in the U.S. economy, has powered through and the year ended more -- in a better spot than people expected. And I think the same thing will happen here. I think there'll be some sort of resolution, and the underlying strength of the economy will stick. And we said it in our first quarter call, but our private equity companies had revenue growth in the quarter, which is remarkable. It's definitely weaker in Europe, but I would say, overall, the picture is quite good on that front. On the inflation front, obviously, we've got near-term headwinds from energy prices. Still some lingering impact from tariffs. But if you look at shelter costs, which are the biggest component of CPI, I would say they're running in the low 1s, first government data in the low 3s and that will be helpful to the new Central Bank chair, particularly after the awards in the rearview mirror. And wages for us have gone from, call it, 5% in the U.S. 2 years ago to 3%. And so again, that's helpful. I think the picture after the war ends will be better than I think most people realize. So I think that's another positive. But the big thing is this massive CapEx boom that's going on. Five companies spending $800 billion. And then obviously, companies like ourselves spending enormous amounts of money on both digital and energy infrastructure -- and that's just going to create a lot of jobs. I mean I really believe there is a blue collar job boom ahead here. And we see it in our company, QTS, which a little over a year ago, had 10,000 people working on its job sites on its data centers. And we think by the end of this year, we'll have over 40,000. And so I think that is obviously a real positive for the economy. And then the next thing that I think is going to come is a productivity boom on the back of this super intelligence starting to get diffuse into the broader economy. We've got a taste of this, obviously, back in the 1990s when we all went online, I think this is going to be much bigger, much broader. So it's overall, I would say, a more constructive picture than I think what you read in the headlines. The astrix I'd put against this is there is going to be significant disruption and change across a wide range of industries. And obviously, it's going to impact professional services, information services, software it will roll into, I think, the automotive industry with autonomous vehicles. And so as an investor, it is harder to deploy capital because you have to think about a world that may look very different than the one we see today. But the overall picture collectively, I think, is more positive. And again, after the war settles, I think people will begin to focus more on that.

It's interesting. You mentioned disruption change harder to sort of I guess, for folks to underwrite to invest with confidence as we go from here, which is a kind of a good segue. I hope you could touch upon that as well. But just given your macro view, how is that translating into deployment here? Where is Blackstone leading in? How are your deployment pipeline shaping up here in the second half. But then how are you cooperating and reflecting it the sort of disruption.

I think you have to incorporate it. I mean we had a busy, I think, first quarter, $36 billion that we deployed in the quarter. If you said the areas we're focused on and will not surprise people AI infrastructure is the top of list. I mean, AI for us is all about infrastructure. Those are what the initials say. And for us, these days, I mean, if you think about it, it starts with the energy where there's just enormous demand today, obviously, its data centers over time, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and so we're across that whole value chain. . What does that mean for us? It means renewables, it means pipelines, it means LNG utilities, electrical equipment, utility services, what had not been the most exciting businesses have become very exciting for us. So that whole area, I think we'll continue to see a lot of capital deployment for us. And then, of course, the data centers, where we have become the biggest investor in data centers in the world. Today, we have, I think, $160 billion of either standing or at least an under construction data centers and a pipeline that's basically equal that in size. And there, we think we're doing it in an incredibly responsible way where the capital is going in the ground for the vast majority of the capital when you have long-term leases and we think that's going to pay huge dividends for our clients. I'd say beyond AI infrastructure, number of other areas, secondaries for us, a business had crossed over $100 billion in AUM in the first quarter. There are LPs out there who would like to see more liquidity, particularly in some of these areas where it's harder to get liquidity like software, I think we'll motivate some more sales the market anticipation is there'll be $250 billion, a record year in secondaries. And so we continue to like that business given the scale of our platform. I would say on the credit side today, on the investment-grade credit side, there is a ton of activity, a lot of it tied to, again, the AI infrastructure. We announced this morning a big a transaction with Broadcom and Apollo and a potential to do much more. This was a $35 billion transaction, and they said it could be up to 20 gigawatts over time, what they want to do. Huge capital needs in that area, particularly investment-grade private credit, but there's often a junior piece associated with it as well. We're doing a lot around pipelines and LNG in that area. And then I would say globally, I think Japan, where I was last week, very exciting. India, although some headwinds in IT services is a country working off a very low base GDP per capita and embracing capitalism -- we have a leading position there. So we're excited about that. Life Sciences is an area. We announced a big transaction a couple of weeks ago with Apogee. We have a bit of a unique platform in that space. And then the sleeper here, I would say, real estate, where after 4 pretty tough years, we're getting closer to the turn -- and so you're seeing us deploy capital there and what I think will be a sector that over time here over the next year or 2 will surprise people. So lots of interesting places, I would say, to deploy capital in the near term dislocation because of the war, the uncertainty that is creating some more opportunities.

So you mentioned a number of themes, and we'll come back and dig into a number of them. But first, I think you had called this the year -- do you still believe that to be the case? And beyond IPOs, how are you thinking about exit opportunities here? Are you -- do you see yourself as more of a buyer or a seller over the next 12 months?

Well, I would say on the IPO market, the overall picture is pretty good. It may not when the war started, and obviously, the war is a huge humanitarian challenge and we'd love to see that resolved as quickly as possible. But what I would say is -- the IPO market has really found its footing. I mean we've got 3 of the biggest companies private companies in the world likely to go public now. We fortunately own states in all 3 through our private wealth vehicle, 1 of our private wealth vehicles. I would say, in addition to that, we're seeing real receptivity. We had our third IPO of the year we did last week with Lyftoff, the company in the mobile advertising business. We have 7 more IPOs on file globally in the U.S., Europe and India. And we would expect, hopefully, many, if not all of those will get done. And I -- the 1 caveat I'd put around it is, I think you have to break up the market into 3 component parts. I think -- the first part of this are AI winners. That's obviously a part of the market where you're in that value chain where there's a lot of interest and getting an IPO done, I think, is fairly easy. The middle part, I would say, is AI unaffected businesses where as we get the equity markets stay healthy, I think there's real openness to medical supply businesses. We took Medline public fast food companies, businesses perceived is not impacted by the change that's coming. I think the third area, which I'll call sort of the white collar world, information, professional services, software, that's probably a little bit harder. And there, I think you'll see less IPO activity. I would say overall, on the realization front, we had a very strong first quarter. I think net realizations were up something like 26%. We said on our call, obviously, the war slowed things down near term. But when we look out over the back half of the year, again, particularly the more it moves to the rearview mirror here, I feel pretty good, given the quality of the businesses and some of the areas we've really leaned into -- and I think we will, over time, here generate what I think are very attractive, both performance fees and realizations for our shareholders.

To maybe more of a buyer near term, but next 12 months, maybe more of a...

I think it's a bit of both. I mean, in our business, there's always a bit of both. There's just -- what happens when you have a moment of dislocation, it slows things down. And then you go back, you restart that IPO pipeline, you restart the marketing process. It just takes a little bit of time to work through the system. I think the key thing is that the underlying fundamentals, the 10% revenue growth I pointed out is that the businesses for the most part are performing very well. And then our concentration in what I think are the most important sectors has been very good. So I just have a -- I have a view that over time, we will see this acceleration in realizations. And that definitely gives me a bit of confidence. And I would say the strength of the IPO market is definitely reassuring in that direction.

Great. Why don't we shift and talk about fundraising. Box has a number of flagship funds in the market or that are coming to the market. So how is fundraising shaping up so far this year? And what do you see incrementally -- where are you seeing incrementally greater client demand? .

Yes. So we have 3 channels, our 3 Is, institutions, insurance companies and individual investors. And we see pretty good strength across all 3. We raised about $70 billion in the first quarter. On the institutional side, where there's talking a lot of press that there's some sort of pullback. That is definitely not what we've seen. . Year-to-date, we've announced 3 funds that exceeded their caps in high-yield private credit in life sciences. And in Asia private equity, and these 3 funds had something like $30 billion of investable capital and demand was in excess of those fundraises. We have a number of other vehicles out there in secondaries energy transition. We continue to see real receptivity from clients -- on the institutional side, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds. Obviously, you have to deliver strong performance, but we're seeing that area as an area of continued strength. They represented half of our fundraising, our inflows in the first quarter. We think it will continue to be a source of strength for our business broadly across our platform. I would say on the insurance side, there still feels like early days. Our AUM in Q1 was up 18% year-on-year. And given that insurance assets because their credit assets virtually entirely don't appreciate, that's really just organic inflows into the business. And there again, as you know, Mike, we're not issuing annuities. We're not doing anything taking on liabilities. This is just a third-party investment management business. And the clients are responding to this open architecture model. They think that it works, it definitely works for us as a firm. It works for them as as clients, the scale we're able to produce and the premium returns at the same or higher ratings has really benefited them. Last week when I was in Japan, we announced the $9.5 billion partnership with Nippon Life, who is the largest insurance company in Japan, something like $600 billion of assets. They serve 15% of the population. That's a partnership that's grown through Core bridge and resolution, and we've been building over years. And I think it just speaks to how this investment-grade private credit is expanding in Asia, in Europe, in the United States. Today, we have something like 35 different clients in that space. And it still feels like early days, particularly when the liquid corporate market is so tight, when you can earn less than 100 basis points on a BBB corporate. And so the premium we're able to deliver in the private market unrated debt is meaningful to these clients. It's something 170-plus basis points to them over the last year. So we think that's got a long way to go. And then on the individual investor side, remarkable resilience. We had a strong first quarter. We then had the war and all the noise on private credit, which was obviously very loud -- as you've seen in our filings, things in the April and May period, April 1, May 1, we saw a slowdown. And yet by June 1, we were up 50% back to the levels we were in the first quarter. And we -- now it looks different because we have lower flows in credit right now given the noise, but when you look in private equity, June 1, we had the great -- the best inflows we had since we launched the product and adjusting there's an underestimation of the power of this well franchise we're building. The breadth of it across real estate and private equity credit infrastructure, the return premium, it's generated for customers. And the way these structures have worked well. We saw through the BREIT period where there was a lot of negative press and yet we delivered this incredible premium now 40-plus percent annually for nearly a decade to customers, I just think there's a lot of focus on what's happening in one particular product in one particular moment. we're looking at the entire thing and the power of our brand in that channel and the power of the relationships we have. So I would say we have significant confidence in where that can grow from the $310 billion we have today.

And we'll come back to private wealth in a moment. But first, I which AI-driven computer become a major investment theme across the private markets. You mentioned you're a large data center business, which is the largest in the world. It seems like you're leaning in even more to AI, the overall ecosystem following some of the announcement over the past few days and weeks, including with Google and profit. Talk about broadly how you're positioning Blackstone across this broader theme? And at what point does your exposure become too large?

Yes. Well, I think if you buy into the idea that super intelligence at low cost, broadly available to every consumer and business in the world is going to have a powerful impact the way electricity, automobiles, the Internet will profoundly change our lives, then you want to have significant exposure to this. And we have made a strategic decision to invest broadly against this space. But doing it, I would say, with significant discipline. If you look at the vast majority of the dollars we're putting in the ground, to your question, Mike, we are focused on long-term contracts with some of the biggest companies in the world. So these data center leases are 15-plus years in length similar with many of the energy projects we're doing, often with the same hyperscalers is counterparties. Some of the electrical equipment is obviously a Picton shovels play. You're not necessarily picking winners and losers. But we do have -- we have made investments in the large language models. We are investing in application software companies. We just have a fundamental view that for our clients, we want to get more exposure. So all in on electricity and the need for turning molecules into electrons, all in on the data centers, but doing it in a very disciplined way -- and then going further now with Neo Cloud. So this partnership with Google, we think is remarkable. We're putting $5 billion across a variety of Blackstone funds to accelerate their deployment here with technical expertise and financial capabilities really to create something that looks like core Weave who's been and will continue to be a great partner of ours in the GPU world, but to do something here in the TPU world with Google's Chip, we're playing across the space. We think that is very interesting. We also think it says a lot about how we're seeing by the hyperscalers that Google chose us to be the partner there. We took public data center business flying pool fund to own stabilized data centers. There are now going to be hundreds of billions, Migas trillions of dollars disease, and there's not a natural home. We were able to get that done in the public markets, and we're enthused about what can be done there. We, as I said, are investing in some of the promising technology companies, although it's smaller scale, some of our growth in our private equity wealth vehicle -- and then finally, with Anthropic, again, we created a partnership with them. I think given our scale, the number of companies we own that we're going to try to bring their incredible large language model technology to our companies. And the biggest challenge today beyond coding is how do you change business processes and use this technology to become much more efficient. And so partnering with Anthropic, we believe we'll accelerate it for our companies. We also think it will be a good investment as well. But when you look across this, I think what you see is a firm that's made a strategic decision. By the way, on the credit side, look at the Broadcom announcement today, look at all the things we're doing in energy, data centers, GPU financings, it's pretty massive as well. What you see here is a firm who's made a very significant strategic decision. I think what you're going to see over time is very strong performance as a result for our clients, which, of course, leads to performance revenues, realizations and more inflows. And when I think about Blackstone, we're probably the least expensive way in the world to play what is happening in AI today. And again, I think people are going to be surprised by the dividend, this is going to pay for our investors and our shareholders.

So let's turn to AI at Blackstone and the portfolio companies. You were an early mover implementing an in-house team of data scientists. I think that was maybe even 10 -- over 10 years ago. Can you talk about the AI use cases at Blackstone today and how it's contributing in-house and across your portfolio of companies? .

Well, look, this is top of the list for us. We have an operating committee offsite coming up, and this is what we're focused on. It's at multiple levels. It's portfolio company level, how do you make the companies better, what we're talking about, what we're building with Anthropic but then individual businesses, how do we make the customer experience in ancestry much more dynamic, where you get your family history, not just in letters, but in a video and music. How do you do grading diamonds using this technology or with Chamberlain, our garage door business, how do you identify the right people, the Amazon person to drop the stuff inside of your garage. How do you take an accounting firm and transform what they do in accounting and tax. So lots of focus there. At the Blackstone level, obviously, coding, we've seen a bunch of pickup there, but it's also how do we do things like compliance. We invested in an exciting company called NORM AI to try to do our marketing compliance using these tools to be better, more efficient, how do we gather information of our portfolio companies, we have all these board packages and data feeds, how do we use the fact that we own more businesses, real estate than anybody else to be even better investors and have more real-time data. We're also before we're doing investment committees, frankly, early on in the diligence process, we're dropping the information into AI, getting a bunch of questions generated. I myself on the weekends when I read my investment committee memos very exciting weekends. What I do now, before I send out the 7 or 8 questions, I'll drop them into the copilot and just say, "Hey, is the answer already here and I'll end up cutting 1 or 2 of the questions off because it is embedded somewhere in the memo. And so I would say it is a mentality at the firm that we have to get better. And I wouldn't say we're best-in-class. We're leading the way. But I would say the focus at every level is there and then super importantly, thinking about businesses we're looking at buying. Is this business on the right side of history, -- is it on the wrong side of history. Maybe it's a business that is done in sort of an analog way and it's got to move to AI, but it has super valuable incumbency. And I think you'll see that with some of the software companies, but may need to transform. And do we have the right leader and strategy to do that? Are there other businesses that can be huge beneficiaries of the tailwinds that people don't see because it's 1 or 2 derivatives off. We've been buying lots of real estate in San Francisco. Obviously, that is a very interesting way to play what is happening in AI, 1 or 2 derivatives off. So I think it's mission critical for us as a firm to get this right, and we are focused on it, but it is still a work in progress.

Great. Why don't we shift and talk about private credit, which continues to be an area of focus for the investor community on the press after a number of widely reported credit events over the last 9 months and then concerns around AI, disrupting software companies and then Evergreen direct lending funds, prorating investor redemptions. So how are your direct lending funds navigating this backdrop? And how do you see the opportunity set evolving from here? .

Well, I think the town cries of private credit Dom are going to be disappointed. Had they come out and said, base rates have come down. These are floating rate products, and there have been some spread compression some older vintage deals, particularly for '21, there'll be some losses. And yes, there's going to be disruption in some of these businesses, which will may create some incremental challenges -- and as a result, the returns from these products are going to come down a bit versus what you've achieved. That would have been totally credible. But the idea that these products, which if we use our B credit as an example, which is less than 1x leverage versus a bank that's 13x leverage that made 40-ish percent loan-to-value loans that had 700 different borrowers, where EBITDA to companies, its borrowers was up double digits. Debt service coverage ratios have gone up 20%. And we're in a healthy economy. The idea that we're going to see some sort of massive financial crisis coming from that. It just doesn't add up. And what they basically did was go out there and tell everybody look at this. This is going to be a crisis and they've driven redemptions higher in the near term. And obviously, some of these are financial institutions. Some of these are long-only fixed income managers, they don't love the development that's happening. But at the end of the day, what is private credit in the noninvestment grade world, true in the investment-grade world, we're essentially taking investors and just bringing them right up to borrowers. Like Amazon does with your goods, we're knocking out a bunch of origination, financing CLO costs and the end consumer here, the investor gets a higher return. And the borrowers, in most cases, get more certainty because you're in the storage business, you're not in the moving business. And the system gets a huge benefit because it's done on a much less leveraged basis, particularly around noninvestment-grade credit. So this is a very sound thing that's happened. It will continue. Interestingly, with our institutional clients, we said this on our first quarter call, we continue to see a lot of demand for these products. for investment in private credit. And then I would say on the investment-grade side, to me, that's an area that still has significant potential. And again, the clients want to get higher returns at the same or higher credit rating. So I think we'll look back at this over time and say, that was an interesting moment in time. There was -- the level of hype relative to the reality were very different.

Great. Why don't we talk about private wealth begin there remain a major strategic focus for the industry. for Blackstone, particularly through your series of evergreen vehicles from BREIT to BXP and many others. How do you anticipate flows trending across the wealth channel as you look out over the next 12 months? or you suggested a recovery in June, which is quite encouraging. How do you think about the flow dynamic over the next 12 months versus next 5 years? And what products or innovations could be very meaningfully as you think about driving that next leg of growth, maybe even transformative and meaningfully expanding penetration.

I think the key thing here is that individual investors look and feel on a lot of ways like institutions. They have long-term time horizons. -- and they can afford to trade away some level of liquidity for higher returns and the benefits of diversification. They get access to some of the fastest-growing private companies in the world that they otherwise couldn't touch. They get access to much of the real estate and infrastructure that's not in the public market. They get that premium and credit returns and credit relative to liquid leveraged loans. And so it's a logical thing for them to do. And so we have been at this now for almost a quarter century. We have $310 billion, which I think is multiples of our nearest competitor. We have a brand that is highly respected amongst financial advisers and their end customers. And most importantly, we have delivered exceptional performance to our clients. I talked about it in the context of BREIT. It's a similar story with BCRED 60% premium over 5.5 years to leverage loans. A similar story with our other products in private equity and infrastructure, which are younger. We're delivering very strong performance, and that's what matters. And so when I look at this and I see how low the level of penetration is, our institutional clients are call it 1/3 allocated to private and individual investors is $140 trillion of wealth is something like 1-ish percent allocate. And so the fact that we are the market leader in this space and that the space is so early in its evolution, to me, that's very promising. Now we're going to continue to grow our institutional business in a big way, but this is early days. And again, we're doing it on a capital-light basis as an investment manager based on our brand. And what we love about these products is the money stays in and it compounds. And what's important is we've now been through where we went through the full real estate sort of shock back 3, 4 years ago. We're now through -- or not done yet, but we're going through this credit cycle. And I think actually, these shocks are important because they show the world that the products fundamentally work. That over long periods of time, you get your capital either monthly or quarterly when you want it, -- and then for some short period of time, a year or so, you may be in a period where it takes you a longer period. It takes 4 months, 6 months, 9 months, whatever that is. And in exchange for that, you get a meaningfully higher return. And if financial advisers see that over and over again over time, it gives people more confidence. So as painful as it is to go through these experiences I think it's healthy for the system. It ultimately leads to some shakeout. And for us, again and again, delivering performance for our clients, which we have done builds the foundation for our future growth. It's a story with institutions, insurance companies, and it's definitely the story for wealth as well.

So bullish on the multiyear outlook for wells, given the under allocations and the performance you've outlined, are there particular innovations or products or areas that you think could be most meaningful in driving that next level of growth? And maybe you could also touch upon models to what extent tokenization might help unlock this movement here or even the D.C.

I think there's a lot of white space here. You start with the fact we still haven't brought our whole platform online. We will have a hedge fund, absolute return product -- we will also create product share that have multiple Blackstone vehicles. So I think of it as sort of Blackstone in a box -- we've announced this collaboration with outstanding firms, Wellington and Vanguard in the liquid space, where we bring private and liquid products together with a one-stop solution. Ultimately, over time, we think, retirement accounts as we move from a country that was primarily DB to DC, why should we exclude individuals from these products, if it's done in the right way, Arista compliance, a minority of their assets all sorts of fiduciaries involved making sure that this is done in the right way, and we would think a firm like Blackstone would be uniquely positioned. So to me, you will see us continue to expand, and then there's geographies. So I mentioned I was in Japan, I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Canada, Australia, Asia, the rest of Europe, certainly in the United States. It feels to us like very early days. And so again, if we can deliver a premium experience for the customer, we can offer in a variety of ways. And I think just like you went back in time with institutions -- and when we did private equity 30 years ago, is the synsotic things small club with a small number of people, I think private assets have the same opportunity over time. Again, you've got to operate in the right way with transparency, valuations, performance, all that matters -- but if you do that and you have a brand like ours, I think the potential is quite significant.

Why don't we shift gears to talk about real estate, which is a large business for Blackstone. How is the higher rate environment impacting the recovery in real estate. And if you look out, how active might Blackstone be on both the deployment and the exit side.

So there's no question that the sharp out movement in rates hurt the real estate business. COVID also hurt the office part of the business significantly where we were less active -- but that's kind of a broad-based impact. I would say the last 2 years with Liberation Day and the war has kept rates more elevated than I think they otherwise would have been, but ultimately, it's a cyclical business, and it's not going away. And so to me, it's just a question of when not if. We're beginning to see the sort of pillars of the recovery come together in real estate. What you're seeing here now is new supply down by 2/3 from the peak in many of the sectors in places like the U.S. and U.K., and that is starting to show up in fundamentals. I would say logistics, the warehouse business is probably best positioned away from just data centers because of that sharp decline in supply reindustrialization, all the building that's happening and then the movement to e-commerce. So that's our largest asset class in real estate. We feel very good about that. We've seen credit spreads tighten and I think investors will increasingly go back to real estate credit as they look for Terra Pharma as an asset class that can offer a premium return and they feel good about the long-term durability of real estate. Base rates coming down would help and they'd accelerate things. I think it will happen. It's not happening, obviously, in the near term. But at some point, this is coming back. And I would say the other thing is in our conversations with investors. They're looking for something that is value and real estate is probably the least bubbly asset class because it's been out of favor for 4 years. And they're also looking for things that in the new world will exist. People will still live in homes. They'll still go to beachfront resorts. They'll still buy their physical goods through warehouses. So I think this is a sector that's coming. Obviously, the recovery has been elongated. And for us, continue to look to invest in an asset class that we like. And as the market normalizes, and we're seeing some early signs in smaller transactions then try to move more and more towards realizations.

Great. Why don't we wrap up here. Final question on your stock. Blackstone and peers have faced some sustained pressure despite solid operating performance, and you mentioned the strength in first quarter numbers. recovery you mentioned improvement in the June retail flows here. So what do you think the market is missing today? And why should investors have confidence in the long-term value creation from here?

Well, investors are definitely looking at our industry and us with a glass half full or a glass half empty, I should say, approach. I might even say 3 quarters empty. They're obviously focused on the near-term flows in direct lending and private wealth. They're focused on a little delay in realizations here. They're focused on, let's say, an elongated real estate recovery. I'd say our focus is that the business has shown remarkable resiliency despite those challenges. Our distributable earnings per share were up 25% in the first quarter. Our AUM has been compounding. I think it's 15% a year. Some of those things that are headwinds can become tailwinds. And then we have over the interim, longer term, we have just some very powerful engines. I think this AI world and our strategic position in that world is going to, as I say, pay very significant dividends in the form of very strong performance. I think the wealth channel as you've heard early days, and we love our position with our brand. Insurance, the idea of doing this without taking on large amounts of liabilities and being a third-party manager able to serve a broad audience, I think that business can continue to grow. And our institutional clients are quite pleased with what we've been doing really across the pace. So I look at all that and then I say, we're producing the growth we are despite running with basically no net debt, almost no net debt, no insurance liabilities and paying out 100% of our earnings in the form of dividends and share buybacks. And when I look out over time, I think the world just underestimates what this business can be and what its earnings power can be. So we're in a moment. We've seen this. The sectors fallen way out of favor. We're trading at a meaningful discount to market multiples on consensus earnings and for a business of our quality and a brand of our quality I think that will look like compelling value in the rear view mirror.

And just given the movement in public market valuations across the space, and how even private firms in the space arguably probably have derated. Is there opportunity strategically as you think about expanding footprint, any notable gaps or a strategic M&A, you've done something.

We really don't like buying because we feel like it's really about human talent and capabilities. What we did in life sciences, secondaries by small businesses with amazing people, put them on the black stone platform and super size them. We're also, I would say, always a bit concerned about cultural fit. Managing these businesses are hard. Yes, I do think there might be 1 or 2 opportunities, but with us, it's going to be tuck-in. You're not going to see us do -- I think it's unlikely we'll do a big acquisition. We just think we have a very special brand that stands for something. We want to attract the best people. And if we can get those people, those talents, we can grow and build those businesses. And there is a real advantage these days to scale. There's a real advantage with our clients. There's a real advantage with corporates. There's a real advantage in AI infrastructure. We think we can continue to grow at large scale because the market opportunities so big. And there are so many subsets here who want more exposure to alternatives, and the alternatives are providing very healthy solutions, particularly in this new world we're heading into. So as you can probably tell, I feel pretty good about my business. I don't love what I see on the screen, but that's life in the big city, and we are long-term holders. We're the biggest investors in this company and our confidence remains very high.

Great. Well, we're out of time. We'll have to leave it there. Thanks much. on so much.

Thanks, everybody. Thank you.