Brookfield Asset Management - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 was strong on core fee metrics: Fee-Related Earnings (FRE) rose 16% YoY to $676M ($0.42/share) and Distributable Earnings (DE) rose 12% YoY to $613M ($0.38/share), while net income attributable to BAM increased 25% YoY to $620M, underpinned by $97B of fundraising over the last 12 months and 10% YoY growth in fee-bearing capital to $563B.
• Strategic activity accelerated: announced over $55B of asset sales YTD and monetized ~$36B since the beginning of Q2; deployed $28B of equity in the quarter, including major infrastructure, credit, and renewables transactions; uncalled commitments reached $128B, with $54B not yet earning fees.
• New AI-linked partnerships are potential stock catalysts: Sweden program to invest up to $10B in AI infrastructure and a first-of-its-kind Google Hydro Framework Agreement to deliver up to 3,000 MW of carbon-free hydro capacity in the U.S., reinforcing BAM’s positioning across digitalization and clean power.
• Dividend maintained at $0.4375/share (payable Sept 29, 2025); BAM was added to the FTSE Russell 1000 Index effective July 1, 2025, enhancing index inclusion momentum and investor visibility.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Fundraising breadth and durability: Raised $22B in Q2 (nearly 70% from complementary strategies), with $97B raised LTM; strong contributions across credit ($16B), infra ($1.7B), real estate ($1.8B), and transition ($1.5B). “We’re raising more money in more places across more products than at any point in our history.” – Connor Teskey.
• Strategic partnerships in AI and clean power: Sweden AI infrastructure program (up to $10B) and Google Hydro Framework Agreement (up to 3,000 MW) position BAM to deliver sovereign-scale solutions; “We have scale, experience and integrated approach that few can match.” – Bruce Flatt.
• Realizations and capital recycling: Announced >$55B of asset sales YTD and monetized ~$36B since the beginning of Q2 across real estate, infrastructure (including data centers and NGPL), and renewables, supporting DPI and fee growth.

What Went Wrong

• Mix-driven margin pressure and higher interest expense: FRE margin was 56% (down vs Q1’s 57%), with CFO noting higher interest expense on a $750M bond and lower interest income as cash was deployed; expenses seen tracking ~10% growth due to build-out initiatives (wealth/credit).
• Estimates unavailability: Wall Street consensus (SPGI) for quarterly EPS and revenue was unavailable at time of query, limiting beat/miss assessment vs Street expectations [GetEstimates result: empty].
• Near-term deployment/fee timing in credit: Significant not-yet-fee-bearing capital in credit requires deployment to translate to FRE; management emphasized deployment pipeline but acknowledged near-term timing effects.

Transcript

Speaker 8

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brookfield Asset Management Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jason Fooks, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Thank you for joining us today for Brookfield Asset Management's earnings call for the second quarter of 2025. On the call today, we have Bruce Flatt, our Chief Executive Officer, Connor Teskey, our President, and Hadley Peer Marshall, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that in today's comments, including in responding to questions and in discussing new initiatives and our financial and operating performance, we make forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities law. These statements reflect predictions of future events and trends and do not relate to historic events. They're subject to known and unknown risks, and future events and results may differ materially from such statements. For further information on these risks and their potential impacts on our company, please see our filings with the securities regulators in Canada and the U.S.

and the information available on our website. Let me quickly run through the agenda for today's call. Bruce will begin with an overview of the quarter, highlighting the strength of our platform, and discuss how we're positioned for long-term growth, particularly around our thematic investment strategies. Connor will discuss our accelerating pace of investment activity and monetizations, both at multi-year highs, and the growing opportunity to reach individual investors through retirement and wealth channels. Finally, Hadley will walk through our financial results, balance sheet, and some of our recent strategic initiatives. After our formal remarks, we'll open the line for questions. Before I hand things over, I'd like to take a moment to welcome the new analysts who have initiated coverage on Brookfield over the past few months. We're glad to have you with us.

To ensure we can hear from as many participants as possible, we're asking everyone to please limit themselves to one question. If you have additional questions, please rejoin the queue, and we'll be happy to take more questions if time permits. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Jason, and everyone joining us on this call. We delivered strong results this quarter, with fee-related earnings up 16% to $676 million. Distributable earnings were up 12% to $613 million. We raised $22 billion of capital in the quarter, and over the past 12 months, $97 billion, helping drive fee-bearing capital to $563 billion, which was 10% up year over year. The broader market environment is very constructive. M&A is gaining traction, and there is significant liquidity with well-functioning capital markets, a much different environment than we saw even a few months ago when investors were waiting for signs of stability. This shift plays directly to our strengths. We have always focused on long-term, mission-critical investments related to the backbone of the global economy, and that continues to be our strategy.

The businesses we own, critical infrastructure, renewable power, industrial and logistics assets, high-quality real estate, and essential service businesses, provide stable, inflation-linked cash flows, which are sought after in a market where resiliency is valued. This opportunity set is large and compelling and is driven by three powerful themes, which we have discussed for years with you: digitalization, decarbonization, and de-globalization. These three Ds are more relevant today than ever before. They have expanded and are converging in ways that are accelerating demand for capital at a global scale. First, de-globalization has evolved from a discussion around supply chain resiliency into a broader reordering of global trade. We are seeing increased reshoring and nearshoring across manufacturing and significant investment in alternative and duplicate supply chains. That is driving a surge in demand for logistics hubs, advanced manufacturing facilities, and modern industrial infrastructure.

Decarbonization, originally centered on net-zero commitments, now also reflects growing concern around energy security and more and increasingly grid stability. The focus on new energy sources is no longer a long-term policy goal, it is a near-term economic imperative. The lowest cost, fastest to market, scalable solution remains renewable power. Most importantly, increased solar penetration is driving soaring demand for the grid-stabilizing benefits of hydro, nuclear, and storage. Lastly, digitalization, which initially focused on cloud infrastructure, telecom towers, and fiber, has entered a new phase. Artificial intelligence is transforming how data is created, processed, and consumed. That transformation is driving exponential demand for computing power, data center capacity, and sovereign-scale AI campuses. In fact, we believe the infrastructure buildouts for AI will be one of the largest capital formation cycles of this generation.

Connor will speak more about our positioning in AI, but the bottom line is this: we have scale, experience, and integrated approach that few can match, and we are viewed as a partner of choice. We are developing next-generation AI infrastructure around the world. With having already built 2,000 megawatts of data center capacity and being one of the largest renewable providers in the world, we can deliver on large, complex transactions integrated with energy, land entitlement, and development under one roof. That is exactly what the largest hyperscalers and governments are looking for in a partner. The convergence of these megatrends has created a powerful investment landscape. We are uniquely positioned to lead. We are investing at scale in these high-growth sectors supported by multi-decade structural tailwinds. This year to date, we invested $85 billion.

We also harvested investments that have benefited from our operating value approach and sold over $55 billion of assets at very good returns. This represents our highest level of activity in years. Connor will discuss monetization more broadly in a little more depth, but these realizations demonstrate the quality of our portfolio and the value creation delivered by our operating teams. The current environment, marked by secular tailwinds, improving sentiment, and a premium uncertainty, is suited to our strategy. Our focus remains the same: invest with discipline for value, protect downside, return client capital to clients at excellent returns. By doing so, we will continue to be rewarded with growing fee-bearing capital and the ability to deliver on long-term value to our shareholders. I'll now turn the call over to Connor to walk through how we are deploying capital, building strategic partnerships, and monetizing assets across our global platform.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. As Bruce highlighted, the market environment is more constructive today, and the structural drivers behind our business have been accelerating. With these themes converging to create an unprecedented demand for assets that make up the backbone of the global economy, Brookfield Asset Management is uniquely positioned to meet that need. This is evident across our platform, where we are deploying capital into long-term trends at greater rates and forming strategic partnerships that reinforce our leadership position. Let's start with partnerships. We recently entered into several large-scale agreements that reflect the depth of our platform and the confidence that the world's largest governments, corporates, and institutions place in Brookfield Asset Management. The first is a $10 billion public-private investment program to support the Swedish government in building out next-generation digital infrastructure to power the growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing within the country.

This framework allows us to integrate our renewable infrastructure and real estate capabilities to deliver a full-suite solution at scale. The second is a renewable energy framework agreement with Google. Under this agreement, we will deliver up to 3,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity across the U.S., starting with initial contracts valued at more than $3 billion. These facilities provide stable, clean, baseload power, a critical input for artificial intelligence and data operation. These transactions build on other strategic partnerships we've already formed with Microsoft, Barclays, and the French government to deliver high-value infrastructure. This is part of a broader shift. Sophisticated counterparties are increasingly turning to us for our ability to not only bring capital at scale but to bring integrated solutions and, most importantly, the experience and capabilities to execute with certainty. Turning now to investment activity, we are seeing transaction volumes increase, particularly around the same secular themes.

Nowhere is the impact of the three Ds more visible than in our infrastructure business. This year, we have committed to a number of major infrastructure transactions totaling over $30 billion in enterprise value. These include Colonial Pipeline, the largest refined product pipeline in the United States, Wells Fargo Rail, the second-largest railcar leasing platform in North America, Hotwire Communications, a leading U.S. fiber-to-the-home provider, and even yesterday, Duke Energy Florida, a vertically integrated electric utility serving 2 million customers with 53,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines and over 13 gigawatts of installed generation capacity. Each of these assets is mission-critical, defensively positioned, and underpinned by long-duration cash flows. This pace of activity is only possible because of our global footprint and readiness to deploy at scale.

We can move decisively, underwrite large and complex assets given our experience, and we will use our operating capabilities to drive value in these businesses under our ownership. Based on our advanced pipeline, this recent pace of activity is not expected to slow down. At the same time, we are seeing robust demand for high-quality assets and businesses we invest in, as evidenced by a significant increase in monetization activity so far this year. Year to date, we've announced asset sales valued at over $55 billion, generating $33 billion of equity proceeds. These exits have achieved strong returns and reflect the operating value we've created over time. We are seeing this across our franchise. In real estate, we've announced $15 billion of sales across senior housing, net lease, student housing, and hospitality. We also completed the IPO of Leela Palaces in India at a record value for the sector.

In infrastructure, we've announced the sale of nearly $13 billion of assets, including partial interest in Patrick Terminals, our final stake in NGPL, and stabilized data centers developed through our DataFor platform. We've also been active in renewable power, exiting wind and hydro assets, and in private equity, where we've returned more than $10 billion to clients over the past two years. While we're harvesting value today, we're equally focused on tomorrow's opportunities, none more important than AI infrastructure. Artificial intelligence is driving exponential demand for compute and requires an unprecedented buildout in infrastructure. Data centers, power, fiber, liquid cooling, and semiconductor capacity are all essential and require trillions in capital investment. This is the next frontier for infrastructure investing, and Brookfield is well-positioned to lead. We already have strong capabilities in power and data center development globally, and we are scaling these platforms aggressively.

The infrastructure outside the box—land, power, and buildings, essentially the racks and shelves—is only part of the story. The infrastructure in the box, the compute, chips, and cooling systems, have largely been funded by corporate balance sheets. We believe that will change. We see an emerging opportunity for long-term private capital to help fund this next wave of artificial intelligence buildout. We're already seeing demand for GPU infrastructure as a service, long-term compute capacity delivered off balance sheet and funded by third-party private capital. We also see opportunities across the broader artificial intelligence supply chain, from liquid cooling and power distribution to fiber networks and chip fabrication capacity. Combined with the need for developers that can deliver turnkey artificial intelligence campuses, as we are doing in Sweden and France, we believe this may ultimately support a dedicated strategy of its own.

Our integrated platform, spanning equity and credit, allows us to deliver these solutions with speed, structure, and scale. Our relationships with governments, hyperscalers, and industrial leaders are generating proprietary deal flow across the new artificial intelligence ecosystem. Alongside this transformation in infrastructure, we're also seeing a transformation in our client base. For decades, alternatives have been driven by institutional capital, particularly defined benefit pensions and sovereign wealth funds. That remains our core base, and it continues to grow rapidly. A new major growth engine is now emerging: the rise of individual access to alternative investments. Defined contribution plans, insurance-based savings, and private wealth are quickly becoming the next frontier. In the U.S. alone, 401(k) plans and retail annuities now represent over $10 trillion in assets, on par with institutional pools. Private wealth clients represent another $10 trillion opportunity. A recent executive order from the U.S.

administration could accelerate this shift by laying the groundwork for greater access to private strategies through workplace retirement plans. Even a modest reallocation could result in hundreds of billions to trillions of net new flows into alternatives over time. We are well prepared for this evolution. In this evolving landscape, distribution will matter, but it is the quality and durability of the products that will ultimately determine success. Our business is centered around real assets and essential business services that offer income, capital stability, and inflation protection that long-term retirement and wealth portfolios require. We've made significant investments across our platform to meet the needs of retail investors through the buildout of our private wealth and retirement platform, Brookfield Wealth, which is on track to raise over $30 billion of capital this year from private wealth and insurance annuity channels.

This year, we're launching two new offerings focused on private equity and asset-backed finance, and at the same time, we are expanding our dedicated teams for both private wealth and defined contribution channels. At the same time, we manage approximately $100 billion and growing portfolio of annuities on behalf of Brookfield Wealth Solutions, which is designed to generate stable, attractive returns for retirement accounts. That platform continues to expand globally. Last week, Brookfield entered into an agreement to acquire Just Group, a leading provider of retirement services in the UK individual retirement market. While Brookfield Asset Management is not contributing capital to the transaction or taking on insurance liabilities, upon closing, we could become the investment manager for a significant portion of Just Group's $36 billion portfolio on terms consistent with our existing arrangement with Brookfield's insurance group, Brookfield Wealth Solutions.

This will immediately add stable, incremental fee-related revenue for our business, with significant upside as Just Group's origination capabilities support further growth in retirement savings. This transaction demonstrates the significant opportunity for us to service Brookfield Wealth Solutions' growing global platform, a feature that remains underappreciated upside for our business. While such transactions are discreet in nature, they continue to be a meaningful and highly accretive source of growth for us as part of Brookfield's ecosystem. In summary, our global scale, real asset focus, and track record of delivering income, stability, and downside protection make us well-suited to serve this new cohort of investors. As capital flows expand from institutions to individuals, we are well-positioned to lead. To close, across our business, we are seeing an acceleration of the most important drivers of our growth. Capital markets are robust, partnerships are expanding, and the pipeline of opportunities continues to grow.

We are investing behind long-term themes, monetizing into strong demand, and leaning into sectors where we have a competitive edge. With a strong balance sheet, global platform, and long-term orientation, we are well-positioned in today's market and excited about what lies ahead. With that, we'll turn the call over to Hadley.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Connor. Today, I'll provide an overview of our second quarter financial results, which demonstrated the advantage of our stable and predictable business model. I'll also discuss our strong fundraising performance and our balance sheet positioning. We delivered strong financial performance in the second quarter. Fee-bearing capital increased to $563 billion, up 10% year over year. Over the last 12 months, fee-bearing capital inflows totaled $85 billion, of which $60 billion came from fundraising, and $25 billion came from deployment of uncalled commitments. We saw contributions from scaling our partner-manager platforms and growth of our listed affiliates' market caps. The strong growth in our capital base continues to drive the strong growth in our earnings. One of the most unique features of our model is that fee-related earnings comprise nearly all of our distributable earnings, making our earnings highly stable and predictable, which is particularly valuable in today's environment.

Fee-related earnings were $676 million, or $0.42 per share, and DE was $613 million, or $0.38 per share. That translates into 16% and 12% growth from the same period last year, respectively, with earnings partially offset by higher interest expense paid on our $750 million bond deal issued in the quarter and lower interest income as we've deployed our cash to acquire partner managers, which will pay off over the long term. Overall, growth has grown by strong fundraising, $97 billion over the last 12 months, and robust deployments. Notably, year to date, we've deployed over $85 billion of capital into investments, including over $50 billion of equity value. This has been a huge catalyst for our business, and we will continue to be active on the deployment front, given our robust pipeline.

The simplicity and consistency of our earnings, anchored almost entirely in reoccurring fees, gives us a strong foundation to continue to build from, especially as we grow further our capital base and launch new strategies. Lastly, on financials, our margin expanded 56%, up 1% from the prior year quarter. Let me spend a minute discussing some of our quarterly fundraising highlights. In total, we raised $22 billion of capital, bringing the 12-month fundraising total to $97 billion. Notably, almost three quarters of our fundraising for the quarter came from complementary strategies, demonstrating the growing diversity and strength of our product suite, which now provides consistent and increasing fundraising regardless of whether our flagships are in the market. Within renewable power and transition, we raised $1.5 billion, including over $800 million for the second vintage of our global transition flagship, bringing total capital raised to over $15 billion.

This is already the world's largest energy transition strategy, and we will raise significantly more capital before our final close later this quarter. Infrastructure fundraising totaled $1.7 billion, including over $1 billion raised for our super core infrastructure strategy, the fund's largest quarter in over three years, and over $800 million raised for our private wealth infrastructure vehicle, which is the strongest quarter ever. In addition, we raised $1.3 billion across private equity strategies and $1.8 billion across real estate strategies, including $500 million for the fifth vintage of our flagship real estate strategy. The scale and diversity of our fundraising, especially across our complementary funds, continues to show its strength. We will have strong fundraising tailwinds in the coming months, with two of our flagships currently in the market expecting final closes shortly.

Turning now to private credit, where our platform continues to grow in both scale and capability, during the quarter, we raised $16 billion across our credit strategies. Our partner managers brought in over $10 billion, and we raised more than $4 billion from insurance accounts. We also raised over $800 million for the fourth vintage of our infrastructure mezzanine debt strategy, which will hold its first close shortly, bringing total capital raised to $4 billion. With more than $250 billion of fee-bearing credit capital, we manage one of the largest private credit franchises globally. Importantly, we have meaningful origination capabilities, having deployed and committed over $10 billion during the quarter and over $30 billion over the past year. Our platform is highly diversified across credit strategies, including asset-backed finance, opportunistic credit, and real asset lending.

This diversity is key as it gives us the ability to remain disciplined when certain markets become commoditized or when risk-adjusted returns are less compelling, and to focus instead on areas where we see more attractive opportunities. Today, we continue to see strong demand in asset-backed finance and real asset, two areas that align closely with our strength: deploying large-scale capital with specialized underwriting capabilities or in sectors where we have deep domain expertise, like infrastructure, power, and real estate. These capabilities have also guided our partnership with managers who share our focus and can help expand our platform. In the quarter, we invested approximately $350 million towards buying and growing our partner managers, including an additional 9% stake in Primary Wave, our leading platform for music royalties, participating in the Castlelake-led acquisition of Concur, a specialty consumer credit manager and origination platform, and increasing our ownership in Oaktree.

Additionally, we expect to finalize our acquisition of a 50% stake in Angel Oak, a leader in non-qualified mortgage origination, later this quarter. These are high-quality, scalable platforms that enhance our credit capabilities and position us to continue delivering strong risk-adjusted returns. As for our balance sheet, at quarter end, we had $1.5 billion in liquidity. We continue to use our asset-light balance sheet to seed new products and support strategic partnerships, including the upcoming Angel Oak closing, with the goal of generating long-term, high-quality revenue streams. We were also pleased to be added to the Russell 1000 Index in June, a first step in our broader goal of achieving broader inclusion in the U.S. equity indices. We are prioritizing this initiative, and we believe we are well-positioned to continue making progress.

Lastly, we declared a quarterly dividend of $43.75 per share, payable to shareholders of record as of August 29. To close, we remain firmly on track with our long-term growth objectives. Our diversified platform, operational depth, and global reach continue to give us a competitive edge in today's environment. Our strategy is anchored in the mega trends of digitalization, decarbonization, and de-globalization, and we're scaling into the areas where these trends intersect, particularly artificial intelligence infrastructure, energy transition, and critical real assets in essential businesses. We look forward to sharing more of these themes at our Investor Day on September 10 here in New York. Thank you for your continued support. Operator, we can open up to questions now.

Speaker 8

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please stand by. We compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from Michael Cypress from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. This is Baron Thomas on for Mike. I wanted to ask about the fundraising backdrop, how you see that progressing into the second half of this year and into 2026, and what you see as some of the key contributors there. Also, more broadly, how is the overall environment for raising capital evolving, given industry challenges around DPI? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Good morning. Thank you for the question. We would characterize the fundraising environment as incredibly robust. To put it simply, we're raising more money in more places across more products than at any point in our history. That's both by geography and by asset class and product. As an example, year to date, we've raised twice as much capital in Europe as we did versus last year. Perhaps even more important and really characterized by this quarter is just the growth in terms of our complementary strategies. This quarter, approximately three quarters of our fundraising came from complementary strategies, showing the increasing diversity of our business and how these products are becoming a very critical and meaningful growth driver for our business. Flagships are going to continue to drive step changes in our growth and our profitability.

The growing number and growing size of our complementary products are providing greater stability and ongoing growth to our business. Where we sit today, we very much expect fundraising this year to be bigger than last year.

Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Sherilyn Radborn from TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Thanks very much, and good morning. Connor, I wanted to pick up on the prospect for alternatives to gain access to the broader retirement market. I think there's been a lot of emphasis placed on distribution and shelf space thus far, but in the letter, you comment that ultimately you think the product offering will be the key determinant of success. Can you elaborate on that a bit more and comment on timing as well?

Speaker 1

Perfect. Thank you for the question. You are absolutely correct. This is a major and significant growth opportunity for our business. We feel it will grow incrementally over the next several years and decades. You're right, there are two things of note. One, success in this space is going to be driven by those with the brand, the scale, and the track record. In this regard, we feel we're second to none. Secondly, we feel the winners are going to be determined by who has the right products to meet the needs of these investors and these new pools of capital. Here, our leadership in the right asset classes, notably real assets across infrastructure, power, real estate, and asset classes that have long-duration, inflation-protected cash flows, which within the alternative space absolutely make the most sense for retirement products.

At this point, our focus is utilizing our leadership in these key sectors to provide the right products across the right asset classes as this opportunity evolves. We have every intention to be a leader in the space as the opportunity grows.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Alex Blowstein from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Hey, good morning. I was hoping we can spend a couple of minutes on insurance, obviously an important growth area for the firm. Two-part question there. I guess number one, we've seen generally increased competition and tighter credit spreads in the U.S. retail channel. How are you guys thinking about both growth in the U.S. retail with respect to kind of that $20 billion-ish target you've talked about in the past and the ability to ultimately pivot and rotate more assets into Brookfield strategies? I was hoping you could also hit on the Just acquisition and just kind of thinking what kind of footprint and the ambitions you might have in the UK market on the back of that deal.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Alex. Maybe taking that all together, in terms of the Just Group transaction, for everyone's benefit, Brookfield Wealth Solutions last week announced an agreement to acquire Just Group, a leader and provider of UK retirement products. If this transaction is successful in closing, we could expect to manage a significant portion of Just's $35 billion-plus portfolio under our existing IMA with BWS. This would add immediate, high-quality, stable fee-bearing capital under our platform. Perhaps most important is we feel this transaction again highlights an underappreciated benefit and an underappreciated upside for Brookfield Asset Management, which is as BWS continues to scale, we get to partner with them on that growth and scale our asset management activities to support their business. We get to do so without the need to invest capital or take on insurance liabilities. While these transactions are somewhat discrete, that is absolutely a growth platform.

It grew first in the U.S. Now it's growing in the UK. There's the potential that it will grow in other markets around the world. We certainly will look to benefit and prosper and grow alongside that business. In terms of what we're seeing in the United States and the ability for that business to grow, we very much feel it's consistent with what we've said in the past. Yes, there are other market participants in the space, but the underlying fundamentals are incredibly robust. There is more demand for these types of products today than ever before. There will be more demand next year than there is this year. By having leading platforms, we are well-positioned to capture our portion or more of that long-term growth trend.

Speaker 3

Maybe I'll just add to Connor's remarks and talk a little bit about what we're seeing in credit, specifically in deploying that capital, because obviously credit is a big area for us. We manage over $300 billion, a major player. We see significant growth, especially around our core competencies. That's around asset-backed finance, real assets, and opportunistic credit. These are areas where we've had a long history of investing, competitive advantages around the origination side, and of course, the deep expertise that we bring, plus the ability to structure complex investment opportunities with appropriate downside protection. We maintain a disciplined approach, and these areas are less commoditized and less exposed to spread compression.

When you look at, as an example, the asset-backed finance market, which about 10% is made up of private credit, and that's a growing area, infrastructure is really feeling the deployment on the credit side related to the three Ds as well, the mega trends that we've been seeing. Real estate and opportunistic are also finding opportunities with bad capital structures and a growing need for tailored financing, which is a big driver. Overall, we feel very good about deploying these opportunities with very strong discipline and attractive risk-adjusted returns where we're not getting caught up in spread compression, which is valuable for all types of our investors, including the institutional and retail market.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Bart Desarski from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to follow up on the fundraising commentary, just specifically diving into the Evergreen private equity strategy. Given your position within the retail channel and the strengths you called out there, how are you thinking about, you know, if we see success on the PE Evergreen fundraise, what that could mean for BBU in terms of maybe going into an Evergreen structure? Thanks.

Speaker 1

There is no doubt that we view the semi-liquid private evergreen PE strategy as complementary and additive to our product suite within private equity. We were able to leverage our existing positions in order to seed that strategy. We think that will put it in a position to launch with success and grow faster. The reality is having more products that can meet more different investment types and investor needs will allow us to do more transactions in the space. The other point that we would highlight is our approach to private equity, which is very much focused on high-quality industrial and services business, strong cash generation, less focused on growth or significantly leveraged private equity strategies.

We feel it is incredibly well-suited to the current point in the market and also incredibly well-suited for the growing number of investors that are looking to get access to private equity exposure, whether that be retail investors or potentially in the future, things like 401(k) accounts.

Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Kenneth Worthington from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. I wanted to follow up on Sherilyn's retirement question. You highlighted the 401(k) opportunity specifically in your shareholder letter and the prepared remarks as part of that retirement opportunity. Is the 401(k) channel something specifically that Brookfield wants to pursue? If so, what is your approach to pursuing this? There seems to be a lot of different angles that one could take, whether it's target date funds, advisor manager towns, record keepers. How are you thinking about it if, in fact, you are going to go after that channel? If so, is partnership something that you feel is important to success here?

Speaker 1

We absolutely expect to go after this opportunity. At this point, we would look to do so across all channels. Piggybacking on the previous question and our comments in the script and on the letter, we believe the most important thing for success here is having the right products. That is where we are focused. Right now, the environment and the objectives of what people are trying to meet continue to remain fluid. Our view is, given our leadership and the right types of alternatives to put into these new accounts, as well as the products that we can create, given the breadth and depth of our platform, we should be extremely well-positioned. There have been some partnerships announced in the space, and that's great. It shows a very constructive direction of travel for more alternatives going into these pools of capital.

We feel that this is going to be an opportunity that is created over an extended period of time, several years and decades. None of those partnerships, to the best of our knowledge, are exclusive. We feel if we have the best products and the right leadership position, we'll be well-positioned to capture this opportunity in the years to come.

OK. Great. That makes sense. Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Kristen Love from Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. Appreciate taking the questions. Can you share your latest thoughts in real estate? It's been a tougher area in recent years, but seems to be getting better. Curious what you're seeing with regards to investor appetite, deployment, and also realization opportunities, and what areas you're most interested in today across real estate.

Speaker 1

Chris, welcome to the call. Thanks for joining. Maybe just to start with some stats around what we're seeing in our real estate platform. When we talk about the strength we're seeing, it's backed by a bit of data. Deployment in real estate year to date is up 2x versus last year. Monetizations year to date are up 4x versus last year. Across our office portfolio in recent months, we've signed our highest leases ever, not this year, our highest leases ever in both New York and London. I think that stat would probably pertain to almost every other major market around the world. The last thing we would highlight is perhaps the most important, that the capital markets that support real estate are now increasingly liquid and very robust. We're seeing some of the financings we've done in certain asset classes come in.

The numbers are quite staggering, anywhere between 300 and 450 basis points versus financings that we were doing as recently as 18 to 24 months ago. In terms of the momentum of our real estate business, we are seeing an incredibly robust recovery. Maybe to put some context around that, when we talk about the monetization activity we're seeing in real estate, the way we would frame it is the ability to exit is expanding very rapidly, but it's still a very discerning market. Investors are willing to pay full value for high-quality platforms that can drive growth in years to come as this market recovers. The read-through to the broader industry is we are still in the early stages of a very robust recovery. We feel it's perfect for our business model. We can still find some very attractive opportunities to deploy capital.

We feel the timing of our most recent flagship fundraise, which is just wrapping up now, is perfect. We can use our capabilities to buy and step into the tail of opportunities that still exist, while at the same time monetize more pristine cash-flowing assets into an increasingly robust and high-demand market. The recovery is absolutely underway and very robust. We think it's got a long way to run, and we expect to continue to see strength out of our platform.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate all that color.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Brian Bedell from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe one for Hadley. Just switch gears a little bit to the expense outlook. Good to see the expense control and margin improving. If you can comment on whether you think this, I think we're about at a 10% year-over-year expense growth pace, if you also see that continuing in the back half of the year, and then how you see the FRE margin expanding into next year, whether we can get to a 60% level at some point. I know that that might be a little bit futuristic. Also on the acquiring the additional stakes in the partnerships, I think that was about a $250 million FRE upside potential that you outlined in the Investor Day last year. Where are we on that path? I think Angel Oak is incremental to that $250, if you can confirm that.

Speaker 3

These are good questions. On the margin front and on our cost, yeah, that 10% does include a little bit of build. As you know, we've been in building mode around different areas, accessing the retail channel as an example on the fundraising front, our credit platform as we grow our renewable strategy. You're seeing that operating leverage that's built into the business pay off on the margin front. We are up 1%, and that does make a difference. The margins are also impacted by the mix of our businesses. As an example, when we acquire more of our partner managers at very attractive levels, when we do acquire them, they generally come at low margins. We're also in a cycle where our opportunistic business is returning on a relative basis a significant amount of capital while they build into their deployment.

Getting to your question around the rest of the year and just kind of overall long term, we see expenses around that 10% level as we continue to do a little bit of the building, but a steady state kind of as we move forward and meeting our long-term goals from that perspective. That's critical for the business as we look out over the five years. On your second question related to the $250 million attached to the FRE that we have options against with our partner managers, you're right, Angel Oak did not exist at that time, so that was not included in that. We're just really in the early part of that because we bought a small portion of Oaktree, 1.5%. We bought a little bit more Primary Wave that takes us to about 44%.

There's a lot more attached to that that can generate additional FRE growth, again, at very attractive multiples.

Great, thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Dan Fannon from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Good morning. This is Rick Roy on for Dan Fannon. If I could start with maybe a housekeeping item in fundraising first and then ask a follow-up for the Wealth Channel. You know that you expect to launch your flagship PE and infrastructure fundraisers shortly after the AI infrastructure rollout. I believe last quarter you mentioned that the upcoming PE flagship was still on track for 2025. Given kind of the new developments and new strategies that have been announced, do you think about a slight push-out of this BCP flagship into 2026, or are you still, I guess, accounting for a second-half story there?

Speaker 1

On both of our next iterations of our flagship PE and infra, PE we absolutely expect to launch this year, infra either late this year or early part of next year with large, meaningful first closes in 2026.

Understood. More on the Wealth Channel, lots have been talked about by my peers. Given the recent succeeding of the PE vehicle, are you able to size your expectations for demand for that and the asset-backed finance products relative to the $30 billion raised from Brookfield Wealth this year? Maybe expanding upon the expense, the margin discussion from earlier and your previous comments on investing in defined contribution, where are you in your investment cycle for the Wealth Channel? Thinking about 2023 as an era of spend and depressed margins in that context, how should we think about where you are in that cycle and how that might impact margins a little bit more near term? Thank you.

I'll perhaps try and wrap all of that into three points. We have now launched our semi-liquid PE strategy. It's now in the market. We expect to have our first closes in the latter part of this year. In terms of total capital raised, if we break the $30 billion out and we focus just on what we generate through retail or Brookfield Oaktree Wealth Solutions, we very much expect to hit our target of $10 billion for the year. We're seeing incredible strength in that channel. The last point to tie it all together, when Hadley talks about expense and investing for the future, unequivocally, the place where we are putting the most investment through expense is to target this retail and individual investor channel over the long term.

Thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Mario Saric from Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning, and thank you for taking the question. I did want to come back to the individual allocation seeing the democratization of alternatives, as you put it. How do you see the ramp-ups in that demand relative to the ramp-up that you saw with respect to institutional allocations rising to alts over the past 5, 10, 15 years in terms of timing? The second part of the question would be, how much of this opportunity would you say is already embedded in your five-year Investor Day forecast as it pertains to the 16% to 17% fee-bearing capital and fee-related earnings bars that you laid out last attempt?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Mario. The opportunity for increased allocation to alternatives from what we will call individual investors, again, we will reiterate, we view it as incredibly significant, perhaps matching and exceeding in size over the long term what is available from institutional investors. It will take time. This will grow incrementally over years and decades to come. The actual process of including these still needs to, the regulation needs to be adjusted. The products need to be formed. It is a very large opportunity, but it is an incremental one in the early years that expands into a very significant one in later years. The other point in context of your question is it's important to recognize that institutional allocations to alternatives are still going up. We do not see that slowing down anytime soon at any point in kind of our short or medium-term plans.

In terms of comparing the individual to the institutional, it's tough to do those at this point, but only to say we see the retail growing incrementally at first and then scaling very rapidly in the future. On the institutional side, we still see increasing demand there.

OK, thank you.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Jamie Goyne from NBF. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Just wanted to get a sense with the Just Group acquisition and more broadly, what are the requirements and then timelines to be able to shift some of these lower fee rate assets that are managed currently in-house by Just Group or others into the Brookfield Asset Management private funds to enhance yields above the standard IMA fee rates?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Jamie, and to you as well. Welcome to the call. Whenever Brookfield Asset Management does a transaction such as Just Group, obviously the transaction needs to be closed. It needs regulatory approval, and such shifts need to be agreed and approved by a regulator. That is no different in the situation of Just as any of the other similar transactions we've done in the past. We would expect that process to take place at some point in 2026. In terms of the opportunity to then increase allocation to private funds, if that is indeed approved by the regulator, as we are seeing in our other insurance portfolios, at that point, it becomes an incremental process over time. We have a little bit of a denominator effect in trying to measure that because the base of assets keeps growing up.

The amount that we've been transferring into our private funds continues to be at a low %. We are seeing that increase. I would say any time we acquire a new portfolio, it's generally a period of somewhere between two to five years to make that shift.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Dean Wilkinson from CIBC. Your line is now open.

Thank you and good morning. Just a quick question around the base shelf that was filed last night. Given your current financial positioning and liquidity, could we perhaps read into that document that there are acquisition opportunities that may come to the forefront over the next 12 months or so that could be an additive to your fee-bearing capital that perhaps we haven't considered at this point?

Speaker 3

No, I mean, I would say that our focus really is around making sure we can generate the liquidity in order to support the business. We've got $1.5 billion as of the quarter end, and we're in a very strong position. We will continue accessing the bond market in order to support the growth of our business because we still have a lot of opportunities on the partner managers, which we talked about, that $250 million of FRE, and then, of course, seeding additional strategies. We've had such strong success with our complementary strategies, and we see a lot more on the product launch side as well as just newer initiatives that we're looking at. From that standpoint, that is what you're really seeing in that shelf. In terms of acquisitions, we're always opportunistic, but there's nothing that we need to do.

It really is just an opportunistic play from that perspective.

Great. Thanks, Hadley.

Speaker 8

Thank you. Our next question will come from Vikram Gandhi from HSBC. Your line is open.

Hi. Morning, everybody. Hope you can hear me all right. I've got a two-part open, perhaps starting with the changes incorporated in the Big Beautiful Bill. I wondered if you could share your thoughts on how these changes around tax breaks for renewable projects could possibly impact your deployment and exits in that area.

Speaker 1

In terms of our renewable business, there are three points that we would make. One, our renewable strategy at this point, we are confident that we can safe harbor or secure the legacy tax credit treatment for the entirety of our advanced-stage U.S. renewables pipeline. That would be point one. Two, the changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill did lead to an accelerated retirement of those tax credits. It does leave a window for those projects that are already either under construction or start construction in the next 12 months to receive the legacy tax treatment. We feel that opportunity lends itself best to the largest platforms that have access to capital and centralized procurement programs to get those advanced-stage projects started. We are certainly the leader in the space.

The third thing I would say, beyond our renewables business, is we do receive tax credits across a number of investments we have at Brookfield Asset Management. Some of our advanced manufacturing, nuclear, hydro batteries, all of that was well protected under the bill. Therefore, we are certainly one of the biggest beneficiaries.

OK. That's very helpful. The other one, if I may, was on a comment made at the Financial Times Global Insurance Summit by the Brookfield Wealth CEO, suggesting the private credit trade was kind of overcrowded. Just curious if you could provide some context around that comment and where do Brookfield Asset Management and Brookfield Wealth, you know, where are the two companies thinking about the asset allocation on incremental AUM, especially once the Just Group deal is concluded?

Speaker 3

I'll add some clarification around that. When we think, again, about our core competencies in credit, it is around real assets, asset-backed finance, and opportunistic. These are the markets that we play in. We have a competitive advantage. Where we are less inclined to spend a lot of our time is around the sponsor-direct lending. That's what that article is referring to because it's more commoditized, a lot of spread compression. We're seeing better risk-adjusted returns from the core competencies that I laid out. We are very active in that space. We're growing. We're doing a lot of investments in those areas and will continue, given the pipeline of opportunities that I mentioned earlier.

That's great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 8

Thank you. I am showing no further questions from our phone line. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Jason Fooks for any further closing remarks.

Speaker 5

OK, great. Thanks for everyone's participation. If you should have any additional questions on today's release, please feel free to contact me directly. Thank you, everyone, and have a good day.

Speaker 8

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.