Summary
- Blackstone Group appeared to show weakness in most of its financial figures on a YOY basis.
- This was not entirely correct as last year's numbers were boosted by a one-off transaction.
- Distributable earnings were quite solid and showed very real growth.
- The company's AUM continues to increase, which helps to drive our growth narrative.
- Blackstone's funds performed very, very well during the quarter, which will likely prove good as the company tries to raise more capital.
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On Thursday, January 31, 2019, private equity giant The Blackstone Group L.P. (BX) announced its fourth quarter 2018 earnings results. While the company beat the expectations of analysts on its top line, the market was somewhat disappointed by these results as it drove the units down in the pre-market session accompanying the earnings announcement. Admittedly, the decline in distributable earnings that we saw during the quarter was rather disappointing, although there were some other factors here that were nice to see and do support the firm's overall growth narrative.
As my long-time readers are no doubt well aware, it is my usual practice to share the highlights from a company's earnings report before delving into an analysis of its results. This is because these highlights provide a background for the remainder of the article as well as serve as a framework for the resultant analysis. Therefore, here are the highlights from The Blackstone Group's fourth quarter 2018 earnings results:
