OWL Earnings Call

OperatorGood morning and welcome to Blue Owl Capital's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again press star 1. Thank you. I'd like to advise all parties that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Ann Dai, Head of Investor Relations for Blue Owl.

Ann DaiThanks, operator, and good morning to everyone. Joining me today are Marc Lipschultz, our Co-Chief Executive Officer, and Alan Kirshenbaum, our Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to remind our listeners that remarks made during the call may contain forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of future performance or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that are outside the company's control. Actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in Blue Owl Capital's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. We'd also like to remind everyone that we'll refer to non-GAAP measures on the call, which are reconciled to GAAP figures in our earnings presentation available on the shareholders section of our website at blueowl.com.

Ann DaiPlease note that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any Blue Owl Fund. This morning we issued our financial results for the second quarter of 2026, reporting fee-related earnings, or FRE, of $0.25 per share and distributable earnings, or DE, of $0.22 per share. We declared a dividend of $0.23 per share for the second quarter, payable on August 27th to holders of record as of August 13th. During the call today, we'll be referring to the earnings presentation, which we posted to our website this morning, so please have that on hand to follow along. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Marc.

Marc LipschultzGreat, thank you so much, Ann. This morning, we reported our financial results for the second quarter of 2026, highlighting 9% DE growth versus a year ago quarter. This growth was broad-based across products and geographies, demonstrating the continued diversification of Blue Owl's platform and reinforcing the strength and stability of our business across a wide variety of market environments. Over the past few quarters, we've looked to address questions about our business, and our ongoing goal is to continue to offer key facts that illuminate the diversification, resilient investment performance, and core growth trends we see across our business. On diversification, which we believe has been an overlooked theme and a key evolution of the Blue Owl story, We start with our real assets platform, which now constitutes nearly 30% of our AUM. We have grown real assets AUM by 25% and revenues by 27% versus a year ago, with particular strength from our net lease and digital infrastructure strategies.

Marc LipschultzIn this platform, our central positioning and strong track record in these markets have continued to resonate with institutional and wealth investors alike., and this has not gone unnoticed by industry participants. Recently, we were named PERE's Global Net Lease Investor of the Year, Global Data Center Investor of the Year, Global Retail Investor of the Year, and we've been ranked number 2 on PERE's Top 100 Real Estate Fundraisers globally. This recognition highlights that our real assets platform, launched 4.5 years ago with $12 billion of AUM, has raised more money over the past 5 years than nearly every other real estate manager globally. We're honored to be leading such an esteemed list of managers and believe our success reflects our singular focus on creating differentiated risk-reward and strong yield-based outcomes for our investors. Since we first established our foothold in real assets in late 2021, we've expanded AUM 7-fold and continue to anticipate that it will be our fastest growing area for the foreseeable future.

Marc LipschultzIn credit, the sources of growth have expanded as we invested behind strategies such as alternative credit, investment grade credit, and GP-led secondaries. Today, direct lending is approximately 35% of our AUM compared to nearly half of our AUM just 2 years ago. In contrast, alternative credit, which is approaching 10% of our credit AUM, has experienced 35% AUM growth over the past year. During the second quarter, we reached the one-year anniversary of the inception of our Alternative Credit Interval Fund, which has surpassed $2.7 billion in size and has outperformed the Leveraged Loan Index by more than 600 basis points over that period. We've also meaningfully scaled drawdown funds in alternative credit. Our opportunistic fund, which held its final close last quarter, raised 1.6 times more than the prior vintage against a market backdrop of private credit concerns and a challenging global fundraising environment.

Marc LipschultzWe continue to anticipate outsized growth from our alternative credit strategy. In GP Strategic Capital, our market-leading position in this specialist strategy has continued to pay off, with approximately $5.5 billion raised over the last year across the commingled fund, co-invest, and innovative strip sale structures. Finally, we continue to introduce de novo strategies that draw upon our investment expertise in various asset classes and offer incremental product suite diversity. Over the last couple of years, we have highlighted GP-led secondaries and Net Lease Europe as some examples of these organic growth initiatives. Last quarter, we held the final close of our BOSE product at a total of $3 billion, and we have closed $1.5 billion for Net Lease Europe. Adding to this list, we're now in market with the first vintages of our data center credit and real estate credit strategies and have raised over $1 billion in aggregate towards a $1.5 billion goal.

Marc LipschultzSummarizing our thoughts on diversification, as we look at the first half of 2026 across Blue Owl, a period spanning the most acute headline noise and elevated redemptions for non-traded BDCs, we raised more than $16.5 billion of equity capital across the firm for more than 40% of our last 12-month total. Over the last 12 months, more than 75% of the equity capital we've raised has been into non-direct lending strategies, and roughly two-thirds has been from institutional and insurance clients, underscoring the breadth and resilience of our business. Moving on to investment performance, we continue to experience strong outcomes across the board with no meaningful change in strategy-level performance. In direct lending, Performance of our funds and vehicles has continued to outpace the relevant benchmarks. Importantly, the underlying portfolio companies we finance have continued to grow at mid to high single-digit pace on average, providing incremental support to our position as the senior secured piece of these companies' capital structures.

Marc LipschultzAcross our direct lending strategy, credit health remains strong. We have seen no meaningful change in our watch list compared to a year ago. We remain vigilant on credit health and are prepared for some normalization off of very low loss rates, but today, we are sitting at a 12 basis points average annual realized loss rate with a net gain in our technology lending book. Through June, our non-traded BDC OCIC Class I shares have returned over 9% since inception, outperforming the leveraged loan and high yield indices by more than 300 and 450 basis points since inception. Additionally, we have begun to see divergence across managers. We expect differentiation in outcomes to continue across market sizing with the upper middle market outperforming the lower middle market as it has over the past years and anticipate further dispersion among upper middle market managers highlighting quality of underwriting and credit selection.

Marc LipschultzIn real assets, our net lease strategy has generated 13.6% total return over the past 12 months, while the Class I shares of our non-traded REIT ORENT have returned 9% annualized since inception. And both ORENT and our non-traded digital infrastructure REIT ODIT have increased their dividends this past year. In GP stakes, we continue to rate very favorably against private equity products of the same vintages with top quartile rankings across funds on DPI. Well, we're cognizant that sentiment can shift with market conditions and investor expectations. We believe our high-quality performance across strategies will allow Blue Owl to serve our investors well through a variety of market environments, with the diversification I highlighted earlier in my remarks ensuring ballast for our platform in the midst of the crosswinds of fluctuating sentiment. Bringing it back to where we started, we believe the results we reported this morning continue to demonstrate the resilience of our business in the midst of many market crosscurrents, which do not uniquely impact Blue Owl.

Marc LipschultzAs I consider the growth we've achieved over the past year, 2 years, or even 5 years, we have done so through a wide range of risk-free rate environments, multiple geopolitical escalations, and a broad spectrum of capital market backdrops. Our growth rate has fluctuated through these landscapes, we have consistently demonstrated growth and durability, and we've maintained very strong investment performance throughout. We're very proud of the business we've built. We're exceptionally thankful for the tireless efforts of our great Blue Owl team, and we are optimistic about the path forward from here. With that, let me turn it to Alan to discuss our financial results.

Alan KirshenbaumThank you, Marc. Good morning, everyone. As we highlighted in this morning's earnings presentation, Blue Owl grew earnings by 9% compared to the second quarter of 2025. Looking at the second quarter versus a year ago, management fees grew 8%, excluding the impact of management fee offsets. FRE grew 9% and DE grew 9%. Our FRE margin was 58.5%, in line with our outlook for the year and modestly up from the first quarter and 2025 levels. AUM not yet paying fees increased to $31 billion, representing approximately $380 million of expected annual management fees once deployed. This is equivalent to approximately 15% embedded growth from our 2025 management fees. As this capital is drawn down and put to work, it converts into fee-paying AUM and will continue to support management fee growth across our platform. To continue with Marc's themes, he covered in his remarks our continued diversification and strong investment performance.

Alan KirshenbaumI'll cover the core growth trends we see across our business. First, given the number of drawdown funds we have in market this year, we expect institutional fundraising to remain strong in the second half of the year. On our net lease strategy, during 2Q, we exceeded the hard cap initially set for this vintage and have raised 1.5 times more than the predecessor vintage. The investor interest and engagement here has been really impressive. So we wanted to share some stats, which include just a year after the first close, we have raised $7.7 billion and surpassed the original hard cap. Inclusive of co-invest, we've raised $8.7 billion. Approximately 60% of these investor commitments are from first-time investors in the strategy. New consultant recommendation led to over $1.5 billion of this capital raised. And geographically, we added LPs from Australia, Korea, Scandinavia, Israel, Kuwait, and the UAE, constituting roughly 40% of capital raised to date.

Alan KirshenbaumIn Wealth, we believe we have seen a bottoming of evergreen inflows in the May 1st close, supported by continued strong performance in these products and ongoing education across stakeholder groups. And for the July 1st close, we saw a greater than 50% increase in Evergreen inflows versus that May 1st close. While we are still below historical levels, we are encouraged by this data and continue to see increased engagement from home offices and financial advisors. And the recent redemption data is also supportive of better trends in the wealth channel. We saw a modest reduction in redemption requests in the second quarter for our non-traded BDCs. While we are not calling for a V-shaped recovery in sentiment around private credit, we do think that the strong fundamental performance of our products has played a role in the decline of redemption requests for the non-traded BDCs, which we continue to view as more sentiment-driven and led by individual clients as opposed to financial advisors or distribution partners.

Alan KirshenbaumFor the second quarter in a row, we continued to see 90% of our OCIC fund investors not request a single dollar of redemptions. The small shareholder base that did put in for redemption requests remained largely unchanged from last quarter with very limited new participation. And while we believe this has become very well understood by shareholders, as a reminder, the liquidity in our non-traded BDCs has remained very strong. As we highlight on slide 25 of our earnings presentation, with repayments in the loan book meaningfully more than covering the net outflows during the second quarter. Outside of the non-traded BDCs, we saw no increase in redemption activity across our other evergreen products over the past few quarters. We raised $7.8 billion of total capital during the quarter, bringing our last 12-month total capital raising to $50.5 billion the equivalent of 18% of our total AUM at this time last year.

Alan KirshenbaumAll of this capital raising was organic, and nearly 40% of it was raised during the first half of 2026, during a period of elevated headlines about private credit and software, and in the midst of meaningful geopolitical uncertainty. Fundraising was particularly strong in real assets this quarter, with about 60% of our equity capital raised originating from this platform across a number of strategies and products. Institutional and insurance investors comprised about 3/4 of equity capital raised in the second quarter and roughly 2/3 of last 12-month equity capital raised. And compared to the prior 12-month period, institutional flows were more than 30% higher year over year, reflecting the expansion and diversification of our business that Marc highlighted in his remarks. Moving on to business performance across our platforms, In credit, we continue to generate strong absolute and relative performance across direct lending, alternative credit, and other credit categories.

Alan KirshenbaumLast 12-month total returns were 8.3% for direct lending and 11.4% for alternative credit, comparing favorably to relevant public credit benchmarks over the same period. Deployment was robust across credit, led by alternative credit and investment-grade credit. Similar to the trends we are seeing in fundraising, our platform expansion has benefited deployment, with all credit deploying nearly $7 billion over the last 12 months, more than double the prior 12-month period. And we've seen meaningful deployment expansion for investment-grade credit as well. In direct lending, we continue to see deployment consistent with an industry backdrop of moderate sponsor-driven M&A activity and continue to see meaningful repayments at par another metric demonstrating health and liquidity within the portfolio. In real assets, we continue to see elevated pipelines with very attractive risk-return dynamics, with nearly $160 billion of near-term opportunities across net lease and digital infrastructure.

Alan KirshenbaumIn Net Lease Fund VI, we have fully committed the funds and continue to have visibility with capital calls in 3Q and to be virtually fully called by the end of the year. Which would be within 3 years of our final close. As I noted earlier, we are making excellent progress on the next vintage, which has already exceeded its $7.5 billion hard cap, and we plan to finish up capital raising this year. Our net lease strategy continues to focus on highly thematic investment opportunities, including industrials and reshoring, cold storage, data centers, and healthcare, as demonstrated by recent announcements such as the Sila and Spire transactions. In digital infrastructure, we continue to advance forward with a list of compelling development projects in progress and under discussion with exceptional partners. Today, our data center footprint spans more than 140 data centers owned or under construction globally with 15.3 gigawatts of leased and owned capacity.

Alan KirshenbaumIn GP Strategic Capital, we raised approximately $1.3 billion during the quarter driven by our flagship large cap strategy and an additional strip sale transaction. The total raised in our 6th vintage is $10.6 billion inclusive of co-invest. Across the past 2 years, we have engaged in 5 strip sale transactions that have in aggregate generated $4.6 billion of return of capital for our investors. We have seen strong interest from new investors for these structures, which can provide a broader set of attachment points across the return spectrum and allow LPs to invest in a highly visible and proven pool of assets. Looking out at the rest of the year, there are a few items I'd like to call out. On stock-based compensation, a quick reminder from our February earnings call, there are three categories running through our stock comp expense numbers, all shown on slide 34 of our earnings presentation.

Alan KirshenbaumFirst, our regular way year-end stock compensation, what we call equity-based compensation other. This is the number to focus on, and we continue to expect to run at approximately $365 million for 2026. Second, business combination grants goes to zero starting in the fourth quarter of this year. And third, acquisition-related GAAP amortization expense related to some of the acquisitions we've made over the last few years. As for an overall 2026 guidance update, on last quarter's call, we said we think we could beat visible alpha consensus estimates for 2026. We reaffirm that again today. And to be specific, at that time, FRE per share was $1.02 and DE per share was $0.89. We think we can beat those numbers this year. With that, why don't we jump into Q&A? Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Operator, can we please open the line for questions?

OperatorThank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. We ask that you please limit yourself to 1 question. You may reenter the queue for any follow-up questions. Your first question today comes from the line of Glenn Schorr from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Glenn SchorrOh, your last comment made me change my question. Alan, could you maybe address the where you can— where you think you— the geography of where you might be able to beat that visible alpha, $1.32? Just which line items do you think are the source?

Alan KirshenbaumOf course, you're definitely allowed to change your question, Glenn. Good morning. Yeah, look, we have some visibility into growth for the next couple quarters, right? So for direct lending, we're gonna look to net deployment numbers as an indicator to management fee growth for the next few quarters, but let's assume that's a push for now. We're wrapping up, the latest GP stakes vintage. So we're gonna add a little growth there. And for net lease, let's break down the pieces there. For Fund VI, that was 65% drawn at quarter end. We're out with a capital call now that'll bring us to 77% drawn next month. And I mentioned earlier, we have line of sight to effectively fully called with Fund VI by the end of the year. Our current vintage is about 10% called and about 40% committed already. So good early progress there on that capital call, that 10% came in on June 25th. So full quarter in 3Q there. And our next digital infrastructure flagship, I mentioned also, I think in our prepared remarks that we're expecting our first close later this year.

Alan KirshenbaumSo you'll see more growth from that. And there's a difference here. If you recall fundraising for net lease generally doesn't immediately link to management fee growth, it's deployment, right, as we know. That links to the pace of management fee growth. For digital infrastructure, we charge on committed capital, so more immediate management fee growth impact there. So look, there, there can always be fluctuations on a quarterly basis. Capital calls are lumpy, they're not straight lines, but we are seeing long-term management fee growth. And remember, we have the $31 billion of AUM not yet paying fees that will get deployed over time, and that's, that's, uh, $380 million over time. But we have We have visibility into the next quarter or two where we do see management fee growth building each of the next two quarters.

Glenn SchorrThanks, Alan.

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Glenn.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Craig SiegenthalerHey, good morning, Marc, Alan. Hope everyone's doing well.

Alan KirshenbaumDoing as well, Craig.

Craig SiegenthalerSo we have a two-parter on the data center book. I'm curious, how are cap rates trending in light of an increase in competition across the peers? And also, can you update us on the underlying tenant credit quality and watch list? I know most are IG tenants, but debt levels are rising and not all are IG. So I'm curious if you saw any changes quarter over quarter.

Marc LipschultzSure, happy to. We continue to experience very strong cap rates. So to be direct, we are not seeing compression in cap rates, competition. Again, remember, we do something very, very distinct. There's a few people in the world that can do it, but only a few, and do, do it, and that is to build in partnership where we have the actual ability to design, build, operate. We have 1,000 people in our capital stack and adjacent businesses, and that has made us the partner of choice for all of the hyperscalers. And that partner, that ability to deliver on time, on budget, and do it in a reliable fashion at scale 140 times— I think we're now at 15 gigawatts of data center capacity that we have either built or are building. Including the biggest project currently underway in the world down in Louisiana, or at least best of our knowledge in the world. I guess we don't know what's happening in China. So, you know, that leads to a value, mutual value for us and Hyperscaler.

Marc LipschultzSo, no, we are continuing to see and are developing at very attractive rates. And in fact, with rising interest rates, you know, perhaps that even helps escalate those cap rates. In terms of what was the second part was credit quality. Look of our business, if you look at our funds, the single digit percentage is done with people that are non-investment grade. So you could take your own view of the current AA borrowers and whether their AA credits, you know, are strengthening, weakening, or neutral. But our business is an IG business. Non-IG is essentially inconsequential to what we do.

Craig SiegenthalerThank you, Marc.

Marc LipschultzThank you.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Steven Chubak from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Steven ChubakGood morning. Thanks for taking my question. So I wanted to ask on the retail fundraising strategy, just given year-to-date BDC redemption trends have been much more concentrated across subset of international investors. Just wanted to better understand whether the recent turmoil within the non-traded BDC space, whether it's reshaped your approach to expanding your retail distribution abroad. And is there a way to isolate what might be considered hot money versus a stickier core US retail base across your platform?

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Steven. I'll, I'll take that. I appreciate the question. Yeah, look, well, overall we feel good about what we're seeing right now.

Alan KirshenbaumNow, just pulling the lens back with wealth overall, we think we've troughed by way of inflows and we, we commented on that. Redemptions are down in our non-traded BDCs. And I, I commented earlier, we haven't seen increases in redemptions across our other wealth dedicated products over the past few quarters. So we're cautiously optimistic that non-traded BDC redemptions will keep coming down. And it appears others are seeing that too. We're seeing strong flows into our ORENT product. And both Orent and ODIT have raised their dividend this year. And to that point, performance is strong across our wealth dedicated products.

Alan KirshenbaumThere's been so much focus on the non-traded BDC space. Looking outside of that, we're running at 10 to 12% annualized return so far this year for OwlCX, for Orent, and for ODIT. And so let's take a product like Orent just to, to double-click on that. Since its launch in September 2022, has been the top-performing non-traded REIT, putting up a consistent 9% annualized return. It's been a category leader in private evergreen real estate fundraising on both a net and gross basis in just 4 years. It's become the largest— or second-largest, sorry— private REIT in the market with $16 billion of AUM. And look, more broadly in wealth, what we're seeing is financial advisors and home offices have been very supportive of us and our products because they see us continuing to post these strong performance returns. And we've been very transparent with them through the challenging period that, that we just went through.

Alan KirshenbaumAnd we're now seeing a broadening advisor participation across our distribution partners. So just to share what we're seeing and hearing, we've already launched on 13 new platforms this year. So talking about, you know, where are we seeing the opportunities in wealth and in growth, we're also slated to launch on 21 more platforms this year. We continue to see a very steady growth of new advisors allocating to our funds for the first time. And for financial advisors that invested in our products in 2Q, 74% are more than one product versus 52% in 2025. So what we're seeing is once advisors allocate capital, we're seeing significant cross-selling opportunity, which is really a testament to continued strong performance. You continue to see that. You continue to hear that theme from us and having built a really diversified product offering for the financial advisor community. So all this shows us we're really seeing a strong level of financial advisor and investor confidence in Blue Owl.

Alan KirshenbaumAnd so internationally, we continue to, um, I don't want to say minimize, but we continue to grow our wealth platform across the board. We have very minimal, very minimal exposure across our wealth products to Asia.

Marc LipschultzI'll say one, um, I think important point of color coming out of this very tumultuous period, or at least narratively tumultuous, which is there's a lot actually to take away about the durability of the wealth channel and its rationality. You recognize the performance numbers speak, I think, for themselves at this point. We continue to deliver and expect we'll continue to deliver very strong performance. That was true before the superstorm of the narrative. It was true during and it's true after. And I think actually the channel—. There's a lot to take away that's favorable, even though none of us would have, you know, wished this experience, which is, first of all, it stayed very concentrated in the products where the narrative and the conversations perhaps got most carried away. They actually— the concentric circles away from that, even one circle away, go to something like Alternative Credit. And we continue to see both inflows and very minimal outflows.

Marc LipschultzGo to things like Orent, you know, again, they're one of the most successful products in the marketplace, raising dividend. Investors are delineating between asset categories. And even those who, you know, where the narrative perhaps drove behavior, it actually stayed very concentrated. We made this comment before, but the redemption, you know, in our core income product, 90% of the investors didn't ask and were appreciative of it for a single share back because they know the product's working. So the redemption behavior was, you know, narrowed to about 10% of the investors in a very specific product. So you actually look out 5 years and say, what do we now know about the wealth channel? I actually think what we know is the structures work and we know that actually the market is very much able to discern indeed when there are narrative moments. We all appreciate it's going to have a slightly different feel in that market.

Marc LipschultzWhere people are gonna quickly pull back on inflows and you're gonna have to deal with outflows for a period of time. But it's much, much more durable and much more narrow than I think anybody probably thought. And even again, the way I think the narrative is today, there's a lot to like about the wealth channel over the medium and long term.

Steven ChubakNo, that's really great color. Appreciate the fulsome response and perspectives.

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Steven.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Bill Katz from TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Bill KatzGreat. Thank you very much. So I appreciate the updated confidence in beating guidance. Great to hear. I think it removes a lot of risks on the story. And just thinking about that and looking at your margin profile, FRE margin, if I did the math correct, it looks like you had about 80% incremental margin year on year. So as you think about the trajectory maybe for the second half of the year and then again into 2027, how are you thinking about maybe the opportunity here to drive a little bit better profitability? Thank you.

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Bill. Appreciate that. Look, we do continue to feel good and very good about where we are and where we're going with FRE margin. 58.5% Was the guide for the year. We've already achieved that in the second quarter of the year. You should continue to expect modest increases as we go out over the next few years, but we feel good about where we are and where we're going there.

Bill KatzOkay. So just to clarify, then the opportunity for the meeting of expectations is more of a top line story at this point? Just so I understand the modeling.

Alan KirshenbaumSure. Yeah. Yes.

Bill KatzOkay. Great. Thank you.

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Bill.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Brennan Hawken from BMO Capital. Your line is open.

Brennan HawkenGood morning. Thanks for taking my question.

Alan KirshenbaumGood morning, Brennan. Hey, how are you?

Brennan HawkenSo I would love to ask about GP6. So you mentioned that you're at $10.6 billion today. I believe that's what you mentioned. What's your updated expectations for size and timing for final close? And then really more importantly, given sort of the expectations for consolidation among mid-market GPs, why aren't there more long-term— why aren't there limitations to growth on this strategy? And what are you hearing from LPs around some of those concerns? Thanks.

Alan KirshenbaumSure. I'll take the first part of that, Brennan. Um, since, since the beginning of fundraise for this vintage, in, in total, we've actually raised about $15 billion when you include this vintage co-invest and the strip sales that we've done. So $10.6 billion in the flagship and co-invest, specifically $9.7, uh, in the vintage, and then, uh, about $4.5 billion that we've raised over the past 2 years across the strip sales. We're in the final stretch of the fundraise. We'll see where we wrap up this year, but we will wrap up this year and we, you know, continue to make steady progress towards where we want to be there.

Marc LipschultzThe opportunity to add, you know, on that side is really more about the evolving marketplace. You have a lot of very important franchise businesses that are of substantial scale And people need to find the proper way to monetize. And fortunately, our GP stakes business is the singular market leader. You know, if you look at the large end of the market, which is very much where we like to operate— and by the way, I think this environment is reinforcing why you very much want to be in the large end of the market and not the middle market. The middle market, as a general matter, with some exceptions— and we see them in our growth fund is an area where, you know, there's a question of like, what is the franchise over the long term? The big firms are not— thankfully are going to actually consolidate their role, as we're all seeing. The bigger are getting bigger, and those owners need to find capital solutions over time to support that growth and support generational transition.

Marc LipschultzSo, you know, that really makes us the destination for those opportunities. So, you know, we definitely see a very strong addressable growing market. Market over time to be able to deploy and deploy very successfully in a way that works for those firms and clearly works for our investors. Again, I think you'll hear this a few times, the results speak for themselves. You look across the board and I don't want to go down this road deep on this question, but performance really matters. And if you look, we are delivering extremely strong performance in all of our platforms and all of our products. You know, there's an example where we were, are rated amongst the very best performers in the land of PE. And as you know, we've talked about this Dow Jones ranking before, you know, number 1 in the world by that measure. So I think we feel very good that this is a very, very attractive way to participate in the PE landscape.

Marc LipschultzAnd as a note, you know, if you think about what we've been able to do at Blue Owl, uh, listen, there are some wonderful PE firms in the world, and boy, are they good at what they do. And we're lucky enough to do business with a a lot of them and lucky enough to own stakes in a lot of them. We've also created our own approach to this asset class. So we have the GP stakes business. So you can be an owner on the alt side as opposed to the LP fee payer. And we have our BOSE product, which is now a $3 billion product in a rapidly growing market where we are buying the self-selected best of breed assets. And it is really working. Our portfolio has come together in excellent form, were deployed at a really attractive rate. And that product, I think, has a lot of promise in the future. So I think we've developed again, as you would, I think, hopefully expect of us, our own way that's very consistent with our DNA to participate in this, frankly, the biggest asset class in alts without going head to head, which was a very different proposition with the many, many good providers in a place where there's already a lot of capital sort of trapped.

Marc LipschultzSo I think we've got a couple of very, very good ways to skin that cat.

Brennan HawkenThanks for that color.

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Brennan.

OperatorYour next question comes from Patrick Davitt from Autonomous Research. Your line is open.

Patrick DavittHey, good morning, everyone. The market's still obviously hyperfocused on your exposure to retail direct lending. But you have a great track record, clearly have institutional relationships where it looks like demand might actually be leaning in. So what has your hesitancy been to do a big traditional drawdown fund like some of your competitors have, and would you consider launching one to help fill in the capital loss on the retail side? Thank you.

Marc LipschultzSure, happy to start on that one. So appreciate the predicate to the question. Performance in our retail direct lending product continues to be and we expect will continue to be extremely strong. Low loss rates, great, you know, great strong returns, good diversification. So, you know, we feel very good about the product. Again, we do understand, well, two things. We understand that there are legitimate questions that have been raised, although I will tell you that, you know, time and deep study have led us to ever-increasing comfort about the manageability of this software transition question. So, but we appreciate that that was a valid and remains a valid conversation. But at the same time, these are very diversified portfolios and they are performing extremely well and were built to handle, you know, very well built to handle when there are, you know, the periodic issues that there undoubtedly are and will be.

Marc LipschultzWe think that channel will recover very nicely. That doesn't mean V-shaped or rapidly, but we can already see it. The tone has changed meaningfully. And, you know, even we even acknowledged high levels. You know, we already saw our redemption requests come down in Q2 and we see a tone continuing to settle and people realize these products really work. And in fact, in a rising rate environment, which apparently now is the new norm from 6 months ago, direct lending is exactly the place to be. And I think investors appreciate that. Institutions do. We absolutely have seen meaningful uptick in institutional engagement. Timing is always a little trickier with things like big SMAs, but we expect to post some really attractive results on fundraising in total in Q3, but including the credit side on the institutional side. As for drawdown, not drawdown, we do have a product called ODL, which actually is a drawdown structure, but, but, but has some nuances that make it slightly different from a traditional one.

Marc LipschultzWe have no hesitation to launch a drawdown product. And in fact, I expect we will if that's where people want to put the capital. We're, we're never trying to force-feed people a structure for our purposes. We want to meet them where they want to be. So it seems quite logical that we would actually launch the right drawdown, traditional drawdown structure. And it's less about, you know, kind of offsetting Retail is— I think retail will indeed already show signs of recovery. Not rapidly. We're not trying to get anybody ahead of themselves in this market. Takes time for, you know, after a hurricane blows through to clean back up again. But we feel good about retail. We also do feel good about institutional and will absolutely— you know, we're absolutely open-minded to creating a drawdown project. In fact, certainly talked about it actually. And imagine we will if that's where our investors want to be. And you'll finally— let's again just go back to the rate environment we're in is exactly when you want to be in direct lending, individual or institutional alike.

Marc LipschultzI mean, how many years in a row has it been now that everyone is sure rates are about to come down and everyone has been wrong every time? And so I'm sure it'll be true eventually. But the point being, a product that insulates and provides for that is a really good place for any type of investor— insurance, institutional, retail alike.

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Patrick.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Devin Ryan from Citizens Bank. Your line is open.

Devin RyanThanks. Good morning, Marc and Alan. How are you?

Alan KirshenbaumGood morning, Devin.

Devin RyanGood. Appreciate the full year outlook. Just want to connect kind of the credit deployment theme. You guys mentioned direct lending activities consistent with a moderate sponsor M&A environment. That's pretty consistent with the data we're tracking right now as well. The flip side, alternative credit, investment-grade credit, some of the other newer strategies are growing pretty quickly from smaller bases. So just trying to think about credit fee-paying AUM growth, maybe looking out a little bit further, maybe next 18 months or so, Do we need to see a more meaningful acceleration in kind of the broader sponsor-led M&A backdrop, or are some of the newer strategies large enough or becoming large enough to move the needle? And just more broadly on that sponsor, you know, kind of M&A backdrop, what are you seeing there as well? You just want to get some of the puts and takes. Thanks so much.

Marc LipschultzYeah, so look, the underpinning to our thinking and to what Alan has commented on, and he can add anything here, that is additional is not about a rapid recovery in the sponsor activity market. Now, that day will come, and we are hopeful, and frankly, kind of the math tells you eventually capital gets deployed and eventually assets have to go back, but that is not the predicate for what we are talking about. We have all these other strategies, as you note, that are growing very substantially. And that, as Alan noted, is really what we're looking at when we talk about driving the growth. When there is a more meaningful cyclic recovery or secular recovery, whatever the case may be in private equity, you know, that should give us some additional wind in our sails. So it is not predicated on a, a meaningful rebound. That indeed would be additive, helpful, supportive. Do you think it'll happen? But there's no point getting ahead of ourselves on that either.

Marc LipschultzIt's not happened yet, that's apparent. We can all look and see in the M&A market on the PE side, it's a tepid environment. That all said, with the, let's call it the storm, this industry went through the last 6 months and a very tepid PE environment, we grew our business 9%. And as Alan talked about, we see, sequential improvement now coming in three and four and into 2027. So I think those other things would be very nice to have a meaningful recovery in retail, be nice to have recovery in PE activity, nice to have. And those will all be nice, you know, additive and reinforcing forces.

Alan KirshenbaumThe only thing I would add here is, is we, we would expect, as I think you would, a natural improvement in the growth rates as we see deployment continue over time, as we see that start to come back at some point in the future and the net flow picture gets better. You know, we commented on the net flows. We've seen that build since the month of April, the May 1 closing. We've seen it build since then. It's built nicely. We have a long ways to go there, but it has built nicely. And if I pull the lens back a little bit more than that, You know, overall, when we talk about, I guess, this question and the last question, institutional fundraising, we commented that overall we do see that remaining strong in the second half of the year. And overall, we do think fundraising for the second half, we think, could be better than the first half. So we continue to be cautious, cautiously optimistic about where we're sitting.

Marc LipschultzWell, at the end of the day, look, mathematically, we have $31 billion of capital that's not yet paying fees. That's $380 million that's coming into the P&L. Again, without trying to take a position on exactly when activity levels, you know, rise, you know, that is forthcoming. So I, you know, I think we were trying to take a very realistic approach and not counting on exogenous variables, you know, to carry the day. That would— those, those will come and they will be helpful and additive.

Devin RyanYeah, thanks so much.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Crispin Love from Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Crispin LoveThank you. Good morning, everyone. On the—. On digital infrastructure, that your data center business has definitely been a significant growth area for you and your focus has been on the infrastructure. Can you just discuss further opportunities there. Do you see chips financing as being an additional place where you could add in this area and one that you'd, you'd be interested in over the intermediate long term?

Marc LipschultzYeah, digital infrastructure is a really important growth opportunity. And, you know, I don't want to say we're scratching the surface because we're amongst the leaders in these hyperscale projects. But you are absolutely correct. There are areas that surround that, some of which we already touch and do well. And we've been involved in fiber that surrounds the data centers very successfully. Power is clearly an area that is both capital intensive and becoming endemic. As you know, behind-the-meter power solutions are becoming a part of the data center solution as opposed to leveraging the grid in many markets. So that brings us, you know, ever more proximate and engaged in the power side of the equation. So we absolutely continue to see, look, and believe we're in a pretty distinctive position by virtue of being the partner of choice and therefore helping in partnership with these wonderful companies control the project.

Marc LipschultzThat gives us access to a lot of the upper— the other opportunities beyond the data centers. You asked specifically about chip financing. We already do participate in chip financing, not in our Bode product, not in triple net lease, because remember, those are about very long-dated arrangements with extremely strong counterparties. But we already do in our, in our lending business participate in chip finance. For example, you know, participated in a meaningful financing a while back for xAI, which I guess, you know, now is part of SpaceX. And we— so that's an area. Yes, that's an area of opportunity, has to be done structurally right. It's a different proposition from TripleNet, but again, a good example of where as a firm, by being very integrated as we are and staying focused on this choice— partner of choice for capital solutions, long-dated capital solutions— absolutely, chips continue to be an area of opportunity in our lending business in particular.

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Crispin.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Alex Blostein from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Alex BlosteinHey, guys. Good morning. I was hoping we can double-click into the wealth channel outside of the non-traded BDCs for both the Alt Credit Fund and the— and ODIT. You guys are seeing nice pickup in flows, as you talked about. I think there's a good chunk of them that still have fee waivers attached or incentives attached to them. Help us maybe think through how those flows turn into management fees over the kind of next 12 months. And then more broadly, are there other retail-dedicated products you're thinking about and kind of what's in the lab, what's in the pipeline?

Alan KirshenbaumSure, Alex, thanks for the question. Look, we continue to be encouraged by the flows that we're seeing.

Alan KirshenbaumIt certainly ORENT as well, but your focus for the question at least OWLCX and ODIT. We're, we're, we're particularly excited about the growth opportunity in alternative credit. We've done a lot there already. We have a big pipeline. We have a 20-plus year track record there. We think this is one of the biggest interval funds out there already, and we're only 1 year out. So the opportunity set there is very large for us. And the management fees will continue. We have, I think in 4Q, the offset goes down to zero. You'll see a partial offset for the interval fund in 3Q. And then, you know, as you roll this out, we do see more wealth products coming to market over the next 6, 12, 18 months. There's some interesting things that we've been working on that, you know, we'll talk more about in the coming quarters. But we are very focused on expanding our presence there. We already have a diversified set of products there.

Alan KirshenbaumAnd it's only going to become more diversified. So we're encouraged there.

Marc LipschultzAnd I think it's important to note that, that when we look at products like OWLCX and ODIT, they're, they're very small today in terms of inflows. Now, they've been very successful in terms of the total capital raised. They're big participants in the market. So they're important. But actually, the funds flows there, just to clarify, are very modest. In fact, you would I would dare say inconsequential in the context of our business today. But what's happening, to be more specific, is we are broadening now the distribution of those products. Safe to say the first 6 months of this year were not the time the platform was saying, great, this would be a really neat time to go out and roll out some new products. So that's what started to be kind of build back up again is the broadening of that distribution, the broadening of the product suite. As you asked, you'll see us, I think, come with some equity-related products.

Marc LipschultzI mentioned BOSE before as an example of a place where we have a really distinctive capability that is so on trend with where market correctly is allocating to PE dollars. So it's much more about the forward opportunity set than it is about anything we're experiencing today. And that again speaks more to the acceleration opportunity going forward, not about today's results.

Alex BlosteinYep, all makes sense. Thanks, guys.

Marc LipschultzThanks, Alex.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Mike Brown from KBW. Your line is open.

Mike BrownGreat, thanks for taking my question.

Alan KirshenbaumHi, Mike.

Mike BrownThinking about the $31 billion here, can you talk a little bit about how the deployment would be kind of different in credit versus real assets?

Mike BrownIn real assets, I guess maybe focus a little more there since you already touched on the credit side. And then with digital infrastructure, Fund IV coming through, can you maybe just touch on the cadence of the closes, the activation, and then any potential co-investment demand there?

Alan KirshenbaumSure. We're certainly seeing, and we've been doing, we continue to see a lot of co-invest interest. In what we're doing in digital infrastructure and what we're doing specifically in data centers. We've continued to close a number of SMAs and co-invest vehicles alongside some of our existing fundraise vintages as we continue to go here. You know, we pointed to back end of this year, back half of this year for the first close of the next vintage. That fundraising will go through 2027, I would expect into early 2028. And so, you know, that'll have its normal cadence. We continue to be excited about that. We continue to have $10 billion as our goal that we think is achievable. In deployment in net lease, or the $31 billion, you know, that breaks out mostly across credit, direct lending, alt credit, and net lease. The net lease, we're actively— I touched on that, as you pointed out. We are actively doing capital calls.

Alan KirshenbaumWe have line of sight for Fund VI to be fully called. We've already been doing calls on, on the existing current vintage. Direct lending, we're going to continue to see. It's going to matter where the deployment happens across our direct lending vehicles. You know, right now we're running at roughly net zero deployments, not different than what you're seeing out across our peers. And we'll see what the M&A environment looks like over the next, you know, 6, 12 months. But as that picks up over time, you know, you'll certainly see our net deployment continue to pick up. You know, maybe more overall, Mike, just to think about the dialogue today, your question and some other questions. We are certainly seeing an inflection point in our business today. You know, again, just broad picture here. We saw redemptions down in 2Q versus 1Q. We saw inflows trough for our May 1st close. So have a ways to go there, but progress.

Alan KirshenbaumWe touched on already today quarter-over-quarter sequential growth in our management fees in 3Q and in 4Q. We see the growth rate for management fees higher in 2027 than in 2026. And we just touched on this. We see a lot happening with our fundraisers across our platforms. We've got follow-on vintages, new products, new strategies. We really are seeing a lot of success here. We just touched on deployment. Excuse me. Deployment is strong in net lease and digital infrastructure and alternative credit. And most importantly, and Marc touched on this in his opening remarks, we continue to see strong performance returns for products across our platforms. So generally, we're, we're, we're pretty sober about where we are today, the last 6 or 8 months. We are optimistic about growth increasing as we go from here.

Mike BrownGreat. Thank you for all that color, Alan. Thank you.

Alan KirshenbaumOf course. Thanks, Mike.

OperatorYour next question comes from Benjamin Budish from Barclays Capital. Your line is open.

Benjamin BudishHi. Good morning and thanks for taking my call—. Or my question. Good morning. This is another quarter of pretty strong administrative and transaction fees despite, you know, a more muted direct lending environment. It looks like real assets, I think the messaging was like maybe Q1 was a little elevated, but it looks like that was strong again in Q2. And then in GP stakes, you had a little bit of a sequential step-up. So just curious if you could talk about what's going on there. And obviously, you know, on the credit side, maybe that'll be more dependent on what's going on in the direct lending market, but should we otherwise be seeing more of a structural step-up going forward? And if you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the other segments of the business, that'd be helpful. Thank you.

Alan KirshenbaumSure, of course. You know, we continue to see good, you know, as we, as we do in direct lending, you see transaction fees come through. You know, that's been modest this year. You know, that goes along with the ultimately gross deployment that you see. We continue to see interesting opportunities in real estate credit. So very similar on the direct lend, very similar as direct lending on the real estate credit side. We have transaction opportunities there. You know, 1Q we had a good quarter, 2Q we, I think, put up relatively similar results. You could see that building a little bit over time as we go here. You know, we continue to see good opportunities in the marketplace.

Benjamin BudishAll right. Thank you, Alan.

OperatorYour next question comes from the line of Wilma Burtis from Raymond James. Your line is open.

Wilma BurtisHey, good morning. Could you talk a little bit about fee-paying AUM and credit? Curious why we saw that go down a little bit given the dry powder. And do you see opportunities to offset outflows by leaning into institutional fundraising? Thanks.

Alan KirshenbaumSure. So for fee-paying AUM, you know, we raised a lot of institutional dollars in 2Q, Wilma. So about 75% of our fundraise in the quarter was institutional. That goes generally straight over to AUM, not yet earning fees, which we've seen increase by about $3 billion since year end. So that incremental $3 billion since year end, that's about $55 million of annualized management fees that gets put into that queue for as we deploy it, that starts to get opened up, if you will. So direct lending, obviously, net deployment's been light. In net lease, you know, we saw the capital call activity. We've talked about that. So that is starting to get deployed. But overall, when you see a lot of institutional dollars raised, that goes generally straight over to the AUM, not yet earning fees. And then as it gets deployed, that starts getting put into the management fee growth rate.

Marc LipschultzAnd we are indeed seeing good institutional interest in, in private credit and direct lending. So to your point, Again, we look to build both, you know, versus sort of, so to speak, the offset, and expect we can build both on the individual side and on institutional. But institutional, we have some quite large mandates that are very advanced. So yes, institutional interest has picked up, and we expect that to benefit us.

Wilma BurtisOkay, thank you.

Alan KirshenbaumThanks, Wilma.

OperatorAnd that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Marc Lipschultz for some final closing comments.

Marc LipschultzThank you very much. I think for us, look, we are excited about the inflection from here. We're pleased with the results for this quarter, but considering the atmospherics that have surrounded it, and most importantly, performance of the underlying products is extremely strong. Job one is to deliver for our LPs. We will never lose sight of job one, and job one will lead to great results for our shareholders. Diversification, you can see the power of how many new businesses, you know, we have built successfully to real scale. We like the direct lending business, but remember, it's now, you know, 35% of our assets. And the products that have been kind of most acute focus, they've probably 90% of the narrative are actually 11% of our fee-paying assets, which is the wealth products in direct lending. And so you can see the benefits and power of the diversification across our 3 platforms. And that brings to durability of the firm in total with both the results we have and the results we see forthcoming.

Marc LipschultzSo we'll continue to push forward on managing that which is controllable. And when exogenous things are helpful, well, that— we look forward to that being additive. But we are excited looking into the back half and into 2027 from here and appreciate the time today.

OperatorThis concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.